Cavan Sullivan: The Rising Star of USMNT

Cavan Sullivan is 16 years old and already playing like he’s in a hurry.

Three goals in three games. Against men. Not academy kids, not age-group peers – professionals. That alone has been enough to light up the conversation around the next wave of the USMNT. And among those banging the drum loudest is a former national team cornerstone.

“Who’s better than this kid?” Tim Howard asked on the Unfiltered Podcast, his voice cutting straight through the usual caution. “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 wasn’t about hype. It was about context.

“In the next four years, there are going to be 115 players that play for the national team,” he said. Then came the reminder of where the U.S. actually sits in the global pecking order. “We are not Brazil, Argentina, Holland, Spain, England, Germany. We don’t produce these players.”

For once, the U.S. might have one. And Sullivan isn’t shying away from that stage.

A teenager who already sees himself in the arena

Sullivan talks like someone who expects to belong, not just be invited.

“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.”

There’s no pretending he doesn’t want it. No hedging around the idea of skipping steps. He believes he can help now.

He’s not alone.

Zavier Gozo, now at Crystal Palace, carries a similar conviction. His path brushed even closer to the spotlight. As a Real Salt Lake winger, he made the USMNT’s preliminary World Cup list before Mauricio Pochettino decided a full call-up was a step too far, too soon.

Gozo didn’t agree.

“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.”

Two teenagers. Two different routes. One shared belief: they’re ready to fight for a place now, not in some distant future.

Pochettino’s line: talent, yes – but prove you’re ready

So how does Pochettino decide when “ready” really means ready?

There’s no formula. No age threshold. No magic number of club minutes.

He brushes aside the usual hand-wringing about physical workload for teenagers. These are not veterans with miles in their legs.

“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.”

The real test, in his eyes, is mental. How they carry themselves. How they work. How they handle the noise that comes with being labeled “the next one.”

“I think respect is the most important thing, and they need to be respectful,” Pochettino 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.”

Then came the line that framed his entire stance.

“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.”

He’s watching the interviews. He’s listening to what they say. Not to catch them out, but to see if the personality matches the potential.

No one-size-fits-all – and only one goalkeeper’s jersey

Every position carries its own puzzle.

Some areas of the squad are crying out for fresh legs and fresh ideas. Others are blocked by established starters in their prime. Goalkeeper is the perfect example: a deep pool, one shirt.

“I think we are going to give some [opportunities] to some new players, not only in that position, but in different positions,” Pochettino 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, already looming in his planning. But it’s not the only tournament on his desk.

The Olympics are around the corner. The Gold Cup returns soon. A Copa America may sit on the calendar as well. All of it demands coordination with Steve Cherundolo and the U.S. U-23s.

The idea is simple: use senior caps to harden some of those Olympic hopefuls, then drop them back into the U-23s with real international experience. What it won’t be is a full youth takeover of the senior side.

The kids will get chances. The veterans will still carry weight.

Lessons from the last rebuild

The U.S. has already lived through one reset.

After the 2018 World Cup miss, the program tore down the old structure and handed the keys to a young core. It worked. Those kids turned into pillars. But the question lingered: what got lost when so many experienced voices disappeared at once?

This conversation flared again around the 2025 Gold Cup, when Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah sat out to rest. Former players challenged their choices. Underneath the criticism sat a bigger worry: had the program moved on from the old guard so quickly that standards and habits slipped through the cracks?

This time, the change will be slower. More deliberate. Some veterans will be phased out, but not in a sweeping purge. That helps the newcomers, who won’t be thrown into a leadership vacuum, and it helps the veterans, who won’t be treated as disposable.

“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,” USMNT defender Chris Richards 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, yes. But not stasis.

For Richards, having Gozo with him at Crystal Palace has sharpened that perspective. He sees the hunger of a teenager chasing his first cap up close, every day. It makes the grind feel new again.

Pochettino leans on that dynamic. Players like Richards become tone-setters, the bridge between what the USMNT has been and what it might become.

“We cannot bring a whole squad of young players, no, because they need to have some guys with experience already competing,” Pochettino 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 big careers

Pochettino kept circling back to the same theme: he’s watching everything.

“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’s tracking when they arrive at training. How long they stay. How they speak to staff. How they carry themselves when the cameras are off.

For players like Sullivan and Gozo, every detail becomes part of the file. Every interview, every reaction, every training clip feeds into one central question: are they ready for a call that can change everything?

At club level, Pochettino could take his time. He saw players every day, nudging them along until the exact right moment to promote them. The national team doesn’t offer that luxury. Camps are brief. Windows are spread across months. A player who looks raw in September might arrive as a star in March.

He knows it. He accepts it. And he’ll be judged on how well he reads those swings.

The next squad announcement lands in a few weeks. On paper, it’s just another list. In reality, it’s the first real sketch of the 2030 cycle.

Young faces are banging on the door. Veterans still believe they have chapters left to write. Somewhere in between, Pochettino has to draw the line.

“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 question now is which of them convinces Pochettino that “ahead” means right now.