The U.S. men’s national team’s June window is fully booked, with a date against World Cup-bound Uruguay the final piece of the puzzle.
The window, which is the penultimate gathering for the U.S. prior to the start of the World Cup in November, will comprise two friendlies and two Concacaf Nations League group games. It opens June 1 in Cincinnati against another World Cup-bound squad, 24th-ranked Morocco, before heading south to Kansas City, Kan., where the U.S. and La Celeste will meet at Sporting Kansas City’s Children’s Mercy Park on June 5.
Uruguay is the 13th-ranked team in the world—two places higher than the U.S. in the most recent FIFA ranking, which was used to determine the pots for the World Cup draw—and won its last four World Cup qualifiers to surge into a place in Qatar after Diego Alonso replaced longtime manager Óscar Tabárez. Some of Tabárez’s stalwart figures still remain, though, with Luis Suárez and Edinson Cavani among five players with over 100 caps still in the picture. The matchup comes as little surprise, with Uruguay already in the U.S. to face Mexico in Arizona three days prior to meeting Gregg Berhalter’s side. The two teams have met just twice in the last 20 years, with the U.S. winning a 2002 friendly 2–1 (current U.S. Soccer sporting director Earnie Stewart and USMNT general manager Brian McBride started), while the two played to a 1–1 friendly draw in Sept. 2019.
