Midfielder Yunus Musah aims to be part of the U.S. World Cup team this summer. Born in the U.S. to Ghanaian parents, he began playing in Spain’s top league at the age of 17 but has faced some career challenges recently. The 23-year-old midfielder is optimistic that his recent performances for Atalanta, including an equalizing goal in the 89th minute of a Coppa Italia semi-final, will help him regain a place on the U.S. team. Ryan Tolmich reports.
The more Yunus Musah thinks about it, the more he considers himself lucky that it’s taken this long. For years, every bounce, every moment, seemed to go his way. He’s had plenty of reasons to smile since breaking through with the U.S. men’s national soccer team as a teenager in 2020. He’s had plenty to be grateful for. Musah, 23, was born in New York City to Ghanaian parents and raised in Italy and England. A versatile midfielder, he’s recognized for his strong work rate and dribbling skills.
He’s grateful for the moments he’s been living this year, too. He’s heading into the biggest stretch of his career so far, even though, for the first time in his life, he’s had an extended period where things have gone wrong. A loan move to the Italian club Atalanta has proven difficult, and his place on the U.S. national team is, at the very least, under threat. It has, to put it lightly, been a challenge.
But Musah views this as an opportunity. This is his chance to show who he really is. The real test of a person, he says, comes when luck seemingly turns against them. He is determined to respond to that challenge.
“I’ve actually had a lot of things go my way in my career,” he told Goal magazine. “From making my debut at Valencia [in Spain’s La Liga] to getting a new coach as a young player, and he starts you every game. Another coach comes in, and he’s playing you again. Gregg Berhalter calls me for the national team, and I start for the national team at a young age, and I go to a World Cup. All of these things were going my way, and sometimes, some things don’t go your way.
“You have to take those on the chin and be positive that things are going to go my way again. I have evidence that it’s gone my way before, so it’s not the end of the world when it doesn’t. I’m young, working really hard and pushing to make sure that things start going my way again soon.”
That process may have already started. In the first week of March, Musah put in a pair of statement performances for Atalanta. With the U.S. team’s March camp on the horizon, he’s holding out hope that he can be involved. Even if he isn’t, it won’t deter him. There are still several weeks until its World Cup roster is officially selected, and during that time, Musah is determined to do whatever he can to get onto that roster.
For many, a season like this would feel like a death sentence for their World Cup dreams. Musah doesn’t see it that way. This challenge has felt empowering to him, despite the difficulties of it all. He’s willing to bet that he comes out of it a better person than he was before.
“It’s nice that it’s come in a season where perhaps I’m not playing so much because it has really pushed me every single day to make sure I never slack,” he says. “I don’t know how it would have been if the World Cup wasn’t at the end of this year. Every day, I’m trying to improve myself and push myself to really go out there and play and do well and put myself in a position to be called in.
“Now that it’s even closer, it’s like, yeah, I’ve been doing this all season, I just have to carry on pushing myself to the edge every day. Having it at the end of this season is a motivation to do better and to do more.”
A difficult year
March 23 will officially mark one year since the world last saw Musah in a U.S. team shirt. So much has changed in that year. Under coach Mauricio Pochettino, the squad was torn down and rebuilt through the summer. It seemed to have turned a corner in the Gold Cup, reaching the final before losing to Mexico. Musah wasn’t a part of that. After opting to rest rather than play in the Gold Cup, he was not called up in the fall at all.
On the club level, Musah’s life has shifted, too. His club AC Milan, unable to find a place for the midfielder, loaned him to Atalanta in the final days of the summer transfer window. That wasn’t a demotion, though – Atalanta finished five spots ahead of Milan in Serie A last season and is playing in the Champions League this season. The season, though, has been rocky. Manager Ivan Juric was dismissed just a few months in, and despite holding an option to buy Musah at the end of the season, Atalanta haven’t really been determined to play him.
As a result, Musah has so far appeared in just 16 Serie A matches, starting only four times, and playing a total of 515 minutes. He started the club’s first Champions League game, a lopsided loss to Paris Saint-Germain, but has been used sparingly since, appearing in seven of their 10 matches in the competition, and getting one assist. That’s been something of a new experience for Musah, who has played at least 35 games for his club every season since breaking through with Valencia in 2020.
“It’s a season of lots of growth, lots of learning,” he says. “It’s all a new experience for me, this first time on loan, and I’ve just been learning. It’s going to teach me how to handle these situations, how to handle not being the main person in a team for a while, not playing so much. It teaches you how to handle that and how to bounce back as well.
“I’m just thankful that, when I did get this chance, I took it as well.”
That chance came at the beginning of March, when Musah created two long-awaited big moments.
Two goals to turn the tide?
Musah had not scored in nearly three seasons in Serie A. He’d found the back of the net once with the U.S. team, netting against Panama in October 2024 in one of the first games of the Pochettino era, but his last club-level goal was with Valencia during the 2021-22 season. He started March with just five career goals in five and a half years as a top-level professional.
That bothered him. Last year, he said he knew that it was a mental thing. He scored plenty in training, he said, which meant he had to translate it to games. But in the first week of March, he scored twice in two games after coming in as a substitute.
The first goal came against Sassuolo on Mar. 1, with Musah scoring late to give Atalanta a chance in what ended up as a 2-1 loss. Three days later, in the 89th minute of the first leg of the Coppa Italia semifinal against Lazio, Musah smashed a shot into the lower right corner to tie the score at 2-2 and emerge as Atalanta’s hero for the day.
“It just showed that all of that hard work and everything that I’ve been going through this season,” he says. “The timing of those goals was amazing, really. For them to come at this time was great.
“Funny enough, when I shoot the ball, it goes very slowly. It took such a long time, and you’re looking at the ball going and going. Then it goes in, and you don’t know what to do. It’s just an amazing feeling. I want to keep getting those goals now because, once you get that feeling, it’s fresh and you just want to keep getting them.”
Musah gives credit to coach Raffaele Palladino for helping to rebuild his confidence. In training, Atalanta have had an increased focus on small-sided games, particularly around the box. That’s encouraged Musah to take shots in those moments, having seen them go in so often in training.
The big question now is if he can use this as a springboard for more. He started against Udinese on March 7, his first time in the XI since January. Could that be a sign of things to come? Might the goals be, too?
“I really think I can,” Musah says. “I feel that I can impact a game in the final third, and my teammates now feel that, the fans feel that, the manager feels that. It feels like everyone’s got more confidence around me, and this feeling that I can deliver for the team.”
As confidence builds in Bergamo, there is a World Cup on the horizon, too, and Musah hopes that the confidence can carry him across the Atlantic and back into the U.S. team’s plans.
World Cup on the line
Musah’s eyes light up when asked about the U.S. national team. He’s missed it dearly. He’s missed the moments in the hotel and on the training pitch. He’s missed meals with his friends, many of whom he hasn’t seen in a year now. More than anything, he’s missed the feeling that comes from representing his country in the biggest games soccer can provide.
Musah didn’t make his decision to rest during the summer of 2025 lightly, he said afterwards. He’d been going nonstop since he was a teenager at Valencia. After becoming a father earlier in the year, he just needed a chance to reset. Many on the outside saw that decision as a lack of commitment to the U.S. national team. Musah says that couldn’t be further from the truth; there are few things he cares more about.
“For me, the national team means so much because, when I go, it’s like we have to prove everything to everyone always, all the time,” he says. “From when I started playing, we’ve always had to prove that this group is talented. You have so many players in Europe and doing well, but how far can we take this? How can we make people respect the U.S. for soccer? We’re seeing that, and we have a big summer where everyone is going to be watching us.
“We want to make this big. We want kids to see us in a World Cup and think, ‘We want to be like them when we grow up.’ That really pushes you, because we can make it really big and inspire people.”
Musah’s place isn’t guaranteed. Coach Pochettino has rebuilt the player pool, bringing along multiple new options in his midfield. One of the coach’s big goals throughout 2025 was to increase competition. Now, heading towards the March camp, Pochettino says that there are at least 75 players who believe they can contribute at a World Cup.
Musah believes he’ll be there. Time is running out to get back into Pochettino’s plans, of course, but Musah is embracing the competition. With his recent goals for Atalanta on his mind, he feels he can thrive in it.
“I’ve definitely missed it, but I’ve been seeing the players play and they’re doing really well, which is nice,” he says. “A lot of different players are doing well. It shows that the team is a big player pool and there are a lot of players to choose from this summer, and that’s exciting for American soccer.
“Since not going last summer, I’ve been trying really hard to get back there. I’ve been working really hard. You can see it in the games as well that I’ve been trying to show why I deserve to be there. I just hope this summer is going to be big.”
For Musah, the key is perspective. If he does ultimately make the U.S. squad, he would still be one of its youngest players. Of the players on the team’s most recent roster, only four were younger than Musah. Young players go through peaks and valleys. Despite his experience on the international level, the midfielder is still a young player, one who has always been somewhat ahead of schedule.
Now, though, he’s lived through one of those valleys, always holding out hope that a peak was just around the corner.
Staying grateful
There’s a word Musah uses repeatedly: grateful.
Despite whatever challenges have been thrown his way, he’s found it easy to keep his perspective. He’s healthy, his family’s healthy, and he gets to play soccer in one of the best leagues in the world. Even on his hard days, life isn’t so bad.
On the days that it is, Musah quickly gets reminded of that when he spends time around his daughter, who truly has changed his perspective on life.
“Sometimes I just look at her or hold her and think about what life would be like without her,” he says. “I can’t imagine living without her. It’s unbelievable. The love you have for your child is different. I can finally understand what my parents have been saying!”
It’s been part of the growing-up process for him. He broke through in American soccer as a kid, just days ahead of his 18th birthday. He’s now a 23-year-old man who, at this point in his career, knows he has a point to prove.
Proving that point won’t be easy. Nothing has been for him this year. There are brighter days ahead, he says. There will be darker ones, too. That’s life, though. What defines a person is how they respond, and Musah plans to do exactly that with a smile on his face.
“It’s an amazing journey. It’s a beautiful journey,” he says. “Again, on and off the field, there are going to be moments when you learn new things. What people see is on the field, but like anyone in life, you’re going to go through moments where things are going better or worse for you. It’s completely natural and normal. It’s important for us players to understand that and for me to understand that there are going to be times when you’re going to have to dig a little deeper.
“There are ups and downs and different journeys, but the journey is not easy. At the end of the day, we’re human. We’re doing our best. Sometimes it goes right, sometimes it won’t, and it’s fine. Just keep going.”