Cavan Sullivan and Zavier Gozo: Rising Stars for USMNT

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

Three goals in three games, against professionals, not peers. He’s not bullying academy kids; he’s taking on grown men and looking like he belongs. That’s why, barely old enough to drive, he’s already being talked about as a serious USMNT option.

Tim Howard has seen enough to plant a flag.

“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 wasn’t to crown Sullivan. It was to question the idea that a player this talented should have to wait his turn just because of his age.

He knows the counter-argument, too.

“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 picturing where he fits.

“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 the only teenager thinking that way.

Gozo’s fire and the near-miss

Zavier Gozo has been living on the edge of the national team picture for a while now. Unlike Sullivan, he already brushed up against the World Cup. The then-Real Salt Lake winger made the USMNT’s preliminary list before the tournament, only for Mauricio Pochettino to decide it was too soon to take an uncapped winger to the biggest stage.

Gozo has since moved to Crystal Palace, trading MLS for the Premier League grind, and he hasn’t forgotten that snub.

“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 edge Pochettino wants. But he’s also the one who has to decide when ambition becomes readiness.

Pochettino’s test: talent, maturity, and everything in between

How does Pochettino know when a kid is ready? There’s no template. No magic age. No automatic promotion after a good month.

As always with young players, workload sits near the top of the list of concerns. Pochettino, though, isn’t losing sleep over minutes.

“These are kids,” he says. They can run. They can recover. What worries him is what’s going on in their heads.

“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 elsewhere. Maturity, every day, not just under the lights. How they train. How they respond to praise and criticism. How they treat people.

“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. 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 clear: talent opens the door, but behavior decides how long you stay inside.

Position matters as well. Some roles are clogged with options, others are screaming out for fresh legs. There is no blanket policy.

Take goalkeeper. One shirt, several candidates, and no easy answers.

“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.”

Olympics, Gold Cup, Copa America – and a long view to 2030

Pochettino’s horizon stretches far beyond the next friendly window. The 2030 World Cup looms in the distance, but there’s plenty before that: the Olympic Games, another Gold Cup, and potentially a Copa America.

Those tournaments won’t just pick themselves. They’ll require coordination with Steve Cherundolo, who is steering the U.S. U-23s.

The idea is to bleed a few of those U-23s into the senior side now, give them caps, expose them to the tempo and tension, then send them back better armed for an Olympic run. That doesn’t mean the USMNT will suddenly become a youth showcase.

Pochettino still leans heavily on his senior core. The kids will come through, but not as a wave that washes the veterans away.

The federation already lived through a hard reset. After missing the 2018 World Cup, the USMNT effectively tore it down and rebuilt around a young core, leaving some experienced players behind. It worked: that new generation grew into pillars. But the question lingered—what lessons vanished when the old guard did?

This time, Pochettino is in no rush to swing the axe.

No mass clear-out, just a careful hand

There will be change. Some veterans will be eased out. But it will be incremental, not ruthless.

“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 star 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.”

Richards feels the continuity. He also feels the new energy. At Crystal Palace, he sees it every day in Zavier Gozo, a teenager desperate for his first cap. That hunger, right next to him in the dressing room, sharpens his own perspective.

Pochettino sees players like Richards as the bridge. Veterans who aren’t old, but experienced enough to set standards for the next wave.

“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.”

So the door is open, but not wide enough for everyone to rush through at once.

The little things that decide a big call

Pochettino kept circling back to the same theme: details. Not just the goals, assists, or clean sheets, but the quiet moments that never make a highlight reel.

“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 watches how they speak to coaches. What time they arrive at training. How long they stay after. Those habits, he believes, reveal whether a player truly meets the standard he wants.

His message to every Sullivan, every Gozo, every young American dreaming of that call: all of it counts. All of it is being logged.

At club level, Pochettino could take his time. He saw players every day, nudged them along, waited until the moment felt right. The national team offers no such luxury. Camps are brief, windows are scattered, and form can swing wildly between one gathering and the next.

He knows the player he sees in September might be transformed by March. That’s why “not ready yet” doesn’t mean “never”.

The next squad announcement lands in a few weeks. Names will be celebrated, others debated. Behind each one is a judgment not just on today, but on what the USMNT might look like in 2030.

Young players are banging on the door. Veterans still have more to give. The balance, and the timing, now sit with Pochettino.

“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 next generation is coming. The question is no longer if, but when Pochettino decides they’re ready to take the shirt and keep it.