"I'm truly not gonna be excited until I'm on the plane and over there." That's Antonee Robinson, summing up the anxiety behind a year that looked a lot messier from the inside than it did from the outside.
Robinson was never seriously in danger of missing the World Cup roster. He's started at the last World Cup, started at Copa America, and spent four years cementing himself as one of the more reliable left backs in the Premier League. There was no realistic version of Mauricio Pochettino's squad that didn't have him in it.
But injuries have a way of getting in your head. A knock at the start of the season disrupted his rhythm at Fulham. Another in February set him back just as he was finding form. By the time roster selection came around, Robinson had spent more time managing his body than playing football. So when the text came through two Fridays ago, the relief was real.
Still the first name on the team sheet
The 3-2 win over Senegal on Sunday was a useful reminder of why. Robinson was all over the first half — combining with Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie, generating a chance from the top of the box at the 31-minute mark. His connection with Pulisic down the left is the kind of relationship that takes years to build, and USMNT don't have many of those.
It wasn't spotless. A giveaway near midfield handed Senegal their opening goal before half-time. That's the version of Robinson that showed up too often at Fulham this season — switched off for a second, and suddenly the scoreline shifts. At a World Cup, those lapses become exponentially more costly.
The experience argument cuts both ways, then. Robinson knows what tournament football demands. He also knows his margin for error is narrower than it was in 2022.
Injury watch heading into the tournament
Elsewhere in camp, Chris Richards (ankle) and Tyler Adams (load management) trained separately on Tuesday — two names worth tracking as the squad takes shape. Brenden Aaronson, who wore a wrap on his ankle Saturday, was without it by Tuesday, which is at least movement in the right direction.
Robinson, for his part, isn't thinking about individual glory. "Not necessarily having to play the best football, but having to find the way to win in each individual game" — that's a player who's been through a tournament cycle and knows how quickly it can unravel if you chase the performance instead of the result.
He just needs to stay on the pitch to prove it.
