From his breakout rookie season with Orlando City to his US men’s national team debut and explosively successful loan stint in the English Championship with Barnsley, the past year or so has been a Cinderella story for Daryl Dike.
So what gives with his exclusion from the USMNT roster for next week’s Concacaf Nations League finals?
Coach Gregg Berhalter framed the snub as a side effect of roster regulations in a Monday conference call with media, lamenting the limitations imposed by Concacaf’s 23-player squad sizes for the CNL semifinals and final.
“It was tough, it really was. Daryl’s here in camp with us, and he'll be here for the duration of the camp. And it's unfortunate that you have to name 23 guys,” said Berhalter from the Swiss Alps, where the USMNT has gathered this week ahead of Sunday’s friendly vs. Switzerland (2 pm ET | ESPN, UniMás, TUDN in US).
A relentless World Cup qualifying schedule is looming, with massive matches and lengthy travel packed into tighter timeframes than ever. So Berhalter and his staff have structured this current international window to replicate that rhythm in preparation.
Dike is part of those plans, but his hopes of involvement in the CNL semifinals and/or final were dinged by the numbers game.
“The way we were looking at this whole trip is, we're going to travel with more players because we want to simulate what World Cup qualifying looks like, where you can interchange the 23 each gameday. Here, unfortunately, we’re not able to do that,” explained Berhalter. “Daryl will still be part of the team, he’ll play against Costa Rica [a pre-Gold Cup friendly on June 9]. And when it came down to those particular two [CNL] games, we based it on current form.”
Josh Sargent and Jordan Siebatcheu got the nod in the No. 9 role ahead of the Oklahoma native, who netted nine goals to power Barnsley’s unexpected push for promotion into the Premier League but saw his scoring rate cool over the final weeks of their campaign.
“Jordan had an outstanding year playing for Young Boys, they won the title running away, he scored a lot of goals. We thought that his movement inside the penalty box was really good, getting on the end of crosses was really good,” said Berhalter. “And Josh is playing at a really high level, he's playing in the Bundesliga every week, he's competing, his minutes this year were off the charts and doing really well.
“So for us it was very difficult, and I had a conversation with Daryl today about it. And it's the hardest thing a coach has to do, is tell a player news like that. But Daryl has a long future with us, and this is just a temporary setback for this tournament, but he's part of the group and he's going to enjoy his time here.”
In general, he explained, the USMNT’s European contingent took precedence for the program’s first activities of a hectic summer, while a more domestic-based squad is expected for the Gold Cup.
“Some of the roster decisions were made based on who's available and what's happening next in the summer. So when in doubt, we leaned on the European guys, because we knew that they're going to need rest and then preparing for their clubs’\] preseason,” said Berhalter, citing [Walker Zimmerman and Miles Robinson by name as players he expects to participate in the Gold Cup.
Two notable exceptions for this window are the Colorado Rapids’ Kellyn Acosta and San Jose Earthquakes regista Jackson Yueill, who have impressed the USMNT staff and may now find themselves competing head-to-head for opportunities in defensive midfield (Acosta is also an option as a No. 8 and can fill in at fullback).
“Kellyn did a great job against Jamaica in the friendly [a 4-1 win in Austria in March]. This was a guy that was only playing in preseason, he came and played 90 minutes against Jamaica and did a really good job,” said Berhalter. “He was a player that we were unsure of how we would perform there, but he took to the role, he understood the role and he executed it really well.
“Jackson's a guy that we've grown with. We've seen him make his debut in June [2019] against Jamaica in D.C.. And then since then, he's just kept improving, he’s just kept getting better,” continued the coach. “Games like this, Jackson in my opinion is a guy that needs to be tested in games like Switzerland, Nations League semifinals, hopefully finals – these are games that will test him, and that's exactly what he needs, and then we'll be able to really determine the difference between those two.”
Berhalter also provided injury updates on New York Red Bulls academy product Tyler Adams, now at RB Leipzig, who is dealing with a back issue, and Fulham left back Antonee Robinson, freshly returned from an ankle problem.
“Tyler, he's a guy that we’ve been monitoring very closely. He was touch-and-go at Leipzig, they held him out of the [DFB-Pokal] cup final, he still had a little bit of pain that he was getting treatment for after the cup final, he was preparing for the final day of the weekend and still struggling a little bit. So he went home to get treatment,” he said. “We felt that he's that important to the team that we want to put him on our roster. We know we can always replace him if he's injured. We have enough players in camp to do so, so it was a risk worth taking.
“With Antonee’s case, in terms of his playing, he was cleared to train fully with Fulham … right now we're planning with him, all the medical reports have been really good coming out of Fulham, so we expect him to be training with the group fully.”
