There is no guarantee that the next great USWNT player will announce herself at the 2026 FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup.
That is rather the fun of watching it.
Long before players become familiar faces with the U.S. Women’s National Team, there are tournaments like this one, where the future of American women’s soccer is still being assembled in public. Some prospects arrive through the traditional powerhouse college soccer programmes. Others are already playing professionally in the NWSL before they are old enough to legally buy a drink.
The United States head to Poland with both.
For anyone wondering what the next generation of the USWNT might look like, the U.S. U20 Women’s National Team offers an intriguing glimpse. There are defenders who can suddenly become forwards, midfielders already accumulating professional minutes and players who have been appearing at FIFA youth tournaments for what feels like half their lives.
Here are five USWNT prospects worth watching particularly closely at the 2026 U20 Women’s World Cup.
Caroline Birkel
Position: Goalkeeper
College: Stanford University
Goalkeepers are difficult prospects to judge because development rarely happens in a straight line. One mistake can dominate a tournament; one brilliant month can transform a reputation.
Caroline Birkel arrives with something rather useful instead: evidence.
The Stanford goalkeeper has already experienced a FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup, having been part of the United States squad that claimed bronze in 2024, and has subsequently accumulated six U20 international appearances. She was also involved during the 2025 Concacaf Championship cycle.
That makes Birkel considerably more seasoned than the phrase “college goalkeeper” might initially suggest.
At Stanford, she has been building an equally interesting résumé. Birkel became the programme’s first true freshman to start in goal since 2013 and subsequently developed into the ACC Goalkeeper of the Year. Across 25 appearances in 2025, she recorded a 0.92 goals-against average as Stanford went 21-2-2.
Her beginning to 2026 has been even stingier: a 0.33 GAA through six appearances, with Stanford going 5-0-1.
There is also a physical foundation to work with. At 5ft 11in, Birkel has the size to command her penalty area, close shooting angles and compete aerially, complemented by lateral quickness developed partly through a multi-sport background that included field hockey.
Perhaps the more interesting USWNT quality, however, is temperament.
During Stanford’s 2025 ACC Championship penalty shootout against Notre Dame, Birkel demonstrated the composure and reactions required when goalkeeping becomes an individual psychological contest.
For a United States U20 side hoping to go deep into another FIFA tournament, that matters.
And for those looking further ahead towards the senior USWNT goalkeeper picture, Birkel provides an intriguing combination: size, major college experience, international tournament exposure and evidence that the bigger the moment becomes, the less interested she seems in shrinking from it.
Emma Johnson
Position: Defender/Midfielder
College: Penn State
Emma Johnson has already lived several different versions of a soccer career.
She is still only at the beginning of the actual one.
Johnson made her senior debut for Indy Eleven at just 14 years old and scored in her second professional appearance. She subsequently played with Lexington SC in the USL Super League before entering college soccer with Penn State, where her debut came against No. 2-ranked Notre Dame.
There are gentler introductions to adulthood.
It helps explain why Johnson is one of the most fascinating USWNT prospects heading to the U20 World Cup. While plenty of elite American youngsters spend their teenage years playing almost exclusively against other elite youngsters, Johnson became accustomed extraordinarily early to sharing a field with senior professionals.
Her development was built around it. Johnson used online schooling to accommodate the demands of high-level training and professional soccer, effectively reorganising ordinary teenage life around becoming a better footballer.
That experience has produced an unusually versatile player.
Johnson can operate defensively for the U.S. youth national teams while taking on more progressive midfield responsibilities in college soccer. At 5ft 3in, she does not overpower opponents through size. Instead, her game is constructed around a low centre of gravity, aggressive pressing, recovering possession and quickly identifying the next passing lane.
There is attacking danger too.
Her ability to strike from distance was memorably demonstrated with a spectacular goal against the Netherlands, adding another problem for opponents who might otherwise concentrate on preventing her progression and distribution.
Johnson already has nine U20 caps, but her USWNT youth pedigree stretches further back. Remarkably, she became the first United States player to score at two different FIFA U17 Women’s World Cups.
That is the detail worth remembering.
The pathway towards the senior U.S. Women’s National Team is brutally crowded, particularly for versatile players without one immediately obvious position. Johnson’s answer may be to make that versatility the attraction rather than the problem.
She has already been a professional, defender, midfielder and FIFA World Cup goalscorer.
And she is only getting started.
Lizzie Boamah
Position: Defender/Forward
College: Stanford University
Lizzie Boamah might be the easiest player on this list to explain and the strangest to categorise.
She is a centre-back.
Except when Stanford need a goal.
Boamah has developed into an important defensive presence for one of the strongest programmes in American women’s college soccer, accumulating 47 appearances and more than 2,500 minutes. She combines recovery speed with aerial strength and the personality required to organise the players around her.
Then there is the other Lizzie Boamah.
During Stanford’s 2024 meeting with No. 11 Santa Clara, she was moved from defence into attack in the 55th minute and scored the winning goal. It was less a positional adjustment than somebody reaching into the tactics screen and dragging a centre-back all the way to the opposite end of it.
The curious thing is that it worked.
Her attacking usefulness has continued to appear in more conventional circumstances too. Boamah scored with a header against UC Irvine in 2026, underlining why her physical qualities can become dangerous from set pieces.
That versatility makes her particularly interesting in tournament soccer.
The United States U20 team cannot carry a specialist for every possible problem through a World Cup. A defender capable of protecting space, winning aerial challenges and potentially becoming an emergency attacking weapon gives the coaching staff another lever to pull when games become strange.
Boamah also brings genuine international leadership experience.
She has captained the U.S. U20 Women’s National Team against Colombia and previously competed at the Pan American Games, where exposure to senior national-team opposition offered a rather different physical test from ordinary youth internationals.
Her personality appears suited to it. Stanford’s staff have described Boamah as having a “big personality”, and there is something appealing about that quality in a central defender. Quiet competence is useful. Sometimes you need somebody prepared to organise the traffic.
For USWNT supporters searching for future defensive prospects, Boamah therefore offers more than physical potential.
She has speed, aerial ability, international experience and leadership.
And if everything goes wrong, apparently you can put her up front.
Ainsley McCammon
Position: Midfielder
Club: Seattle Reign FC
There is a fairly substantial difference between preparing for international youth soccer by playing college matches and preparing by spending your weekends in an NWSL midfield.
Ainsley McCammon has chosen the second option.
McCammon signed professionally at 16, becoming the youngest player in Seattle Reign history, and has gradually moved from fascinating prospect to genuine first-team contributor. During the 2026 NWSL season, she has made 13 appearances with 11 starts, while her four assists lead the Reign.
On March 28, she also became the youngest player in club history to register an assist.
This is what makes McCammon such an intriguing figure within the wider USWNT pipeline. She is not simply being projected towards professional soccer. She is already there.
That changes the developmental questions.
Rather than wondering whether her passing will translate against professional players, Seattle have been able to watch it happen. McCammon’s range of distribution is one of her defining attributes, allowing her to influence matches from different areas of midfield and find dangerous spaces rather than merely accumulating safe possession.
Reign coach Laura Harvey has spoken about McCammon learning that the pass itself does not always need to be perfect if it enters the right area. It is a small tactical lesson with a larger implication: McCammon is already learning the subtleties of senior professional football.
The physical adaptation matters too. Playing 90 minutes in an NWSL midfield asks different questions from dominating players within your own age group.
Internationally, she is hardly inexperienced either.
McCammon captained the U.S. U17 Women’s National Team during its Concacaf title run and was part of the American squad that won bronze at the 2024 FIFA U17 Women’s World Cup, scoring twice across 11 appearances.
Now comes the next level.
The U20 World Cup should provide another indication of how quickly McCammon is travelling through the USWNT development pathway.
Because while this tournament is ostensibly about America’s best young players, McCammon increasingly looks like something slightly different.
A professional who happens to still be young enough to play in it.
Lily Joseph
Position: Midfielder/Forward
College: Notre Dame
Every tournament squad needs somebody capable of turning an untidy five seconds inside the penalty area into a goal.
Lily Joseph may be that player for the United States.
The Notre Dame attacker enters the U20 World Cup cycle in excellent form, opening the 2026 college soccer season with three goals across her first four matches. That included a brace as Notre Dame fought back to draw with No. 2 Penn State, followed by a converted penalty against Murray State.
She is two from two from the spot this season.
Joseph’s attraction, though, extends beyond numbers.
Her game is based around acceleration, lateral movement and the ability to manipulate tiny pockets of space around the penalty area. Against Michigan, she demonstrated that quality by using sharp footwork to escape two defenders before scoring.
These are useful characteristics in international tournament football, where opponents frequently defend deeper and the luxurious spaces available in transitional college games can disappear.
Joseph can manufacture her own.
Her path into the USWNT youth system has included the Olympic Development Program and representing the United States at the L’Albir Tournament. There is international football in the family too: her father, Roland Joseph, represented Trinidad and Tobago.
Yet perhaps the most revealing part of Joseph’s story occurred away from international soccer entirely.
She underwent ACL reconstruction before returning without losing the explosiveness that makes her dangerous. Long before becoming a Notre Dame attacking threat, she had produced an extraordinary high-school campaign of 66 goals in 19 matches.
College soccer inevitably provided sterner resistance.
As a freshman in 2024, Joseph still contributed 22 points.
Now her trajectory is pointing upwards again.
Of all the potential future USWNT players at this tournament, Joseph might be among the most entertaining to track because attacking prospects ultimately face an uncomplicated examination. They can possess wonderful movement, excellent technique and impressive youth résumés.
Eventually, somebody has to put the ball in the net.
Joseph has spent much of her young career doing precisely that.
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