Cavan Sullivan and Zavier Gozo: Rising Stars of the USMNT
The numbers are absurd. Three goals in three games. Sixteen years old. Doing it against professionals who’ve spent more time in weight rooms than he has on this planet.
No wonder Cavan Sullivan has become the face of whatever comes next for the U.S. men’s national team.
Tim Howard is already all-in.
“In the next four years, there are going to be 115 players that play for the national team,” Howard said on the Unfiltered Podcast. “Who’s better than this kid? Who’s better than this kid that doesn’t deserve an opportunity? I’m not saying he plays every game, but he should be in the conversation to be playing every game.”
Howard’s point cut straight through the noise. The U.S. doesn’t have the luxury of ignoring special talent.
“For all the naysayers out there, I’m not saying to gift this kid something he hasn’t earned on a silver platter,” he added. “I’m saying we are not Brazil, Argentina, Holland, Spain, England, Germany. We don’t produce these players.”
Sullivan doesn’t sound intimidated by any of it. If anything, he’s already visualizing his chance.
“Thinking about that Belgium game, I think I could come into that game on the right side and make a difference,” he told Alexi Lalas’ State of the Union podcast. “You have to believe in yourself. You have to think you can help your team win. Obviously it’s not my team yet, but I’m always dreaming and hoping for call-ups.”
He isn’t alone.
Gozo’s fire and the near-miss
Zavier Gozo has walked even closer to the edge. While Sullivan is still chasing his first senior look, Gozo was on the USMNT’s preliminary World Cup list when he was still at Real Salt Lake, only to be left out when the final squad dropped. Mauricio Pochettino decided it was too soon to hand a World Cup place to an uncapped teenager.
Gozo has since moved to Crystal Palace. The ambition hasn’t dimmed.
“I do think I deserved to be there. I’m going to be honest,” he told The Late Run. “But obviously it’s the coach’s choice. Maybe he didn’t think I was ready, or whatever it is, but it just put a fire under me to make the next World Cup and show why I should be there.”
That’s the tension around this U.S. team right now. A wave of teenagers is charging at the door. The man holding the key is trying to work out who’s truly ready.
Pochettino’s test
So how does Pochettino decide?
There’s no algorithm. No age threshold. No magic number of club minutes.
“It’s case by case,” he made clear. The physical side doesn’t scare him. The mental side does.
He bristles at the idea that a 17-year-old needs to be protected from minutes.
“I know the mindset of the coaches,” he said. “Sometimes the coaches say, ‘Oh, I have a 17-year-old guy that plays in the MLS, but when the national team calls, we say no because they need to rest’. If you’re 17, and you need to rest? Yeah, we have a big problem.”
So he looks somewhere else: maturity. Every day, not just matchdays.
How do they train? Do they keep pushing? How do they treat staff, teammates, opponents? For Pochettino, talent is the entry fee. Character is what keeps you in the room.
“I think respect is the most important thing, and they need to be respectful,” he said. “And of course, we want players with talent. We want players who feel brave, feel confident, but not feel things they don't show. I think you are only entitled to talk a little bit out of order if you are Messi.
“If you win eight Ballon d'Ors, okay, you can talk with a certain arrogance, but even then, … if you are young and you start to talk that you can play here, you can play there, or you can play. I say, I don't believe that this is the right way to build your career in the best way, no. And that is why we need to be careful.”
The message is blunt: talk less, show more.
No one-size-fits-all pathway
Pochettino knows not every door opens the same way. Some positions are clogged with depth. Some are screaming out for fresh legs.
Goalkeeper is a perfect example. The U.S. has options, but only one shirt to hand out.
“I think we are going to give some [opportunities] to some new players, not only in that position, but in different positions,” he explained. “We’ll have the possibility to add a new player and to give them the possibility. I think for us now it’s about not only thinking about today, but also to think about the future and 2030.”
That’s the horizon line: the 2030 World Cup. But it isn’t the only tournament on his board.
The Olympic Games are coming. A Gold Cup is on the way. A Copa America could drop into the calendar. Every one of those competitions will demand coordination with Steve Cherundolo, who is steering the U.S. U-23s.
The plan is to bleed some of those Olympic-eligible players into the senior side now, give them caps and scars before they’re asked to chase medals. That doesn’t mean the USMNT will turn into a U-23 showcase. Pochettino still leans heavily on his core veterans.
The kids will get their chance. They just won’t get the keys overnight.
Lessons from the reset
The caution is rooted in recent history. After the failure to qualify in 2018, the U.S. tore the squad down and rebuilt around youth. Veterans were pushed aside. It worked on one level: that group of youngsters grew into the current spine of the national team.
But a question lingered in the background: what wisdom disappeared when the old guard walked out?
That conversation flared again around the 2025 Gold Cup, when Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah skipped the tournament for rest. Former players, some loudly, questioned their commitment. Underneath the criticism sat a broader concern: had the program lost its internal standards by moving on from experience so quickly?
Whatever the answer, Pochettino has no interest in another clean sweep. Some veterans will fade out, but there will be no mass cull. The transition will be slower, more deliberate.
USMNT defender Chris Richards has seen enough cycles to know how this usually goes.
“I'd say it's a continuation of the last two cycles I've been a part of, just because I just know that's how it works,” he told GOAL. “It's not like you just completely sack off the team that was at the World Cup and move on from there.”
Continuity doesn’t mean staleness. Richards sees that every day at Crystal Palace, where Gozo is now trying to climb the same ladder he did. Watching a teenager chase his first cap has given the whole process a jolt.
Pochettino wants that energy and that experience in the same room.
“We cannot bring a whole squad of young players, no, because they need to have some guys with experience already competing,” he said. “Yes, we are going to do a mix. Our idea is we are going to do a mix between experienced players… I think experienced players and young players can fit together and start to work and see how the young kids start to manage the pressure to play in the first team in some really nice games.”
The little things that decide careers
If there’s a theme to Pochettino’s approach, it’s this: he’s watching everything, especially the things players think no one sees.
“It's important not only to see them or watch the games, the performance, but also what they are talking about in the media, how they behave with the opponent, how they behave with their teammates,” he said. “I think it's so important. We want to be a very good team. We want to build something different and be competitive.”
He tracks when they arrive at training. How long they stay. How they speak to coaches. Who lingers to do extra work and who bolts for the parking lot.
For those dreaming of that first call, his message is clear: all of it counts, and he’s keeping score.
On the club side, he could take his time, drip-feed opportunities, and watch players every day until the right moment revealed itself. International football doesn’t offer that luxury. Camps are short, windows are scattered, and form can swing wildly between one gathering and the next.
Pochettino knows the teenager he sees in September might look like a different player by March. That’s why “not yet” now doesn’t mean “never”.
The next squad announcement is only weeks away. The stakes stretch well beyond that list. These choices will shape the entire run to 2030. Sullivan is scoring on grown men. Gozo is burning to prove a point. Veterans still believe they have more to give.
Pochettino has to find the blend.
“We need to create a group of players that are really being professional and competing in the way that we expect,” he said. “They all need to compete with the talented players and young players that we have ahead.”
The kids are coming. The door isn’t wide open yet. But the knock is getting louder.
