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In a matter of hours, the U.S. men’s national team will officially announce its 2026 World Cup roster. After 91 players were given international minutes since the last World Cup, the U.S. has whittled its list down to 26 for the upcoming major tournament that will be co-hosted on home soil. Doing so is no easy task.
For head coach Mauricio Pochettino, who has been in charge since late 2024, the message has been that “no one can feel safe” when it comes to roster selection, highlighting just how open and fluid decision-making can be. (The roster leak over the weekend, if accurate, shows just how fluid this process is.)
As for the players themselves — in the current and former World Cup cycles — it’s also a stressful period while waiting to hear if you’ll make the final cut.
“Definitely on your mind, it’s impossible not to think about it,” former U.S. Jozy Altidore acknowledged on a recent podcast appearance with U.S. legends Landon Donovan and Tim Howard. “It’s nerve-racking for all players. Whether you’re somewhat of a shoo-in or one of the guys who you’ve earned your place, or you’re a bubble guy. It’s a nervous time.”
Tough choices are inevitably made when it comes to any national team’s World Cup roster announcement, and following the release of the list, there will be plenty of the usual headlines when it comes to the most notable snubs.
This is a good reminder to review those who were also shockingly left out in the past. Ahead of Tuesday’s official squad reveal, let’s take a look back at the all-time surprise World Cup roster absences for the USMNT.
Quick note: Any drops due to injury are not listed.
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The GOAT for the U.S., and, for U.S. World Cup roster snubs.
“America is angry,” read the first line of one article that responded to Donovan’s 2014 omission. Another called the move the “biggest and most polarizing in U.S. soccer history.”
When head coach Jürgen Klinsmann left off the four-time U.S. Soccer Player of the Year, he was not only overlooking the country’s all-time leading goal scorer, but also the face of the men’s national team program.
Months after the decision, Donovan was still perplexed as to why he wasn’t involved in the 2014 World Cup.
Landon Donovan was denied a chance to play in a fourth World Cup after being left out of the U.S. roster in 2014. (Photo by David Bernal/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images)”I didn’t agree and I still know I should have been there,” mentioned the U.S. player after his national team earned an exit in the round of 16 against Belgium.
At first, Klinsmann mentioned that dropping the 32-year-old was due to sporting reasons, but later opened up and noted that a winter sabbatical by Donovan in the year before the World Cup had influenced his choice. The justification could be made that the coach put more value on those who were there when needed, especially during World Cup qualifiers that led to the path to Brazil 2014.
All that mentioned, his absence from that World Cup roster remains the biggest “what if?” for the national team. It also wasn’t the only eyebrow-raising decision for that 2014 roster, with someone like Eddie Johnson also a strong candidate for this list.
It’s one thing to drop a fringe player or an up-and-coming name; it’s quite another to stun the roster by leaving out one of the biggest, if not the leader, of the squad.
“He took away the captain of the team,” former defender Marcelo Balboa mentioned, regarding then-coach Steve Sampson dropping Harkes ahead of the 1998 World Cup.
Like Donovan, this was a very well-respected name with World Cups already under his belt. Harkes had Premier League experience and was someone who had scored at Wembley Stadium. During the 1998 MLS season — the same year of the World Cup in France — he would go on to become a league All-Star for a second consecutive time.
The problem? Harkes had an affair with the wife of teammate Eric Wynalda. Later made public by Wynalda, Sampson recognized that the situation had played a role.
“I think he was an exceptional captain on the field, but it was impossible to keep him on the team based on his behavior off the field,” Sampson mentioned.
Fair play to Sampson. We don’t have to make any arguments that the player continued to deserve to be on the roster, but did Harkes’ actions and the entire situation still make this one of the more shocking absences for a U.S. World Cup squad? Most definitely.
In the lead-up to the 2022 World Cup, only two goalkeepers were involved in qualifiers: Matt Turner and Steffen. Nearly splitting the starts for the 14 games that provided an invitation to the major tournament, the easy assumption was that the No. 1 goalkeeping spot would come down to either player.
But when the roster was revealed by head coach Gregg Berhalter, Steffen was nowhere to be seen. Not even a backup, or a backup to the backup.
“Zack’s been there for me a bunch of times,” Berhalter mentioned during the roster announcement. “And to tell him he is not going to be part of the World Cup team was heartbreaking for me.”
So why was he dropped? Berhalter mentioned that there became a level of comfort with a new goalkeeping trio that included Turner alongside Ethan Horvath and Sean Johnson. Turner would go on to start at the 2022 World Cup and give up only one goal in the group stage, before being involved in a 3-1 loss to the Netherlands in the round of 16.
Would things have been different, for better or worse, had Steffen started? We’ll never know.
Across World Cup qualifiers that cemented the USMNT’s spot in the 2022 tournament, Pepi led the U.S. in goals and assists with a goal contribution of six across 10 appearances. At club level with FC Groningen, he racked up an impressive tally and brilliant run of form with six goals and two assists in his last nine Eredivisie games ahead of the World Cup.
Eligible for both Mexico and the U.S. but eventually choosing the latter in the hopes of a more prominent role, Pepi was then left off the 2022 roster by Berhalter. The lack of selection was, unsurprisingly, a massive letdown.
“I felt like I gave myself the best opportunities to be in the World Cup roster,” the forward mentioned afterward.
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Although Pepi did close out 2022 on a high with Groningen, a scoring slump for club and country that preceded the late resurgence appeared to be enough to leave him out of the World Cup picture.
But perhaps if he were on the plane to Qatar, he could have given the U.S. more of a fighting chance in the round of 16 against the Netherlands if he were the one who was starting as the No. 9 instead of Jesús Ferreira.
Before we select our last option here, a quick shoutout to Brian Ching in 2010, Jeff Agoos in 1994, and Eddie Johnson in 2024. These players narrowly missed their own World Cup list and our very own here for the most stunning absences. Although he didn’t make the 2006 roster, perhaps Twellman can take some solace in knowing that he made the cut here.
In an eventual national team squad that had 11 of its 23 players from MLS, Twellman just so happened to be the league MVP and leading goal scorer in the season before the World Cup. Despite not having the same ratio of goals at the international level, he was able to gain some traction in the winter of 2006 with four goals scored across two U.S. matches.
To quote an article that year from The New York Times: “Twellman was not named to the USMNT World Cup roster when it was declared in May, even though he had established himself as one of the country’s most dangerous forwards.”
Looking ahead to Tuesday, we’ll see if any new faces will join Twellman and others from this group.
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