Despite picking up an injury in training the day after the United States’ win over Australia, Cristian Roldan remains optimistic that he’ll be able to make his World Cup debut on Friday against Türkiye in Inglewood, Calif.
“I’ll be on the field [for training on Wednesday],” Roldan said. “We’ll see how it goes. It’s just really hard to know.”
There certainly won’t be any lack of motivation on Roldan’s part.
Having made the World Cup roster for the second time, Roldan is still looking for his first minutes. It seemed like last Friday’s game was a perfect opportunity, with the USA nursing a 2–0 lead late in the match in the stadium where he’s played his entire professional career and in the city he’s called home since 2013.
But U.S. manager Mauricio Pochettino had different ideas, bringing in midfielders Sebastian Berhalter (74’) and Gio Reyna (90’). The Türkiye match provides another golden opportunity for Roldan, who grew up in Southern California and passes the field where he played high school soccer everyday on the way to USMNT training.
Beyond the emotional ties, giving Roldan minutes would be practical as Tyler Adams is one yellow card away from being suspended for the Round of 32 and the US has already locked in their spot at the top of the group. Roldan is the most natural replacement on the roster.
Roldan admits that it’s been hard to change his mindset from written-in-ink starter with the Seattle Sounders into one of a squad player with the USMNT.
“As a professional athlete, you want to be on the field, you want to be contributing, you want to be helping,” he said. “I feel like I can still do that with the United States. But if that’s not my role or my name isn’t called, I need to be present. I still need to be as focused as I can be just in case they call on me.
“But I also need to be present in the sense of ‘what do my teammates need from me?’ How can I increase the level of training sessions? My role is very complex because I’m probably the guy who brings everyone closer together and, unfortunately, I don’t see the field as much.”
If he does get on the field?
“It would mean a lot to me,” he said. “I think honestly, it would mean a lot to the team. I think my teammates really want that for me. They know how much I sacrificed for the boys and they know that I help the whole team a lot. I’m pushing extremely hard to get into the next game.”
As meaningless as the game may be in the standings, Roldan understands that no World Cup game is actually meaningless.
“The intensity is very important,” Roldan said in Spanish. “We have to keep that up because when we played well in the two previous games, we were very intense.
“It’s true that this game doesn’t matter for the group, but if we want to show the country that we can do something in the World Cup, we have to win that game.”
