Cavan Sullivan: The Rising Star of USMNT Talent

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 youth internationals. Professionals. It’s why his name keeps surfacing in every conversation about the next wave of USMNT talent — and why some prominent voices think “next” should come a lot sooner than expected.

One of those voices belongs to Tim Howard.

“Who’s better than this kid?” Howard asked on the Unfiltered Podcast. “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 didn’t call for a free pass. He pushed back at the idea that the U.S. can be picky about elite young 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 said. “I’m saying we are not Brazil, Argentina, Holland, Spain, England, Germany. We don’t produce these players.”

Sullivan doesn’t sound intimidated by the noise. He sounds intrigued by it.

“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 staring at the national team door and wondering how hard to knock.

Gozo’s fire and Pochettino’s line

Zavier Gozo came even closer. The then-Real Salt Lake winger made the USMNT’s preliminary World Cup list before Mauricio Pochettino decided the tournament was a step too far for an uncapped teenager. Gozo has since moved to Crystal Palace and is still simmering from that near miss.

“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 at the heart of Pochettino’s job. When is a kid actually ready? When is the hype justified, and when is it just noise?

There is no universal formula, he insists. It’s case by case, and it starts with a question that has nothing to do with legs or lungs.

He’s not worried about 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 the physical side doesn’t scare him. The mental side does. He looks for maturity first, talent second. Not just how a player performs, but how he lives.

Do they keep working when the cameras are off? Do they chase improvement or just attention? Do they treat people properly?

“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.”

Careful — but not timid.

A squad built for 2030, not just September

Pochettino knows some positions can absorb more risk than others. Some are clogged with depth, some are crying out for fresh blood. Goalkeeper, he pointed out, is the clearest example: a stack of options, one jersey.

“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 future isn’t just about a distant World Cup. The calendar is crowded and unforgiving. The Olympics loom. Another Gold Cup is on the way. A Copa America could slot in as well. Each tournament forces a conversation with Steve Cherundolo, who leads the U.S. U-23s, about who should sit where on the ladder.

The idea: bleed a few youngsters into the senior side now so they’re hardened for an Olympic run with the U-23s. But don’t expect the USMNT to morph into an age-restricted experiment. Pochettino still leans on his core veterans. The kids will come, just not in a tidal wave.

That lesson is still fresh from the last cycle. After the failure of 2018, the program essentially hit reset, phasing out veterans and handing the keys to a young core. It worked in one sense — those kids became pillars. Yet a question lingered: what wisdom did they miss by not having more old heads around?

That question grew louder around the 2025 Gold Cup, when Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah chose rest over tournament duty. Former players, some loudly, questioned their commitment. Beneath that criticism sat a broader worry: had the program moved on from its elders so quickly that the culture lost something?

This time, the turnover will be slower. No mass clear-out. No symbolic culling. Veterans will leave, but in stages.

Richards, Gozo and the new blend

USMNT defender Chris Richards has lived both ends of that spectrum. He knows how ruthless international football can be, and how rare continuity actually is.

“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,” 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.”

At Crystal Palace, he sees the next wave up close every day. Gozo trains beside him, still waiting for his first cap, still chasing the thing Richards already has. That hunger, he says, changes the feel of the whole process.

Pochettino sees players like Richards as crucial. They are the bridge. They know the standard and can show it to the teenagers desperate to take their place.

“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 message is clear: this is not a youth project. It’s a team. If you’re good enough, you’re in — but you’re in alongside players who’ve already survived the pressure you’re about to feel.

The little things that decide big futures

Pochettino keeps returning to one theme: he’s watching everything. Not just the 90 minutes on a Saturday, not just the highlights that go viral.

“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.”

So he studies the details. When do they show up to training? How do they speak to staff? How long do they stay after a session? Who leaves early? Who lingers to work?

For players like Sullivan and Gozo, that’s the real scouting report. Every interview, every handshake, every extra sprint is part of their case file.

Soon, Pochettino will have to act on those files. The next squad announcement is only weeks away, and with a national team manager, the margin for error is smaller than at club level. At a club, he could drip-feed opportunities, watch youngsters grow day by day, sense the exact moment they were ready.

International football doesn’t offer that luxury. Camps are brief. Windows are scattered. A player in September might look completely different by March — stronger, sharper, or, just as easily, lost.

That uncertainty hangs over every decision he makes. The names he reads out next will not just shape one friendly or one tournament. They’ll echo into 2030.

Young stars are banging on the door. Veterans still have something left in the tank. Somewhere between them lies the team the U.S. wants to be.

“We need to create a group of players that are really being professional and competing in the way that we expect,” Pochettino 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 simple, and brutal: who’s truly ready when the phone finally rings?