Brenden Aaronson surprisingly dropped from USMNT for Concacaf Nations League final four

Next week’s Concacaf Nations League semifinals will mark the last time the U.S. men’s soccer team can assemble all of its top players for an official competition before next year’s FIFA World Cup.

This summer’s Gold Cup is at the same time as the FIFA Club World Cup, so some big-time players are expected to be unavailable. After that, it will just be friendlies until June 2026.

This month’s event is mainly being used as a measuring stick to see what U.S. manager Mauricio Pochettino thinks his A squad is. And as a result, Tuesday’s roster announcement was as notable for who wasn’t there as much as who was.

One of the most significant omissions happens to be perhaps the most prominent active player from the Philadelphia area. Brenden Aaronson, the Medford native who played at the 2022 World Cup and has 47 U.S. appearances, did not make the cut.

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Aaronson has been a regular player with Leeds United, currently in first place in England’s second division. But Pochettino indicated that he wanted to see other players this time around.

“Brenden, we know very well, but we decided to bring another player in his place,” the manager said Tuesday on a video news conference. “We have players in that position like Gio Reyna, who is for the first time able to join us, and then [Christian] Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Diego Luna. … Too many players for only one position.”

That was a reference to Reyna being called up for the first time in the Pochettino era, after suffering a series of injuries since his last U.S. appearance in July. Reyna is one of the players who will be at the Club World Cup.

Luna won the manager’s appreciation in the January camp for domestic prospects. His assist after suffering a broken nose in a game led to Pochettino’s most famous quote of his tenure so far: “Assist and we score — I said [on the sideline], ‘Big balls.’”

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As surprising as Aaronson’s omission was, it need not overshadow that three other players from around here made the 23-player squad: goalkeeper Zack Steffen of Downingtown and former Union centerbacks Auston Trusty of Media and Mark McKenzie of Bear, Del.

Steffen is one of three goalkeepers on the squad, along with the Columbus Crew’s Patrick Schulte and presumed starter Matt Turner, currently with England’s Crystal Palace.

McKenzie, who has played well this season for France’s Toulouse, is a potential starter next to Chris Richards of England’s Crystal Palace. Trusty has played well for Scotland’s Celtic, including in a recent Champions League series against German superpower Bayern Munich.

Celtic teammate Cameron Carter-Vickers and Charlotte FC’s Tim Ream are the rest of the unit.

Pochettino praised McKenzie when asked about him, calling him “a player that we really trust, and we have confidence [in].”

But he made clear that no starting spot is guaranteed as of now and noted that McKenzie will have one fewer day in camp because Toulouse plays Sunday and other teams play Saturday.

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The manager’s decision to take five centerbacks may also have factored in his not picking Aaronson. Pochettino noted that for future squads he plans to take only three or four.

“When you have the possibility [of] only 23 players to call in a competition that is only two games in a very short space of time, I think we need a good balance,” he said. “We can talk about him [Aaronson], but we can talk about many other players that were in the pre-list [of nominees] that were disappointed because we cannot call all. …

“I think he’s going to be always in our mind — Brenden is a player that our consideration [of] is so high, but in this moment we need to wait for the next [camp].”

Those games will come in June, when the U.S. hosts Turkey and Switzerland for friendlies before the Gold Cup.

In the Nations League, the U.S. will play Panama in the semifinals on March 20, then Mexico or Canada in the final or third-place game on March 23. All the games will take place at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., home of the NFL’s Rams and Chargers.

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The rest of the roster is headlined by longtime stars Tyler Adams, Pulisic, McKennie, Reyna, and Tim Weah. Adams returns to the national team for the first time since last summer’s Copa América, after finally overcoming a back injury that plagued him for most of last year.

The surprise inclusions all come from MLS: Luna and strikers Patrick Agyemang of Charlotte FC and Brian White of the Vancouver Whitecaps. Agyemang and White also did well in January, and with top Europe-based strikers Folarin Balogun and Ricardo Pepi injured, Pochettino chose them as backups to presumed starter Josh Sargent.

White played in the Union’s youth system as a teenager and was teammates with Steffen on an under-17 squad that won the prestigious Generation adidas Cup title in 2012. (Jim Curtin was their coach, two years before becoming the first team’s manager.)

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The other big omission was winger Alejandro Zendejas of Mexico’s Club América. He won a Mexican league title last December and has five goals and five assists in his last nine games. He wouldn’t start over Pulisic or Weah but was projected as a leading backup.

Pochettino was not surprised that he got as many questions about who didn’t make the squad as who did.

“Always, we are going to be talking about the players who are not in the squad,” he said. “For sure, too many deserve to be [there], but we don’t have places for them to be with us.”

And he acknowledged that only time will tell whether he got his picks right this time.

“The difficult thing always, when you have too many players, is to be right and to be clinical in the moment that you select the players to play,” he said. “Because that is about our feelings, it’s about your intuition, how you are going to project the team to play in different competitions.

“And I think when we selected these 23 players, it was because we really believe that we can find a very good balance, and to compete our best — and to get the result that we want, to win.”

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Goalkeepers (3): Patrick Schulte (Columbus Crew), Zack Steffen (Colorado Rapids), Matt Turner (Crystal Palace, England)

Defenders (8): Cameron Carter-Vickers (Celtic, Scotland), Marlon Fossey (Standard Liège, Belgium), Mark McKenzie (Toulouse, France), Tim Ream (Charlotte FC), Chris Richards (Crystal Palace, England), Antonee Robinson (Fulham, England), Joe Scally (Borussia Monchengladbach, Germany), Auston Trusty (Celtic, Scotland)

Midfielders (6): Tyler Adams (Bournemouth, England), Johnny Cardoso (Real Betis, Spain), Diego Luna (Real Salt Lake), Weston McKennie (Juventus, Italy), Gio Reyna (Borussia Dortmund, Germany), Tanner Tessmann (Lyon, France)

Forwards (6): Patrick Agyemang (Charlotte FC), Yunus Musah (AC Milan, Italy), Christian Pulisic (AC Milan, Italy), Josh Sargent (Norwich City, England), Timothy Weah (Juventus, Italy), Brian White (Vancouver Whitecaps)