Episode 134: Return of the Future Draft, where we pick XIs of un-capped U23s

American heroes Sanjiv (@usmntvideos) and Chris (@watke_) join the pod for a draft of starting XIs from the ranks of un-capped male American soccer players. 

Sanjiv: https://twitter.com/usmntvideos

Watke: https://twitter.com/watke_

Here are the rules:

• Only U.S.-eligible players born in 1997 or later are allowed.
• We go youngest to oldest in the draft order, so Sanjiv first, then Watke, then Belz, and then the draft order snakes for the rest of the picks.
• Anyone already capped with the senior men’s national team is disqualified. That excludes, for instance, Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Sargent, Weah and now Mark McKenzie, Uly Llanez, Sam Vines, Jesus Ferreira, Paxon Pomykal and Brenden Aaronson.
• We’re picking specifically with the goal of assembling the best possible team in 2026. This makes it fun and pretty much releases from any responsibility to be correct in our choices. Everything will change by 2026 in ways none of us foresee.
• We each need to come up with a starting XI, a total of 33 players.
• Dual nationals are fine as long as they're not cap-tied with another nation.

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