The World Cup the United States opens Friday night against Paraguay belongs, on paper, to the whole country. Around here it is more specific than that. Four of the 26 players head coach Mauricio Pochettino named to the American roster learned the game in Texas, and all four of them came through the same doorway: the FC Dallas academy in Frisco.
That is not a hometown paper rounding up. It is FC Dallas's own official count. Weston McKennie of Little Elm, Ricardo Pepi and Alejandro Zendejas of El Paso, and Chris Richards, the Alabama kid who moved to Texas at 16 to chase exactly this, are the four academy products on the squad. No other former FC Dallas player made the 26; Lyon midfielder Tanner Tessmann, another academy alum, was the most notable name left off.
There is a redemption thread running through this group, too. Four years ago, Pepi and Richards both missed the Qatar World Cup, one left off the roster after a cold streak, the other ruled out by injury weeks before kickoff. Both are now closer to the center of the team than they have ever been. Here are the four Texans, who they are, and what they bring.
Weston McKennie, the engine from Little Elm
The resume: McKennie was raised in Little Elm, joined the FC Dallas academy at 11, and helped win back-to-back Development Academy national championships in 2015 and 2016 before turning down a hometown contract to sign with Germany's Schalke 04 on his 18th birthday. Juventus brought him to Italy in 2020, and by the club's count this March he had made 220 appearances with 26 goals and 26 assists, earning a contract that runs to 2030. This season he started 32 league matches for a Juventus side that reached the Champions League knockout rounds, and the club describes him as capable of playing, in its words, "literally any position."
For the national team he has been a fixture since scoring 21 minutes into his debut as a 19-year-old in 2017. He owns the fastest hat trick from the start of a match in program history, 13 minutes against Cuba in 2019, plus three CONCACAF Nations League titles and the 2020 U.S. Soccer Male Player of the Year award. This is his second World Cup.
By the numbers: 66 caps, 12 goals for the United States. No. 8. Juventus since 2020.
McKennie's full hometown story, from a village club in Germany to the FC Dallas fields to Turin, is at our sister publication LittleElm.city.
Ricardo Pepi, the striker from the border
Ricardo Pepi with the U.S. team in Atlanta, March 28, 2026. Photo: Bryan Berlin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Pepi is the roster's El Paso headliner, born there on January 9, 2003 to parents who emigrated from Mexico, and a student at Coronado High School before the FC Dallas academy came calling. He signed a Homegrown contract at 16, and by 2021 he was the MLS Young Player of the Year. That winter, at 18, he moved to Germany's FC Augsburg.
The European road bent before it climbed. After a loan season at FC Groningen in the Netherlands, where he scored 12 goals in 29 league matches, PSV Eindhoven signed him permanently in the summer of 2023. He has won the Eredivisie title in back-to-back seasons there, and this season he has been prolific: 19 goals in 34 games for PSV despite a mid-season injury, by U.S. Soccer's own count.
His national team story started loudly. He scored on his debut at 18 against Honduras in September 2021, then twice against Jamaica a month later, both in World Cup qualifying. Being left off the 2022 Qatar roster stung, and he has said as much; ESPN framed his 2026 selection as the answer to that snub. He arrives at this World Cup as the No. 9 with the best goals-per-appearance rate of any American forward on the squad's roster sheet.
By the numbers: 35 caps, 13 goals for the United States. No. 9. PSV Eindhoven, back-to-back Dutch champion.
Alejandro Zendejas, the one who chose
Zendejas's Texas story starts about as close to the border as it gets. Born in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on February 7, 1998, he moved with his family to El Paso at roughly six months old and grew up playing in the city's recreational leagues. FC Dallas found him through its El Paso youth affiliate, brought him into the academy at 13, and made him the club's 13th Homegrown signing in October 2014, the first to come through an affiliate. He made his MLS debut at 17.
His career since has run through Mexico's biggest clubs: Chivas, where he won a league title in 2017, then Necaxa, then Club America in 2022, where he won three consecutive Liga MX championships, the first three-peat of the league's short-tournament era. He is still there, which makes him the first Mexico-based player on a United States World Cup roster since DaMarcus Beasley in 2014.
The flag was the hard part. Zendejas played for Mexico at senior level in friendlies before FIFA cleared a one-time switch, and he committed to the United States in March 2023, two months after debuting against Serbia. The El Paso kid picked the country he grew up in. His signature moment so far is the opening goal in a 2-0 win over Japan in September 2025.
