Former Union sporting director Earnie Stewart takes pride in helping build the USMNT's World Cup team
Eight years since he left Chester, Stewart still has a soft spot for the club and the players he helped develop — including all four former Union players on this summer's squad.
CHICAGO — When Earnie Stewart learned of the U.S. men’s soccer team’s World Cup roster, he could have sent his first messages to any number of people, from the governing body to the men he played with from 1990-2004.
He chose to send them to Union principal owner Jay Sugarman and academy bankroller Richie Graham.
Eight years since the end of Stewart’s tenure as the Union’s sporting director, he still has a soft spot for the club and the players he helped develop. All four of the Union alumni on the U.S. squad were in the youth academy when he was in charge — Brenden Aaronson, Matt Freese, Mark McKenzie, and Auston Trusty — with the last two making their senior-team debuts before Stewart left in mid-2018.
From Chester, Stewart went to U.S. Soccer to become its sporting director until early 2023. Then he left to take the helm at PSV Eindhoven, in the Netherlands where he grew up as the son of a U.S. Air Force serviceman and a Dutch mother.
The time and distance along the way could have led Stewart to leave his Union years behind. But he still takes pride in his role helping the quartet of players make it to the big stage — one he graced with the U.S. in 1994, 1998, and 2002.
“That’s what I like most of my job,” he said at a reunion of the 1994 team before Saturday’s U.S.-Germany send-off game. “Once the roster came out, the first text messages that I sent were to Richie and to Jay to congratulate them with everything that they’ve been putting in all these years. Now it pays out, to have four guys on the on the U.S. roster, which is amazing.”
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Stewart has also had three players from this year’s squad at PSV: Sergiño Dest, Ricardo Pepi, and Malik Tillman. He signed all three to the club, sold Tillman to Germany’s Bayer Leverkusen last year for $41 million, and will reportedly sell Pepi this summer to England’s Fulham for around $46 million.
“They’ve all gotten better,” he said. “They’ve gotten better on the ball. The qualities that they already have, they’ve shown that now for years after one another, so that excites me to see them at this level.”
Stewart added that “they’ve already shown that they can do it at a certain level,” citing Dest’s place on the 2022 World Cup team. Tillman and Pepi are on their first, and he said of them: “I’m excited to see what they’re going to be doing.
He said signing Americans to PSV is “not the goal in itself,” given the perennial pressure PSV faces to win the Dutch league (its 27 titles are the second-most) and do well in the Champions League. But he said “these players just fit for us” with what he was looking for, and he admitted it helped that “you know them.”
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“And then it’s fantastic that they also have that history in the U.S., and that you can help them on their path to hopefully being even greater than they are today,” Stewart said. “So that’s very satisfying that these three are on the roster for the U.S. as well.”
His work at U.S. Soccer means his fingerprints are on the World Cup team in an even bigger way. Thirteen of the 26 players on the roster played at the 2022 tournament too, during Stewart’s time as sporting director.
Earlier this week, former U.S. manager Gregg Berhalter — now with the Chicago Fire, whose facilities the Americans practiced at on Friday — spoke of what it means to have helped plant the roots of this team. Stewart said he feels the same way.
“You’re part of something that started,” he said. ”Because the beginning was not easy when we made certain choices — bringing, I’ll just say, the young guys in, and then losing the first game against Brazil, in 2018 [by 2-0], and not having a chance in that game. To where it is today and how these guys have all progressed. … I’m excited about that piece, and now hopefully that all comes together at once during this World Cup and we can really do damage.”
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Saturday brought another special moment for Stewart: he was one of 15 players from the 1994 U.S. team honored on the field in a pregame ceremony.
“Ah, it’s nice,” he said. “You never really have the opportunity to connect with one another. And then for U.S. Soccer to put this on and get all these guys back together again, it’s, I’d say, very, very special to be there with one another again.”
The feeling was mutual for his teammates, including Eric Wynalda.
“He has such a keen eye for the necessary components to success,” said the former striker, who remains a big presence in the media. “He’s very good at what he does. And that is: to the point, I know what I like, I know how to help this player get better, and I recognize it early.”
Nine nations will compete in five group stage matches this summer, plus two more in a knockout game on July 4. Here’s what you need to know about those countries — and what those fans need to know about Philly. Click here for more.
