Intro: The 500 Club
First in a new series tracking the players with a RAW score over .500
I’m sure there are lots of theories about why we lost to the Dutch in our first knockout game at the 2022 World Cup, but the main issue I think we can “fix” before 2026 is our lack of high-quality depth.
After just over a year of tracking players with version 2.0 of the formula, it’s become clear that a score of .500 is a natural cutoff point between players who are regular starters for major clubs, and everyone else. I didn’t plan this when crafting the updated version of the formula, but I don’t hate it. Using .500 as a cutoff, we’ve had anywhere from 12 to 16 players in the 500 Club in a given week since the last week of 2021.
So far, it’s been impossible to get into the 500 Club from MLS, which I imagine will please the MLS Doubters. Sean Johnson, one of the highest-scoring domestic MLS players last season was able to notch 11 single-games scores over .500, but never really threatened to get his RAW score over .500. Conversely, it only took Matt Miazga three caps for FC Cincinnati to pull him below .500 after coming back from Europe.
If you’re a regular starter for a club in one of the Top 5 leagues, you’ll be in the 500 Club. If you start every now and then for one of those clubs, you’ll probably hover right around .500. Tim Weah is sitting at .477 as I type this, but a few more starts in February will probably finally get him over the line. Like Miazga, both Christian Pulisic and Sergino Dest have fallen below the line after falling out of favor with their clubs.
If you don’t play in the Top 5, you better be really good on one of the powerhouses in your league, and even then it’s not a guarantee. Jordan Pefok was never able to crack .500 when he was dominating the Swiss Super League with Young Boys, but two starts with Union Berlin in the Bundesliga got him over the line. For Cameron Carter-Vickers, starting for the dominant club in the Scottish Premiership, Celtic, has been enough to put him in the 500 Club from its inception. Similarly, Mark McKenzie has been a constant member since he established himself as a locked-in starter for Genk in the Belgian Pro League.
Finally, the outliers. Alex Zendejas and, more recently, Mauricio Isais have proven that being an every-game starter for a top Liga MX team is also enough to get you in the club.
The point of The 500 Club is not to say that these are definitely our best players, or that they should start every meaningful USMNT match. The point is that today, we have 13 of these players. If we want to take the next big step, in 2026 we need to have 25. If we ever want to actually compete to win a World Cup, we probably need 50. That’s why I’ll be tracking this group every week going forward, because now that we have world-level quality, we need to develop elite-level quantity.
Current Members of The 500 Club:
Strikers (1)
Jordan Pefok (.511 - Union Berlin - German Bundesliga - 22-week streak)
Wingers (2)
Brenden Aaronson (.541 - Leeds United - English Premier League - 54-week streak)
Alex Zendejas (.523 - Club America - Liga MX - 18-week streak)
Midfielders (2)
Tyler Adams (.583 - Leeds United - English Premier League - 54-week streak)
Weston McKennie (.545 - Juventus - Serie A - 54-week streak)
Fullbacks (3)
Antonee Robinson (.562 - Fulham - English Premier League - 54-week streak)
Joe Scally (.533 - Gladbach - German Bundesliga - 9-week streak)
Mauricio Isais (.515 - Pachuca - Liga MX - *3-week streak)
Centerbacks (4)
Cameron Carter-Vickers (.614 - Celtic - Scottish Premiership - 54-week streak)
Mark McKenzie (.553 - Genk - Belgian Pro League - 16-week streak)
Chris Richards (.518 - Crystal Palace - English Premier League - 54-week streak)
Erik Palmer-Brown (.506 - Troyes - French Ligue 1 - 18-week streak)
Goalkeepers (1)
Matt Turner (.506 - Arsenal - English Premier League - DEBUT)
Next Up?
Malik Tillman (just fell out this week, likely to jump back up with another start or two)
Yunus Musah (actually over the line today, will have to see if he stays up after his game Sunday)
Christian Pulisic, Sergino Dest, Gio Reyna (long-time members, will quickly jump back in if they can ever get back in regular rotation)
Folarin Balogun & Tim Weah (will make the jump soon if they maintain their current trajectory)
Luca de la Torre, Djordje Mihailovic, Taylor Booth (LDT will make the jump if he becomes a regular starter for Celta Vigo, Booth & Mihailovic would have to turn into McKenzie-level contributors for their clubs)
Philippe Sandler (similar situation to Booth & Mihailovich)
Notes
John Brooks & Tim Ream (both are still technically members of The 500 Club, but I’ve made the editorial choice to remove them from active tracking; if the next USMNT manager starts calling them into camps I’ll gladly add them back, but for now I suspect their times as meaningful contributors to the USMNT are over
The Story So Far
I have data for The 500 Club going back to the week of December 27, 2021. That inaugural version had 14 members (Aaronson, Pulisic, Reyna, McKennie, Adams, Dest, Robinson, Scally, Brooks, Ream, CCV, Richards, Miazga, and Steffen).
Membership remained unchanged for 19 weeks, when Scally fell out the week of May 9, 2022.
Pefok became the first striker in the club on August 8, 2022, bringing the total number back to 14.
Three weeks later, Miazga fell out, dropping the total back to 13.
Zendejas and EPB both joined the following week, bringing membership up to 15.
On September 9, 2022, McKenzie joined, setting a new peak membership of 16 that only lasted two weeks.
Pulisic and Dest fell out in consecutive weeks, but Dest was only out for one week, and Scally rejoined the week after, only to see Dest fall back out the next week, back to a total of 14.
Tillman joined on December 19, 2022, with Steffen finally falling out the following week after his move down to the English Championship. The second week of 2023 I removed Brooks and Ream to take us down to an all-time low of 12 members.
Isais joined January 16, 2023 (*the first week I added him to the formula), and this week Tillman fell out with a score of .499 and Turner joined for the first time with a score of .506 after his big start last week.