Tim Ream is Mauricio Pochettino’s captain with the USMNT, but that doesn’t spare him any pressure
The veteran centerback has long seemed to be a lock for the World Cup squad. He's 38, though, and some watchers worry about Father Time catching up to him this year.
Union fans know all too well the sinking feeling that comes from watching a centerback race backward to catch an attacker.
They know, too, that when that centerback is also racing Father Time, it only gets harder to reach the finish line first.
So there were a whole lot of nervous watchers last month when Tim Ream got caught twice in quick succession playing for Charlotte FC against the Los Angeles Galaxy.
On the first, he got beat off the dribble by Gabriel Pec, who then slid a pass by Ream for João Klauss to finish. On the second, Klauss jumped on a poor pass by a teammate, dashed toward the middle of the field, cut right on Ream, and shot low to score.
Either play can happen to anyone, as the Union have also proven. But it feels different when the defender in question is 38 years old, and manager Mauricio Pochettino’s U.S. national team captain with the World Cup looming.
There are, to be sure, some disclaimers. Though Charlotte gave up three goals in that game, it has only given up three in its other four this year combined. And the club plays in a back four, instead of the back three that Pochettino deploys.
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The latter setup helps Ream not just with an extra centerback, but with two central midfielders in front of the trio.
Still, the questions won’t go away. Ream surely knows it, and Pochettino will hear about it if there are any slipups in this month’s games vs. European superpowers Belgium (Saturday, 3:30 p.m., TNT, Telemundo 62) and Portugal (next Tuesday, 7 p.m., TNT, Telemundo 62).
This specific moment is magnified by issues across the centerback depth chart. Chris Richards is a lock to start, and Ream likely won’t go anywhere unless there’s a catastrophe. But the third spot in the lineup isn’t settled.
Union alums Mark McKenzie and Auston Trusty and Cincinnati’s Miles Robinson will compete for it this month, and marquee prospect Noahkai Banks could join them if he picks the U.S. for his national team future. Though he backed out of this camp while making his decision, there will likely be room on the World Cup squad.
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As the Americans started training camp Monday in the Atlanta suburbs, Ream stepped up to face the media. He had plenty to say about his situation and the team’s as a whole.
“You focus on what you can control,” he said. “I’ve always been somebody who just puts their head down and works hard, and tries to help the guys around myself and within the team in any way that I can.
Pochettino laid down the first rule of the month when he announced his roster last week. Along with making it clear that the door to the World Cup squad is not closed for players who didn’t make the cut, he said bluntly that “the players that today are in the roster, they cannot think they are going to be in the final roster” for the tournament.
Ream echoed that message on Monday.
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“Every camp is important, every training session is important, every touch is important, and you treat everything as [if] it’s the most important,” he said. “Things fluctuate, things change constantly. One week, someone’s doing something great. There’s battles all over the field.”
As cutthroat as the competition must be, the spirit among the players is positive. They want each other to succeed, even though they know only 26 of them will make the World Cup squad.
“We all want everybody to be performing at their very best,” Ream said. “When guys are doing that, then it creates more competition, it drives you on further.”
He called himself “relaxed,” and said he intends to stay that way.
“You don’t want to play tight,” he said. “You want to have a focus, you want to have an intensity, but you don’t want to feel like you’re gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. You have to play loose, you have to play with confidence and be comfortable.”
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Ream also addressed the Banks situation, though only briefly.
“Whether Noahkai changes [his mind] or decides, it’s not something I can control,” he said. “So we work with the group that’s in right now, and then we see what happens in the future.”