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

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Christian Pulisic, Antonee Robinson and Alejandro Zendejas all could miss the United States' friendly against Ecuador on Friday.

“We have some issues in some players like Christian that didn't train today and Antonee Robinson and we need to assess tomorrow if they can be available or not,” U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino said Thursday. “We don't believe that Alex will be part of the game tomorrow.”

Robinson said Wednesday he still is regaining fitness following right knee surgery in May. No information was announced on the conditions of Pulisic and Zendejas.

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

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

Pochettino took over the team in October 2024, three months after Gregg Berhalter was fired following first-round elimination at the Copa America. The Americans then lost in the semifinals of the CONCACAF Nations League in March.

Pochettino said he inherited a culture of complacency.

“We knew something wrong was here because if not the federation, why call us? No, why they offer the job, no, really with not too much time to build our ideas or to settle our principal,” he said. “That was a time to assess, to seem and the moment that we identified the problems we started to destroy the things that we needed to destroy and started to build the house from, how you say the ground up?”

Following the Nations League final four, he shook up the roster for the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

“That was really a wake-up call because I think it showed why they called us, because ‘Houston we have a problem?’" he said. “I think from then we started to work in a very intense way with the federation and tried to change things that didn’t help.”

The U.S. is 11-7 under Pochettino, ending a seven-game winless streak against top 25 nations last month when it won 2-0 over a Japan team of mostly second-string players.

“Now I promise you no one is sure that is going to be on the roster of the World Cup 2026,” Pochettino said. “I don’t believe that before that was in the same, in the same way around. But today I promise all the guys feel that they need to fight to be there. And that is priceless, because all feel they need to go out of the comfortable zone.”

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