Hey, US Soccer - please recruit Efrain Alvarez

Hi US Soccer,

I’m writing to let you know that Efrain Alvarez is right there, waiting to be called up for the senior national team. At least waiting to be called, visited, spoken to... waiting. Right now he’s waiting in Mexico with the U-17s where he will represent El Tri, our regional rivals, in the Concacaf U-17 Championship. I realize he’s played in the US youth team set up before, but the young man can also hold his own with grown adult men in MLS - a league that the US Soccer Board of Directors member Don Garber is commissioner of. He’s pretty good at soccer.

Just look:

I realize that he’s playing against the Chicago Fire, but did you see all that? Anyway, since he’s able to do that against the Fire, I can’t image that he’d be out of place during the Gold Cup. See, the FIFA rules state that he can ping back and forth between countries he’s eligible for until he makes a senior team debut in a competitive game. The Gold Cup is a tournament that takes place every two years and the teams in it can even send players back to their clubs and replace them after the group stage if they want. It would be an ideal time to call him up.

I get that he can say no and definitively choose Mexico if they also call him, but the USA has a fairly poor recent track record of trying to get Mexican-American dual nationals to select the US over our southern neighbor. It would be really good to watch him play in the Stars and Stripes since the player pool is a little lacking when it comes to attacking midfielders and his creativity and vision would really be an asset to making the US good at scoring goals. Mexico has obviously been in touch with him, so consider something like an all-out recruitment effort to bring him in. I’d much rather be writing about him scoring goals and being a potentially generational talent for the USMNT than against it.