U.S. Soccer has named Steve Cherundolo head coach of the men’s U-23 national team, as reported by The Athletic’s Tom Bogert on July 9, with Cherundolo set to lead the program through the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Cherundolo departed LAFC after the 2025 season, citing his family’s desire to return to Germany. Before taking this role, he had remained in Germany to earn his coaching license and worked within the German FA’s youth national team structure – a background U.S. Soccer COO Dan Helfrich explicitly flagged as central to the hire. “Throughout his career, Steve Cherundolo has been a proven winner, an elite talent developer, and a great ambassador for American soccer,” Helfrich said in the official announcement.
The Résumé Behind the Appointment
As a player, Cherundolo earned 87 caps for the USMNT between 1999 and 2012, appeared at three World Cups, and was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2021. At LAFC, he won MLS Cup and the Supporters’ Shield in 2022 and the U.S. Open Cup in 2024, never finishing worse than third in the Western Conference across four seasons.
“Representing the United States at the Olympic Games is one of the greatest honors in sports, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to lead this team,” Cherundolo said in a statement. “Our responsibility is to compete with courage, humility, and a clear identity.”
What the Role Actually Involves
The 2028 men’s Olympic tournament is a U-23 competition with three over-age slots permitted, and it sits outside the FIFA calendar – meaning clubs face no obligation to release players called into squads. That makes Cherundolo’s job part coaching, part diplomacy, requiring individual release negotiations with MLS sides and European clubs alike for every camp and tournament.
Olympic soccer will be staged across six MLS venues, including New York, Columbus, Nashville, San Jose, St. Louis, and San Diego, with the gold medal match at the Rose Bowl. For context on how MLS clubs like NYCFC feed into the national team pipeline, the pathway those players travel to senior level runs directly through programs like this one.
The hire also comes with an organizational asterisk: Helfrich led the search himself following Matt Crocker’s departure as sporting director prior to the World Cup, so Cherundolo steps into a federation still sorting out its technical leadership structure. He will work in coordination with both the senior and youth national team coaching staffs – a remit that positions the U-23 program as a genuine bridge rather than a sideshow, which is exactly what U.S. Soccer needs it to be heading into a home Olympics and then the next World Cup cycle.
Expect U-23 camps to begin taking shape over the next 12 to 18 months, drawing from current U-20s and early-career domestic and European-based Americans – the exact cohort Cherundolo spent his post-LAFC time studying up close in Germany.
