1990年，时任美国国家男子足球队主教练的鲍勃·甘斯勒做出了一个关键且颇具争议的决定。他让队中三位功勋卓著的老将留在家中，带着一支年轻且经验不足的队伍前往意大利参加世界杯——这是美国队40年来的首次世界杯之旅。
In 1990, then-United States men’s national team manager Bob Gansler made a critical and somewhat controversial choice. He left three of the program’s laureled veterans at home and brought a young and little-tested team to the World Cup in Italy, the USA’s first in 40 years.
正如甘斯勒后来回忆的那样：“我当时考虑的不仅是1990年，更是整个90年代。”
As Gansler recalled later: “I was thinking not only for ’90, but I was thinking about the 90s.”
1998年，史蒂夫·桑普森同样着眼于未来。他偶然获得了美国国家队的教练职位，并在当年的世界杯前勉强保住了这份工作，但他仍然自信地宣称：“10到15年内，我们一定会赢得冠军，毫无疑问。”他对《华盛顿邮报》说：“一旦我们美国人决定做一件事，就一定会坚持到底。”在那段时期，一种观念逐渐形成——尽管从未被正式承认或公开提及——美国国家队就是未来的球队。
In 1998, Steve Sampson was looking to the future as well. He had lucked into the USMNT’s managerial gig and had barely clung on to it going into that year’s World Cup, but he nevertheless made a confident proclamation. “In 10 to 15 years, we’ll win the title, there’s no doubt about it,” he told the Washington Post. “When we Americans decide to do something, we’ll see it through.”A sense took hold sometime during that period, while never really acknowledged or said out loud, that the USMNT were the team of the future.
他们确实从未停止成为那样的球队。而这种对“并非当下，但肯定会在未来某个时刻”的模糊愿景所激发的乐观情绪，往往集中在一位、或许两位球员身上。2002年，美国国家队凭借20岁的兰登·多诺万和达马库斯·比斯利所迸发的活力与天赋，实现了现代世界杯征程上的突破。当两人在2006年世界杯上表现不佳时，另一位年轻球员克林特·邓普西脱颖而出。同年，年仅16岁的弗雷迪·阿杜也首次代表美国国家队出场。
They never really stopped being that. And this bullishness on the hazily outlined not-right-now-but-definitely-sometime-later-on tended to coalesce around one player, maybe two. The USMNT made their modern World Cup breakthrough powered by the energy and unfettered talent of 20-year-olds Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley in 2002. When those two foundered at the 2006 World Cup, another young player, Clint Dempsey, emerged. That year, a 16-year-old Freddy Adu made his USMNT debut.
就这样，一种模式逐渐形成：美国足球界一直在等待一位救世主，将他们带到新的层次。下一个年轻人，或者再下一个。他会为我们做到这一点。否则，就轮到下一个人了。
And so a pattern formed: the US soccer community waited to be lifted to the next plane by a savior. The next kid. Or maybe the one after that. He’ll do it for us. Or else the next one will.
邓普西熬过了多诺万，却恰好在克里斯蒂安·普利西奇崛起之时逐渐淡出。尽管围绕他的黄金一代已初具雏形，但人们始终认为，普利西奇才是有望在2026年世界杯上有所作为的球员——那届赛事将是国家队八年重建计划的最终成果。人们期待他能像2022年卡塔尔世界杯上那样短暂开启“英雄模式”：那次他奋不顾身地扑向一次传中，虽导致骨盆挫伤，却硬生生将决定胜负的关键球送入伊朗球门。
Dempsey outlasted Donovan and faded just as Christian Pulisic emerged. Because even as a golden-ish generation coalesced around him, Pulisic was seen as the player expected to make something happen at the 2026 World Cup, the culmination of an eight-year project of rebuilding the national team. He was expected to activate Hero Mode, the way he briefly had in Qatar in 2022, throwing himself in front of a cross at the expense of a pelvic contusion but bundling the make-or-break winner into the Iranian goal.
然而，2026年他再未做到。除了赛事首战表现出色外，普利西奇在本土举办的世界杯上表现惨淡，美国国家男子足球队（USMNT）的征程也以失败告终。
He never did it in 2026. Aside from a great first half in the tournament opener, Pulisic’s home World Cup was a bust, and the USMNT’s campaign ended with a whimper.
乍看之下，毛里西奥·波切蒂诺在世界杯后的首个集训营就启动青年军计划，似乎有些不合常理。他的球队核心阵容并未明显老化，除了后卫蒂姆·里姆外，其余球员都正值30岁左右的黄金年龄。尽管如此，他仍征召了13名首次入选的球员和8名青少年。
On its face, it felt odd that Mauricio Pochettino should launch a youth movement in the first camp after the World Cup. The core of his team had hardly aged out; all but defender Tim Ream are comfortably on the right side of 30. All the same, he called in 13 debutants and eight teenagers.
如果世界杯后数个月的成绩能说明什么，那么这些成绩无疑证明了这位阿根廷教练推陈出新的决定是正确的。这些年轻球员与经验丰富的老将们并肩作战，先后以4-1和4-2战胜秘鲁和智利，随后又以3-0的压倒性优势击败墨西哥。周二，他们在这场激烈而艰苦的国际比赛日收官战中，以1-0成熟地战胜加拿大——这支球队在过去曾凭借顽强的斗志和身体对抗给美国队带来过巨大麻烦。
If results in the months after a World Cup count for anything at all, they have vindicated the Argentinian’s decision to freshen things up. The kids, sprinkled in among a robust base of veterans, reeled off 4-1 and 4-2 victories over Peru and Chile, respectively, before dispatching Mexico in a merciless 3-0 walloping. On Tuesday, they concluded this jumbo-sized international window with a mature 1-0 win over Canada in a scruffy, scrappy game, vanquishing a team whose fierceness and physicality had given the US a great deal of trouble in the recent past.
然而，真正令人惊讶的，不仅在于有多少年轻人才正等待在球队阵容的后备席上——或者如今，或许甚至已经浮现在阵容表面——更在于最新“救世主”普利西奇缺席期间，人们几乎感受不到他的缺失。在观看这支沉稳而成熟的球队连续取得四场胜利时，你很可能甚至已经忘记他根本不在场上。同样的情况也适用于韦斯顿·麦肯尼，这位在过去五年里一直是美国国家队核心支柱的球员之一。
What was startling, however, wasn’t just how much young talent is waiting down the depth chart – or now, perhaps, very much on the surface of it – but how little Pulisic, the latest savior, was missed in his absence. You easily might have forgotten that he wasn’t even there while watching a composed and polished team reel off four straight wins. The same was true for Weston McKennie, one of the USMNT’s load-bearing players for the last half decade.
两人均留在各自的意大利俱乐部，要么希望利用这段休整期重新赢得教练的青睐（普利西奇在米兰），要么是为了养伤（麦肯尼在尤文图斯）。
They both stayed with their Italian clubs, either hoping to use the time off to get back in favor with their manager (Pulisic at Milan) or to heal up an injury (McKennie at Juventus).
在他们缺席期间，众多球员共同承担了重任，以各种方式作出大小贡献，轮流贡献关键表现，因此压力从未集中在任何一名球员身上。卡万·沙利文或许会是美国国家队明星球员更替序列中的下一位——也可能是朱利安·霍尔、阿德里·梅赫梅蒂、扎维尔·戈佐、贾斯汀·埃利斯或马蒂斯·阿尔伯特——但没有任何迹象表明，这支球队需要由他独自推动前进。正如前主教练布鲁斯·阿雷纳在美国队未能晋级2018年俄罗斯世界杯后对普利西奇所说的那样，这如今已不再是沙利文个人的球队。
In their absence, so many players carried the load, contributing in ways big and small, taking turns coming up with the big play, that the burden was never on any one player. Cavan Sullivan may well be next in line in the succession of the USMNT’s star players – or maybe it will be Julian Hall, or Adri Mehmeti, or Zavier Gozo, or Justin Ellis, or Mathis Albert – but there was no intimation that this was his ship to propel under his own power. This was not Sullivan’s team now, as then-manager Bruce Arena told Pulisic after the US failed to reach the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
从这场规模空前的国际比赛间歇期中——其比赛场次甚至超过了美国国家队参加多个大型赛事的总场次——我们得出的最重要结论是：这支球队或许终于不再过度依赖某一名球员，甚至不再依赖少数几位核心球员。
The big takeaway from this mega-pack of an international break – which encompassed more games than the USMNT’s run at several big tournaments – is that this team may, at long last, no longer be so dependent on one player, or even a small handful of them.
如果这支球队正迈向一个“后救世主”时代——换句话说，正在摆脱对普利西奇或其他任何“救世主”的过度依赖——那么这比出现某个新天才，甚至一群天才，更能清晰地表明球队正在进步。
If this program is entering into a post-savior age – moving on from Pulisic-pendencia, as it were, or whoever-pendencia – that’s a clearer sign of progress than the emergence of some new prodigy, or indeed a cluster of them.
这支球队，乃至整个美国足球界，似乎真正成长起来的，恰恰是美国球迷过去常常羡慕其他更发达足球国家的球队所具备的那种阵容深度。如果到了2030年世界杯，美国队的电视广告不再像去年夏天普利西奇那样几乎独占广告时段，那么这将是又一项进步。
What this team, and this soccer country writ large, appear to have grown instead, is the kind of depth US fans used to envy in other, more developed soccer nations. If at the 2030 World Cup, the US TV commercials don’t all feature the same player, in the way Pulisic largely hogged the commercial blocks this past summer, it will represent another step forward.
莱安德·沙尔莱肯斯（Leander Schaerlaeckens）是《长期博弈：美国男子足球队及其长达四十载的残酷登顶之旅》（The Long Game: US Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts）一书的作者，该书现已出版。他在马里斯特大学（Marist University）任教。
Leander Schaerlaeckens is the author of The Long Game: US Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, which is out now. He teaches at Marist University.
本文摘自《卫报》美国版旗下的足球专栏新闻通讯（Soccer Desk），可在此免费获取。
This is an extract from Soccer Desk, a newsletter from the Guardian US. for free here.