For decades, the U.S. men’s national team was downright spoiled when it came to the goalkeeper position, as the program produced a veritable conveyor belt of world-class keepers.
There was Tony Meola in the early to mid-1990s. You had Kasey Keller and Brad Friedel duking it out in the late ’90s and mid-2000s. That was followed by Tim Howard in the 2010s. The latter three enjoyed long careers at a variety of clubs in top European leagues.
But as the USMNT heads into this summer’s World Cup, a position that once inspired complete confidence now raises nagging questions. The current group of goalkeepers — consisting of New York City FC’s Matt Freese, the New England Revolution’s Matt Turner, the Chicago Fire’s Chris Brady, FC Cincinnati’s Roman Celentano and the Columbus Crew’s Patrick Schulte — approach this summer’s tournament at not the same level as their predecessors.
The fact that all of them are playing in MLS is perhaps the most obvious sign this group of goalkeepers is a step down from previous generations. Either they haven’t caught the eye of the world’s top clubs abroad, or they’ve tried, but couldn’t establish themselves at the level of Europe’s elite.
While the USMNT has a longstanding reputation for producing physical athletes, much of what separates the merely good keepers from the elite can be found between the ears. Decision-making, positioning and the ability to move past inevitable errors are all part of strengthening a goalkeeper’s resilience. Experience is the key to improving those aspects of a keeper’s game, and none of the current pool has yet accumulated the breadth of experience that previous USMNT keepers had.
To be fair, some of that is down to youth: Brady, Celentano and Schulte are all 25 or younger. Their best days are ahead of them — Brady in particular is viewed as having a high ceiling — but that won’t be reached in time for the World Cup.
Meanwhile, Turner started for the U.S. at the World Cup four years ago, but at 31, is back in MLS on loan with New England from French side Olympique Lyon after not being able to secure steady playing time at multiple European clubs. Presumed starter Freese, 27, is another with room to grow, and he’s been solid for the most part in his appearances for the USMNT. But he hasn’t yet delivered the kinds of performances that will wow anyone.
Former U.S. international goalkeeper Kasey Keller — who was the starting goalkeeper for Tottenham and Borussia Mönchengladbach during his playing days — is less than impressed.
“It is a little surprising, in all honesty, because it’s not even like there’s a second tier [of keepers] that you go, ‘These guys are all right,'” said Keller, who is also an analyst for ESPN. “… I guarantee you, nobody’s looking at Matt Freese in Europe, going, ‘Oh, that’s my guy.'”
Tim Hanley is a longtime goalkeeper coach in MLS who worked with the likes of Joe Cannon, Pat Onstad and Andre Blake, and was most recently on the staff of the Houston Dynamo. He also coached Freese when they crossed path with the Philadelphia Union. Hanley is just as skeptical.
“I don’t know if [goalkeeping] is a weakness, but it’s definitely not a strength,” Hanley said about the USMNT goalkeeper situation. “You’re not going into the World Cup in that position where you feel great about it. I think they’ll start Freese and play Freese. I don’t think they have much of a choice.”
Worryingly, there is evidence that the USMNT’s goalkeeping performances in the 2026 World Cup cycle — at least in terms of shot stopping — haven’t matched up to the 2022 cycle, when the USMNT exited the World Cup in the round of 16.
In the run-up to the 2022 World Cup, taking into account competitive fixtures only, the USMNT’s goals prevented — a stat that essentially measures if a keeper is saving more goals than expected given the quality of shots faced — was 5.42 over a span of 32 games (or 0.17 goals prevented/game). In the current cycle, the goals prevented number was 2.25 over a span of 28 games (good for 0.08 goals prevented/game). (Goals prevented data only goes back to 2018, meaning we can’t study earlier cycles.)
How did the USMNT end up with goalkeeper as a weakness?
The most charitable argument for the USMNT’s predicament is that, at the international level at least, the quality at a given position is cyclical. There are ebbs and flows as to why stellar talents emerge at certain positions and then go dormant for a while. Even with Argentina, until Lionel Messi came along, there was a near-constant search for the next Diego Maradona. The U.S. goalkeeper contingent appears to be no different.
“I just think it’s a wave. I just think that that we’ve had it pretty good, and now we don’t,” said Hanley. “Now those guys have fallen off. All the hopefuls and new up-and-comers are too young, and the guys that are kind of the MLS guys: they’re decent. But I think if somebody like Freese or Celentano are playing overseas, [at a club like] Club Brugge, they would have a better feel for the pressure.”
However, there is also an argument that the way U.S. Soccer trained keepers eroded its advantage at the position. The training emphasized keepers being good with their feet more than the position’s other key aspects, like stopping shots.
Former U.S. international goalkeeper Brad Friedel, who was previously the starting goalkeeper for Aston Villa and Tottenham, spent part of his post-playing career serving as an assistant with various U.S. youth national teams, and he saw this emphasis up close. Friedel, who as a manager gave Turner his first starts with New England back in 2018, feels that for about a decade, from around 2007-17, the U.S. “lost what was important” about goalkeepers.
“We focused more on playing out of the back and positional sense with the back four,” he said. “With all due respect, if you’re not an athlete and you’re not brave, you can’t be a top-level goalkeeper. If you are an athlete and you are brave, you can get taught all the other skills. But you can’t teach someone to want to throw their body in front of a ball or a foot. It just doesn’t happen.
“So I think we lost a lot of time in what was important in goalkeeping, and we focused a lot on developing a better outfield player.”
While Friedel feels the pendulum has begun to swing back in terms of training emphasis, it’s too late for this World Cup cycle to have an impact. Still, Keller feels that the tactical shift of involving a goalkeeper in the buildup continues to hold sway.
“I think our young goalkeepers here are no longer goalkeepers,” he said. “They’re a field player who spends a little bit more time using their hands than the other field players. … You need [your goalkeeper] to come up with one save to make a difference. Keeping possession inside your own 18 isn’t making a difference.”
Hanley doesn’t dispute that in recent years, he has incorporated more passing into his sessions. If he’s firing in shots to work on a specific area, he said he’ll sneak in a distribution drill, or perhaps end with one.
“Every exercise now is doing [passing]. I don’t think it has to take away,” he said. “I think that’s always going to be the chatter. It’s always going to be, ‘Can you [keep] the ball out of the goal?’ I think we’re still at a point where most of people that are in goal nowadays are better at the saving part and not quite as good at the kicking. It’s not like everyone’s turning into Jorge Campos out there, that they can do these incredible things with their feet.”
A shortage of club experience for USMNT goalkeepers
What isn’t in dispute is that the current contingent of U.S. keepers don’t have the same level of experience that their forebears had.
Prior to the 1998 World Cup, Keller already had 281 first-team matches under his belt, 270 of which came in European leagues. Heading into the 2002 World Cup, Friedel had 201 first-team appearances, 156 of which came in Europe. Howard topped them all. Heading into the 2010 World Cup, his first as the USMNT starter, Howard had already amassed 360 first-team appearances, with 261 coming in Europe. Meanwhile Freese has 120 appearances, all in MLS. Turner, who it must be said is the only member of the current pool with World Cup experience, has amassed 142 first-team appearances, but just 31 of those came in Europe over a three-year-period.
The reality is that U.S. keepers in the last decade haven’t been able to break through consistently and earn starting spots in top European leagues, where they could acquire the kind of experience needed to join the elite, whether it was Zack Steffen at Manchester City or Turner at Arsenal, Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace. Ethan Horvath, now with the New York Red Bulls, probably came the closest, though the English Championship proved to be his ceiling.
Granted, injuries did plenty to blunt the progress of Steffen’s career, which was aided by loan spells at Fortuna Dusseldorf and Middlesbrough. He eventually returned to MLS with the Colorado Rapids, but his case illustrates how transfer decisions can come back to haunt a player if it’s not the right fit. If a move isn’t working out, it’s better to cut it short and find a better playing situation. That is essentially what Turner, Horvath and Steffen have done — though returning to MLS feels like a step down. “I’m never going to tell somebody, ‘Don’t gamble on yourself,'” Keller said, but, he added: “Instead of Matt Turner not making it at Arsenal, I would have loved to have seen him go and play a season in the English Championship — 46 matches plus cup games, super grind, intense, powerful, physical. Instead, they tried to go the Tim [Howard] route and just take a step down from the club you were at and stay in the Premier League, and it didn’t work.” That isn’t to say that there isn’t value in playing in MLS. The level might not be as high as the Big Five top leagues in Europe, but it’s still first-team experience. That matters. As Friedel put it: “People ask me the question all the time: Is it better to go to Europe or better to stay in MLS? And then my answer is, ‘It’s better to go to Europe if you’re going to play. If you’re going to go to Europe and sit on the bench, it’s better to stay in MLS and play.'” The hope for the USMNT’s goalkeepers, then, will be that the likes of Freese, Turner, Brady et al. will head — or in Turner’s case return — to clubs overseas in the next cycle after this summer’s World Cup. For now, it’s not like Freese, Turner or Brady is suddenly going to obtain vast amounts of experience prior to the World Cup. Nor are they going to undergo some radical change in ability. They are who they are. Freese remains the front-runner to start at the World Cup, given that he has been in goal for 14 of the USMNT’s last 15 matches under Mauricio Pochettino. For all of the talk about experience, he gained some valuable know-how at the 2025 Gold Cup, which included prevailing in a penalty shootout against Costa Rica, with Ticos legend Keylor Navas in the opposition goal. But Turner is making a late push to unseat Freese. Turner is second in MLS in goals prevented with 5.96, while Freese is at -0.19. Turner’s save percentage of 77.4% is also significantly higher than Freese’s 65.5%. While it’s true that a goalkeeper’s numbers can be a reflection of how well the defense is playing in front of him, it still indicates Turner’s current form has been good. “I think they’re all there — I think they’re all at a level where it’s not going to be the goalkeeper that is the reason that that we lose a game,” Friedel said about the current corps of keepers. “Tournaments like World Cups make stars, so if Matt Freese starts, why couldn’t he become the hero of the United States?” If he does, he’ll be on his way toward becoming the next great American goalkeeper. The USMNT can only hope.Where do things stand for the 2026 World Cup?
