George Campbell's groin put Mark McKenzie on the Haiti roster five hours before he scored

By a little after 8 a.m. Pacific on Friday, Mark McKenzie was on the United States roster for Haiti. About five hours later he headed in a Cristian Cásseres corner for Toulouse, his first league goal of the season, in a 3-1 win over Strasbourg. As auditions go, the timing was terrible. He already had the job.

He got it from George Campbell's groin. Campbell left West Brom's match against Southampton at halftime on Tuesday. Pochettino named his 25 on Wednesday with Campbell on the list and McKenzie off it, and on Friday U.S. Soccer withdrew Campbell and sent for the man who had played every minute of Toulouse's league season.

That count is now 900 of 900. It was 360 of 360 when Pochettino named 28 players in September and left McKenzie out, and 810 of 810 this week when he did it again. The manager has been looking at this number for seven weeks. Nothing about Friday suggests he changed his mind. A West Brom defender's groin changed the list for him.

Here is what the injury actually moved. Five center backs played for the United States across the four fall matches. Campbell started two of them, Peru and Canada, and is now off the list. Miles Robinson started Chile, hurt a leg with Cincinnati in October and is not on the list. That leaves Chris Richards, who started Mexico and Canada, plus Auston Trusty and Neil Pierre. Grey Whitebloom of Sports Illustrated names those three and McKenzie as the options and calls the places "very much up for grabs."

Richards has one of them unless something goes badly wrong. So it is three men for the other. Trusty started three of the four fall matches, two of them in the middle. Pierre is 19, has three caps, and made his first start against Chile. McKenzie has 30 caps, including a start against Türkiye at the World Cup, and this is his first camp since that tournament. In January he and Pierre become teammates at the Philadelphia Union, which should make the carpool interesting.

The job is worth more than a usual November job. These are the first matches of the cycle that count: Haiti as the designated home team at Nu Stadium in Miami on November 14, then Cincinnati on November 17, with away goals deciding a level tie before extra time. A goal the United States gives up at home in Cincinnati is the expensive kind.

Pochettino may not be finished with the list, either. Gio Reyna, who is on it, scored for Strasbourg in the 67th minute of the same match and came off three minutes later. ESPN's match log says it was because of an injury, and The Athletic was calling it a potential setback by Friday afternoon. Nobody had said how serious.

My call: McKenzie starts at least one of the two legs. Pochettino used a different center back pairing in each of the four fall matches, and these are two matches three days apart with one place open and three candidates.

The case against is plain, and it is the same case as Wednesday. A manager who has left a man out twice with all of this in front of him does not owe him a start because somebody else got hurt. Damion Downs was added to the fall roster after the list came out, went to all four matches and started none of them.

Pochettino did not pick McKenzie on Wednesday. Now he only has to pick him once.

Sources: U.S. Soccer roster releases of November 4 and November 6, 2026 (the 25, the withdrawal, caps, kickoff sites and dates, the Türkiye start, first camp since the World Cup); The Associated Press via ESPN, November 6, for the swap and the groin injury; ESPN match data for Toulouse v Strasbourg, November 6, and West Brom v Southampton, November 3; league minutes through nine matches from ESPN match sheets; Grey Whitebloom, Sports Illustrated; ESPN match data for the four fall matches; U.S. Soccer, September 20, 2026, for Downs; Concacaf's approval of the Miami arrangement and the away-goals rule, as carried in coverage of the November 4 roster.