The minutes explain why Pulisic is out, but not why Weah is

Mauricio Pochettino named 28 players on September 17 and the argument since has been about a man who is not on the list. Christian Pulisic has not started a Serie A match this season. He is not in the squad.

Timothy Weah has started all four of Marseille's league matches. He is not in the squad either.

One of those absences the club minutes had already accounted for weeks ago. The other they do not account for at all, and nobody has been asked to account for it either.

What the minutes do explain#

Pochettino was asked about the missing names at the announcement and answered on three of them, in remarks reported by Ben Steiner of Sports Illustrated on September 17. Pulisic fractured two bones in his right leg in the round-of-16 defeat to Belgium on July 7, was an unused substitute for Milan's first three league matches under Ruben Amorim, and came off the bench against Lazio on September 12 for his first league appearance of the season. Weston McKennie has played once in Juventus's first four. Folarin Balogun has not played a minute of Monaco's first four, after a move to Everton collapsed and a knee problem, and Pochettino said he had spoken to him directly, which is a departure from his stated habit of not contacting players outside a window.

Count the rest of the pool and the pattern holds at that end of the table. Of the 41 players in this site's September 14 USMNT pool snapshot, 25 who were left out have a club line in it. Eleven of those 25 are under half of their club's available league minutes this season. Tanner Tessmann has 27 of a possible 360 at Lyon. Johnny Cardoso has 50 of 450 at Atletico Madrid. McKennie has 90 of 360 and one start in four. Pulisic has no starts in four.

Set that against the men who were called. Thirteen of the 28 appear in the same snapshot. Twelve of the thirteen are at half their club's league minutes or better, and the one exception is Alex Freeman, who has 120 of a possible 360 at Villarreal. The median for the thirteen called is 83.1 percent of available league minutes. For the 25 left out it is 56.9 percent.

Two things about those figures before anyone leans on them. The snapshot is dated September 14 and the roster was named on September 17, so the midweek European matches of that week are not in it. And the share is of league minutes only, so an MLS player measured across 23 to 25 league matches and a European measured across three to seven are comparable as shares and not as raw totals.

What they do not explain#

Six of the 25 left out are at 90 percent or more. Three of the men who were called are underneath them.

Share is of the club's available league minutes this season, which is league matches played times 90, from the September 14 pool snapshot. MLS clubs have played 23 to 25 league matches this season and the European clubs three to seven, so the shares compare and the totals do not.

Two of the six are goalkeepers, where a squad carries four and the arithmetic stops meaning much. Nathan Harriel and Paxten Aaronson play constantly in MLS, and the snapshot dates the last United States squad either of them was in to early July 2025, so leaving them out continues a status rather than changing one. Mark McKenzie, who has played all 360 minutes of Toulouse's four league matches, went to the World Cup and has a case.

Weah is the one the ledger cannot place. ESPN's match log, opened on Saturday morning, has him starting all four of Marseille's Ligue 1 matches and starting away at Besiktas in the Europa League on September 17, which was the day the United States roster was published without him. He is 26 and he went to the World Cup. In the remarks reported from the announcement, Pochettino was asked about Pulisic, McKennie and Balogun and answered on each. Weah did not come up.

Minutes are availability, not production#

The count cuts the other way too.

In those four Ligue 1 matches Weah has no goals and no assists, from four shots with two on target. Marseille have won one of the four and lost three, and they lost 4-1 at Besiktas in the match he started on Thursday. A manager opening a four-year cycle can look at a 26-year-old winger who plays every week and produces nothing and decide that is the profile a reset exists to replace. Club minutes measure whether a coach picks a player. They do not measure whether he played well, and that gap is where this instrument stops being able to help.

What the minutes can settle is that Weah's omission is a judgment and Pulisic's is closer to an administrative fact. The first of those is worth a question at the next press conference.

The roster was picked on age#

The federation printed the real selector in its own release. The average age of the 28 is 22 years and nine months, more than four years younger than the squad taken to the World Cup. Thirteen of the 28 are uncapped and their average age is 19 years and six months. Tim Ream, who started the last match the United States played, is 38 and has played 1,575 of Charlotte's available 2,250 league minutes, and he is not in the squad.

Fifteen of the 28 do not appear in the September 14 pool snapshot at all. Thirteen of those are the uncapped group. The other two are George Campbell, who won his only cap in January 2025, and Yunus Musah, who has 47 caps and has not appeared for the United States since March 2025 against Canada. The snapshot builds its pool from the last fifteen match squads, so those two are not new. They are returning from outside the window.

"The players that are going to be involved in these four games, for different circumstances, are the best players that we want to see," Pochettino said on September 17. Note which verb he chose. He wants to see them, which is not the same claim as saying they are playing better than the men at home. This is not a form roster, and reading it as one produces the wrong questions about it.

The players report to Atlanta on September 20 and play Peru in Orlando on September 26, Chile in St. Louis on September 29, Mexico in Glendale on October 3 and Canada in St. Paul on October 6. Four matches in eleven days is enough football to give thirteen uncapped players a look and still leave the experienced spine a match each. Whether Pochettino spends it that way is the first thing this camp will actually tell anyone.

Sources: ussoccer.com's roster announcement of September 17, 2026, for the 28 names, the caps, the match schedule, the age averages and the Musah and Campbell notes; Sports Illustrated (Ben Steiner), September 17, for Pochettino's remarks on Pulisic, McKennie and Balogun and for Pulisic's and Balogun's club situations; ESPN's player match log for Timothy Weah, opened September 19, for his Marseille starts and Ligue 1 shooting record; the Grab Some Pine USMNT pool snapshot of September 14, 2026, for every club minutes figure and share.