The Soccer Fates Comes For Big Pat, MLS Separates
Patrick Agyemang is the first legitimate World Cup roster candidate to be eliminated from World Cup consideration thanks to a devastating Achilles tendon injury the forward suffered on Sunday playing for Derby County.
We knew the soccer fates would come for someone, we just didn't know who. And, of course, they might not be done. The window in which a player with more than a short term issue could be scratched off the list of World Cup possibilities is now open.
History is littered with players who missed the World Cup because of an injury at exactly the wrong time. Most of the time those injuries are of the pedestrian soccer type, like Agyemang's tendon tear. Chris Armas missed out in 2002 via a May knee injury. Miles Robinson tore an Achilles tendon in the first half of 2022 and missed Qatar. American soccer remembers Charlie Davies, an exciting young player seemingly destined for World Cup glory whose career and life took a horrific turn in a car accident back in 2009—a one-off that we very much hope never happens again.
But I mention Davies because missing the 2010 World Cup meant his never playing in the tournament. While I think it's fair to say Davies was expected to have a much bigger role in the team that went to South Africa than Agyemang was expected to have in the group representing America in a home World Cup, I can't help but wonder if Big Pat is missing his one shot. He'll only be 29 in 2030, so nothing is settled, but the fates are cruel and there are certainly no guarantees.
Agyemang's injury feels all the more brutal because he's an eminently likable guy and his story plays to those of us who still value the idea of the late blooming college product who three years ago wasn't even in the World Cup picture. We should reserve at least one roster spot in every USMNT World Cup team for a guy like Pat.
What this means in practical terms for Mauricio Pochettino's roster won't be known until May, but the obvious beneficiary is Ricardo Pepi. Despite a mooted move to Fulham (is that on or off at the moment? I can't keep track) Pepi's USMNT star appears to have faded. While no one doubts Pepi's finishing, he doesn't impact games off the ball, isn't great back-t0-goal, and isn't much more than a token defender from the front. If Pepi goes to the World Cup, it looks like he'll go as a bench option when Folarin Balogun's legs are gone and the US is chasing a game.
I'm not saying that Pepi is a bad player. He might even have beaten out Agyemang (or Haji Wright) to make the roster regardless of the state of the forward pool. Pochettino's ways are a mystery. But Agyemang provided a different physical profile to anyone in the pool and while he is by no means a polished player, I think his "awkwardness" off the bench (for lack of a better word) might have been an asset for the Americans come June.
I hereby call for all fans of the USMNT to make a sacrifice to the soccer fates—tonight, before they again turn their cruel malevolence towards our players. I can't be sure it will work, but I would rather try and see our attempts fail then regret doing nothing.
Damn them.
Six games into the 2026 MLS season and it feels like we can pull out a few narratives out of the pile. We might not yet have a line on who the elite of the league are beyond LAFC, Vancouver, and (for me) Nashville, but it's beginning to become glaringly obvious what the group of bad teams looks like. It feels like separation and without significant overhauls in the summer, the bottom feeders through six games look headed for painful campaigns.
The cadre of no-hopers as I see it:
- Philadelphia Union
The turnover in Philly hasn't proven too much.
- Orlando City
How does Antoine Griezmann help this team, exactly?
- Sporting Kansas City
The end of the Vermes era was bad but this transition period (new coach, new ownership) might be worse.
- CF Montreal
Montreal's interest in winning hasn't been the same since Joey Saputo took over Bologna, but at least the Quebecers remain willing to give minutes to overlooked players?
Honorable mention for Atlanta (I want to believe), Portland (Neville's in a death spiral), and the LA Galaxy.
Philly sitting at the top of this list and at the bottom of the table as the only MLS team without a win in 2026 says everything you need to know about just how weird our domestic league really is. Going from the best team over 34 games in one season to an also-ran the next isn't even really that notable in the annals of the competition, though the degree of decline for the Union this season is.
No league in the world does a better job of giving clubs the tools to enact their own demise.
At this juncture it seems pertinent to point out that there are several—a gaggle even—of qualified, unemployed (or not employed in the top job), MLS head coaches on the market. The line between "retread" and "smart, experienced hire" is sometimes fine, but I'm a little surprised that the league moves on so quickly from coaches that can point to meaningful MLS success on their CVs.
I think a few clubs are learning that casting their gaze to Europe in the bid to find the Next Hot Young Head Coach (NHYHC) might not be better than tapping someone who knows the leauge and the culture.
A few names, just to get them on the record, with no regard for whether they would listen an offer from an MLS club:
Wilfried Nancy
Jim Curtin
Giovanni Savarese
Patrick Vieira
Josh Wolff
Bob Bradley
I'm making no claims about fit in any particular place or even suggesting any of the names above would definitely do a better job than some of the currently employed head coaches stinking up the joint across MLS. There's a range of pedigree in the list and MLS is such a strange league that I can hardly say that what Nancy did in Columbus or what Curtin did in Philadelphia means they'll find succes in a new job.
I mean, Greg Vanney won an MLS Cup in Toronto, watched that team disintegrate, moved to the Galaxy, won an MLS Cup, and is now on the verge of a second consecutive season of abysmal results—if he's given the chance to finish the season.
This week's edition of The Best Soccer Show (live, Thursday night at 9 PM ET on YouTube) will be a special "WHAT'S YOUR DEFCON?" episode. We're going to take stock of our confidence levels for the USMNT with no more pre-World Cup roster windows left for Pochettino to gather information and a mixed bag of good (Balogun, Luna, Berhalter) and bad (waves at almost everything else) data from the return to club soccer.
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