It’s funny how much things can change in a year.

Last year, our list of the best under-21 prospects for the U.S. men’s national team was filled with a lot of guys who aren’t really prospects. No, it included plenty of first-choice, or first-off-the-bench types, for the senior national team. Giovanni Reyna, Yunus Musah, Ricardo Pepi, Joe Scally, Malik Tillman, Gianluca Busio? They were all there.

And now they’re all gone — most recently Pepi, who turned 22 on Jan. 9. He would be No. 1 on this list were he born just a week or two later. Heck, Busio ranked 10th on this list last time — had he been just a year younger, with the same track record he had a year ago, he probably would have been first this time, too. Unfortunately, he was born in May 2022.

This is why people talk about “Golden Generations” with national teams. Even when the broader trend of youth talent is broadly positive, as it is with the USMNT, things can get pretty volatile from one year to the next. Sometimes you just get a concentration of excellent players all born in the same year and sometimes, well, you don’t — like this year.

Now that your expectations are sufficiently lowered, let’s do it all again. Ahead of the USMNT’s friendlies with Venezuela and Costa Rica, who are the program’s 15 best under-21 prospects?

Wait, what do we mean by a USMNT ‘prospect’?

Manchester City, Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Bayer Leverkusen, Chelsea: All of these clubs have Americans under contract right now. The only problem: They’re all teenagers without any real professional experience. And the most likely outcome for almost every teenager yet to play a professional game? He won’t be a contributor for his national team.

By having so many young players at so many of the world’s best clubs, the USMNT is greatly increasing its chances of having a couple of those players turn into USMNT stars, but there is just so much that can and will change for a 17-year-old prospect who — unless he’s Lamine Yamal — it’s foolish to put any kind of confident projection on how any single players’ career will pan out.

If this were easy, then most of the best players in the world would be the ones who come through the academies of the best teams in the world. Instead, that’s very rarely the case unless, again, you’re Lamine Yamal.

And so here’s how these rankings are decided, as was the case in last year’s edition:

Humility is the No. 1 scouting tool — we can’t be confident in how any 21-and-under player’s career will pan out. So, these rankings will be heavily weighted toward players we can have a little more confidence about.

That weight, in order: We care about players who have played a lot of minutes, then we care about players who have played a lot of minutes at a younger age, then we care about what level of competition those players have played those minutes in, then we care about how they have performed within those minutes, and only then do we really care about things like traits or tools or whatever other scouting terms you prefer.

We’re also not including players like Burnley’s Luca Koleosho and Stuttgart’s Anrie Chase, who are eligible for the USMNT despite showing no real interest in actually playing for the USMNT. And like last year, players are divided into tiers, and we’ll use those same tiers this time. Here’s how it looks:

Tier 1: USMNT stars — and potentially European stars, too

There are undoubtedly some players out there who have this kind of potential. Some of you are probably smashing the letters “C-A-V-A-N S-U-L-L-I-V-A-N” into an email window as you read this. People have referred to the Philadelphia Union prospect, who will move to Manchester City when he turns 18, as the best 15-year-old in the world.

But just think about that for a second: HE IS 15 YEARS OLD. We literally don’t even know how tall Cavan Sullivan is going to be in five years, let alone how effective he will be at soccer.

Someone is going to find his way into this tier eventually, but there are not currently any 21-and-under soccer players who I’m willing to say are more likely than not to become a star for the USMNT.

Tier 2: Fringe USMNT starters, mid-tier European pros

In Europe’s Big Five top leagues, here’s the list of 21-and-under Americans, per FBref, who have played at least 2,000 minutes:

Just kidding, there’s no one. Last year, this tier featured Joe Scally, Malik Tillman and Ricardo Pepi. This year, it’s empty.

Tier 3: Can they make it in Europe?

1. Kevin Paredes, 21, winger, Wolfsburg

2. Caleb Wiley, 20, left back, Strasbourg (on loan from Chelsea)

3. Paxten Aaronson, 21, midfielder, FC Utrecht (on loan from Eintracht Frankfurt)

4. Noahkai Banks, 18, center back, Augsburg

5. Damion Downs, 20, forward, Koln

One of my favorite things to read each week is the Bayesian Quarterback Rankings from NFL analyst Kevin Cole on his Substack, “Unexpected Points.” Rather than just adding up the player’s stats from the current season to create the rankings, he looks at the stats for each quarterback across his career (while weighing recent performance more heavily), and then projects who is likely to perform the best going forward. Even in a relatively down year by his incredible standards, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes remains at the top each week because his career-long track record is so far ahead of any other player.

The opposite, though, happens with rookie quarterbacks. They come into the rankings with loose expectations based on their draft positions, but that is quickly overwhelmed by the evidence of their initial professional performances. Three games, say, is a small sample, but for a rookie, it’s also the entire sample.

This is how I think of prospects in soccer, too. With Christian Pulisic, we have a pretty big sample of what to expect. A single game, or even a couple months, shouldn’t really sway our opinion of the player all that much. But with these under-21 guys, I think we need to constantly be updating our opinions with each new bit of information we get.

See: Noahkai Banks. He’s been near the top of the list for USMNT prospects-watchers for a while, but I wouldn’t have had him here if we did this exercise a week ago. Except then he made his professional debut for Augsburg over the weekend.

All of a sudden, with his hourlong cameo against Stuttgart, Banks is an 18-year-old center-back who has played more minutes in a Big Five league than all but four other U21 Americans. Not only that, but he’s also done it at a position that’s not kind to teenagers. Among center-backs who were 17 or younger at the start of this season, only two players have been featured in more minutes than Banks, Giovanni Leoni of Parma and Barcelona prodigy Pau Cubarsí.

Kevin Paredes, meanwhile, stays atop the list because we’ve seen him play nearly 2,000 minutes at a young age in the Bundesliga. He’s missed the season with a number of lower-body injuries, but no one else has really done enough to surpass him this season.

Caleb Wiley played a ton of minutes as a teenager in MLS for Atlanta United. That earned him a move to Chelsea — great sign! But he’s spent the season on loan at Chelsea’s satellite club, Strasbourg, and has only played 250-plus minutes in Ligue 1, thanks to a succession of knee and shoulder injuries. He looked like a Ligue 1-quality player at just 20, but just hasn’t played enough.

Paxten Aaronson, meanwhile, has been fantastic in midfield for third-place Utrecht, but unless you’re playing for a Champions League team, it’s really hard to judge the true quality of a prospect’s minutes in the Eredivisie. Plenty go on to flourish at a higher level, while plenty of others wilt under the increased physicality and defensive organization in the Big Five leagues. We’ll learn a lot more if he heads back to Germany next year.

Finally, Damion Downs played a little bit for Koln in their relegation season last year, but he’s been one of the best forwards in the German second division for easily the best team in the German second division this season.

Tier 4: How do you judge any of them?

6. Gaga Slonina, 20, goalkeeper, Chelsea

7. Rokas Pukstas, 20, midfielder, Hajduk Split

8. Cole Campbell, 18, forward, Borussia Dortmund

9. Diego Kochen, 18, goalkeeper, Barcelona

On the one hand, Gaga Slonina’s career has stalled. He went on loan to Barnsley in League One this summer, but that loan was just terminated after he struggled for playing time and then with a seasonlong injury. On the other hand, goalkeepers tend to peak much later than outfield players, and he was a starter in MLS and the Belgian first division before he turned 20. The early career minutes at a position typically reserved for older players bodes well for Slonina’s future projection, even if this is going to be a lost season.

Rokas Pukstas broke out last year by becoming a full-time starter for one of the best teams in Croatia as a teenager. This season, he’s playing significantly fewer minutes, but he’s still been out there for more than half of the available game time. He’s doing it for the team that’s tied on points atop the Croatian league table. And he’s still only 20.

Cole Campbell is another favorite of USMNT-prospect-watchers, and he’s played just a little over 30 minutes for Dortmund as an 18-year-old. That’s barely anything, but when you combine the pedigree with a Champions League appearance, I feel comfortable sliding him into the tier above the guys playing lots of minutes in lower-level leagues.

Same goes for Diego Kochen, who has literally zero professional minutes under his belt. But unlike Campbell, who can come on for tiny stretches at the end of matches in Dortmund’s attack, Kochen is a goalkeeper, and managers don’t sub their goalkeepers. Just ask Matt Turner.

Kochen, though, has already appeared on Barcelona’s bench 30 times in his career. That’s sort of a sad thing to celebrate, I guess, but there’s probably at least a little of a signal in a goalkeeper who makes it that far up the pecking order for one of the biggest clubs in the world well before his 21st birthday.

Tier 5: Six more, plus everyone else

10. Quinn Sullivan, 20, winger, Philadelphia Union

11. Jack McGlynn, 21, midfielder, Philadelphia Union

12. Brian Gutierrez, 21, midfielder, Chicago Fire

13. Cade Cowell, winger, 21, Chivas Guadalajara

14. Chris Brady, 20, goalkeeper, Chicago Fire

15. Diego Luna, 21, attacking midfielder, Real Salt Lake

Last year, I said the bottom tier was occupied by the guys I listed in the bottom tier — and then a long list of other players who didn’t make the top 15. I think that’s mostly true again this year, but I do think these six have separated themselves a tiny bit from the rest of the player pool below them.

While it’s really hard to value a player’s performance in a full-time MLS role vs. a bit-part role at a major European club, it’s a lot easier to compare all of the players across MLS. Here, we can also start to take a look at actual performance, in addition to playing time. And we can do that by using Michael Imburgio’s DAVIES model, which is the best publicly available metric that values everything a player does with the ball.

The model has data dating to the 2017-18 season for some European leagues and 2019 for MLS. Among 21-and-under seasons by American players, the best — by far — was Folarin Balogun‘s 2022-23 season with Reims. His overall DAVIES total — a number that represents the goals a player provided above average, when controlling for both age and position — was 7.85. No other under-21 American has broken 5.0.

However, Jack McGlynn’s season with the Union last year was the fourth best from a 21-and-under American. Except, Quinn Sullivan’s age-20 season last year with the Union was better than McGlynn’s the year before, so we’re giving Sullivan the slight edge.

One constant, from the DAVIES data is that most of the recent players who have gone on to become starters for the USMNT have put up positive seasons at age 20 or even younger. Brian Gutierrez did it at 19 and 20 and then he had another really nice season at 21 this past year. Cade Cowell, too, put up value-adding seasons at 18 and 19 in MLS and now he’s playing half of the minutes for Chivas in Liga MX. All four of these guys should end up being solid pros somewhere — and possibly back-end depth for the USMNT.

Chris Brady doesn’t have any DAVIES data because he’s a goalkeeper, but his Fire teammate Gutierrez is the only 21-and-under player still in MLS who has played more career minutes. He’s still only 20 and already has two full seasons of league-average shot stopping in MLS. He’s also a couple months older than Slonina.

Lastly, there’s Diego Luna, who was on the same level as McGlynn, Sullivan and Guttierez last season, but doesn’t also have those one or two seasons of above-average performance before turning 21. Chances are that someone in this group goes on to become a solid USMNT contributor over the next few years. Luna, though, seems the least likely of the six to get there.