Fans of the men’s national team from the United States have been waiting for this moment for a long time.

We can all relax and enjoy the first USMNT Player Performance Index of the 2024–25 European football season—and the first edition since Copa America—after a summer of disappointment and management turmoil!

You may now be a little more anticipating something else: the USMNT’s inaugural two games under their brilliant new manager, Mauricio Pochettino. But we’re back with our attempt to rank the top players in the entire American player pool before Poch & Co. play Mexico and Panama in friendly later this month.

Although the season is still early, this index, which examines USMNT players’ club performance, will help us keep track of players as we periodically review these rankings. Gio Reyna will unavoidably enter another January transfer window in need of a new club, trends will begin to emerge, performances will solidify, stars will rise and fall, and Tyler Adams—possibly, theoretically, spiritually, and maybe even literally—will resume playing professional football.

In a moment, we will discuss the methodology behind the number-crunching that goes into these rankings and provide some context for some of the noticeable omissions.

Which members of the USMNT are absent? And how is this ranking established?

Last year, we landed on a methodology that simply asked two questions: How excellent is a USMNT player’s club team, and how much credit does the player deserve for that?

There are many different types of individual statistics available, but they are all certain to lack some crucial context, which differs depending on the position. While the numbers we selected for this ranking are by no means exceptional, taken as a whole, they miss out on far less than any other methodology we could think of.

There are no playoffs in European soccer, so every minute you’re not playing is a minute where you’re not helping your club finish higher in the table. Your coach probably believes you’re performing well if you’re getting a lot of playing time. Additionally, the minutes you’re offering are more valuable the better your team is. As a result, we created a model that rewards individuals who contribute frequently and on strong teams.

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