Christian Pulisic, Antonee Robinson and Alejandro Zendejas could miss the US friendly against Ecuador

Christian Pulisic, Antonee Robinson and Alejandro Zendejas could all miss the United States’ friendly against Ecuador on Friday.

«We have some problems with some players, such as Christian who did not train today and Antonee Robinson, and we have to assess tomorrow whether they can be available or not,» US coach Mauricio Pochettino said on Thursday. «We don’t believe Alex will be part of the match tomorrow.»

Robinson said Wednesday that he is still back to fitness after surgery on his right knee in May. No information has been released regarding Pulisic and Zendejas’ terms.

The 16th-ranked Americans follow up against No. 24 Ecuador by playing 25th-ranked Australia on Tuesday in Commerce City, Colorado.

After this month, the Americans have just four more friendlies before Pochettino calls up players for a pre-World Cup training camp: against Paraguay and Uruguay in November, plus a few more games in March.

Pochettino took over the team in October 2024, three months after Gregg Berhalter was sacked after being eliminated in the first round of the Copa America. The Americans then lost in the CONCACAF Nations League semifinals in March.

Pochettino said he inherited a culture of complacency.

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«We knew something was wrong because if the federation wasn’t there, why would we get the call? No, why are they offering the job, no, really with not too much time to develop our ideas or sort out our client,» he said. “That was a time to judge, to appear and the moment we identified the problems, we started destroying the things we needed to destroy and we started building the house, how do you say from the ground up?”

After the Nations League final, he shook up the squad for the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

“That was really a wake-up call because I think it showed why they were calling us, because ‘Houston, do we have a problem?’” he said. “I think from that moment on we started working very intensively with the federation and tried to change things that were not helping.”

The US is 11-7 under Pochettino, ending a seven-match winless streak against the top 25 countries last month when it won 2-0 against a Japanese team made up mostly of second-string players.

“Now I promise you that no one is sure that this will be in the 2026 World Cup squad,” Pochettino said. «I don’t think that happened the same way before. But today I promise that all the guys feel like they have to fight to be there. And that’s invaluable because they all feel like they have to step out of the comfort zone.»

Published on October 10, 2025