On Friday around 1 p.m., U.S. Soccer sent roster emails to players and Tanner Tessmann opened one that told him he was not on the United States’ 2026 World Cup roster.
Tessmann, who had featured in each of the last six USMNT games and who started the opening matches of the October, November and March windows in a double‑pivot, learned his World Cup will be from the sidelines after an email that landed in his inbox at the same time as the rest of the squad’s messages.
The omission removes one of the midfielders many expected to be in the first XI and reshapes a midfield picture already thinned by injury: Johnny Cardoso suffered an ankle injury that required surgery and is ruled out of the tournament, while Tessmann had picked up a muscle injury earlier in the month.
Those facts leave manager Mauricio Pochettino with a smaller pool than many anticipated and place unusual weight on Tyler Adams — the roster’s only defensive‑minded midfielder playing club soccer outside MLS — and on Sebastian Berhalter, who has been superb for the Vancouver Whitecaps in big moments.
For the coach the choices are now practical and blunt: find a pairing that covers defensive responsibilities and transitional play, or alter roles inside the group. Pochettino has spoken about giving players "freedom," and the coach must now translate that philosophy into a midfield that can manage games against the world’s best without the player many had pictured starting.
Context matters: the U.S. did not need to qualify for the 2026 World Cup because it is a co‑host, a tournament it secured along with Canada and Mexico in June 2018 when 134 national soccer federations voted for the joint North American bid in Russia. The roster choices this week are therefore about construction and form rather than a last chance to earn a slot in Qatar‑style qualifying.
The weight of Tessmann’s season complicates the narrative. Before his injury he had seen his form and playing time dip at Lyon — a reality acknowledged inside the staff — but a source briefed on the injury told The Athletic there was no concern about his World Cup availability. That assessment and his regular appearances for the national team across six straight matches stand at odds with the decision captured in Friday’s email.
That contradiction is the story’s tension: a player thought fit enough to start three recent windows is told he won’t travel, even as a separate injured midfielder is ruled out for good. Pochettino can pair Tyler Adams with Sebastian Berhalter, or reverse their roles; either way the coach will be forced to pick between domestic experience and international temperament in the midfield pivot.
The concrete consequence is immediate. Tessmann’s omission makes it unlikely he will be in Mauricio Pochettino’s starting XI at kickoff — the coach’s next steps will be to define a midfield that compensates for his absence and to decide which players will shoulder the most defensive work. Pochettino’s choices this week will determine whether the U.S. enters the 2026 World Cup with a midfield built for control or one that must be remade on the fly.
