Tyler Adams knows USMNTs teenage stars face a different kind of pressure than his generation did
Tyler Adams has been in their shoes.He’s carried the weight that the nine teenagers on the U.S.
men’s national team’s roster are shouldering right now, and then some.For all the pressure Cavan Sullivan must be feeling ahead of what could be his first cap with the national team Saturday against Peru, Adams had to contend with labels being thrust on him after an astonishing failure to qualify for the World Cup. He, Weston McKennie and Christian Pulisic weren’t just the next generation eight years ago.
They had to save the national team right then and there — or at least that’s what it felt like. “We continue to be grateful for the opportunity when we get it, but these young kids, there’s not the pressure that — you need to step in right now or else the national team is gonna fall apart,” Adams told The Post in a conversation this week at the national team’s training center outside of Atlanta.“We have a great core of this national team, even with players that aren’t here right now and something to build off.” Aside from their own talent, which is considerable unto itself, that is as good a reason as any to believe in the program’s ability to integrate the likes of Sullivan, Adri Mehmeti, Neil Pierre, Mathis Albert, Julian Hall and company.
No longer does the USMNT need to build the ship while figuring out how to direct it. Even on the young roster that will play in Orlando on Saturday, there are double-digit World Cup veterans.There is a program that made it to the Round of 16 less than three months ago, and could justifiably call that a disappointment.
There is a second-cycle coach in Mauricio Pochettino with enough experience that he was asked Friday to reflect on Lionel Messi’s international retirement — having coached Messi at Paris Saint-Germain. When Adams and McKennie earned their first caps in late 2017, none of that was in place.John Brooks, Alejandro Bedoya and DeAndre Yedlin were the only players on that roster wit...