​Steve Cherundolo has been appointed the head coach of the United States under-23 men’s soccer team, which will compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The 47-year-old Cherundolo previously led Los Angeles FC in Major League Soccer from 2022 through 2025, guiding the club to an MLS Cup victory in 2022. As a player, Cherundolo appeared as a defender in the 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups and was selected for the 2002 World Cup squad, though an injury prevented him from taking the field.
The U.S. men’s team was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the 2024 Olympic tournament by Morocco, a 4-0 defeat that marked the first time the United States had qualified for Olympic play since 2008. Marko Mitrović served as the U.S. coach for the Paris Games, after which he became the head coach of the U-20 program. The United States automatically earned a spot to host the 2028 Los Angeles Games, guaranteeing a place for the home nation in the Olympic tournament.
In men’s Olympic soccer, the competition is largely based around an under-23 format, with the allowance of up to three over-age players per roster. Should any members of the 2026 U.S. World Cup squad be selected for the 2028 Olympic team, they would need to be accommodated as over-age players under the tournament rules. The United States has a storied, albeit limited, Olympic history in men’s soccer, having won its only Olympic medals at the 1904 St. Louis Games, when two of the three competing teams were American.
As to how the 2026 World Cup roster might translate to the 2028 Olympic team, the Olympic eligibility rules will cap the number of players who participated in the World Cup from 2026 in the LA Games roster. This constraint means that even if several World Cup contributors remain among the elite, their presence at the Olympics will depend on their status as over-age selections or on the timing and composition dictated by the Olympic roster rules and the U.S. Soccer plan for developing talent toward those future stages. The Olympic pipeline remains a critical bridge for the U.S. program, balancing the opportunity for young players to showcase their talents on a global stage with the need to manage age groups and eligibility across two prestigious tournaments in a span of four years.