Pochettino's eye is on MLS teenagers now

A USMNT manager scouting his own domestic league for the next cycle, rather than just poaching from Bundesliga bench spots, is not how this program has usually worked. Pochettino, per The Athletic, is monitoring a group of young MLS players as he starts thinking about life after the tournament, and Cavan Sullivan's name sits right at the front of that list.

Sullivan, still a teenager at Philadelphia Union, has spent the past couple of seasons being talked about as the kind of prospect MLS doesn't produce very often: technically sharp, comfortable carrying the ball into midfield, unafraid of senior minutes at an age when most of his peers are still in reserve fixtures. That profile is exactly the sort of thing a coach building for the next four-year cycle wants to get eyes on early, rather than waiting until a European move complicates the conversation.

Pochettino's post-World Cup audit

The World Cup squad is essentially set in the fans' minds already: Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, the usual spine. What Pochettino is doing, according to the report, is working out who fills the gaps once that generation ages out or gets rotated. MLS has spent years insisting it can produce that kind of player. Sullivan, and whichever other names emerge from this evaluation process, are the actual test of that claim.

The Athletic's reporting frames this as early-stage assessment rather than anything close to a squad list. There's no confirmed call-up, no fixed criteria laid out publicly, just a manager known for backing academy graduates at his club jobs now doing the same audit at international level. Pochettino built reputations on trusting young players who hadn't fully arrived yet. Doing that with MLS talent specifically, rather than treating the league as a retirement home for ageing Europeans, would be a genuine shift in how the USMNT sources depth.

The path from watchlist to call-up

None of this converts to caps by itself. Sullivan and any other MLS youngster under consideration still have to keep performing at club level through the rest of the season, and Pochettino still has to decide whether domestic form translates to what he needs at international tempo. The post-World Cup cycle gives him room to experiment without the pressure of a home tournament hanging over every selection, and that's precisely when this kind of look becomes worth taking.

For now it's a watchlist, not a squad. But a USMNT manager treating MLS as a genuine pipeline rather than an afterthought is the more interesting story here, regardless of which names actually make the eventual squad.