The U.S. men's national team will face Puerto Rico in a Copa América Centenario warm-up match on May 22 in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, U.S. Soccer announced on Thursday. The match, which will be the first-ever meeting between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, will kick off at 9 p.m. PT at Estadio Juan Ramón Loubriel and will be broadcast on FS1, UniMás and UDN.
The match will be the first of three friendlies for the U.S. leading into the Copa América, with the U.S. scheduled to host Ecuador in Frisco, Texas, on May 25 and Bolivia in Kansas City, Kansas, on May 28.
MLS players will not join the national team until after the games of May 20-22, so the roster for the Puerto Rico match will mostly consist of foreign-based players. That means current Sounders Clint Dempsey and Jordan Morris are unlikely to play, but former Sounders player DeAndre Yedlin could play a part.
U.S. training camp will open May 16 in Miami, with MLS-based players joining in Dallas prior to the game against Ecuador. The final roster for Copa América Centenario must be submitted no later than May 20.
CenturyLink Field in Seattle will host three games in this summer's Copa América Centenario, with a chance of hosting the USMNT in the quarterfinals on June 16. CenturyLink will host a match between the winner of Group A and the runner-up in Group B and USMNT could appear in that quarterfinal match if its able to win Group A, which also consists of Colombia, Costa Rica and Paraguay.
Tickets for the historic tournament are now on sale and suites at CenturyLink Field are also available.
Since MLS players will not yet be in camp for the Puerto Rico match, the U.S. team will likely include some younger players from the U-23 and U-20 pool who are based outside the U.S. Some, though potentially not all, of those youth players will be sent home following the Puerto Rico game, while the rest of the USMNT will head to Dallas to join up with the MLS players to start the full camp.
"We are thrilled to be playing Puerto Rico in our first preparation game for the Copa América Centenario," head coach Jurgen Klinsmann said in a statement released by the federation. "This will be an important opportunity for our players to stay sharp and keep progressing towards our opener against Colombia, and we appreciate all the efforts by the Puerto Rican Football Federation to help organize the match."
The U.S. will play the first match of the Copa América, facing off against Colombia in a Group A contest on June 3 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. The U.S. will then play Costa Rica in Chicago on June 7 before squaring off with Paraguay in the Group A finale on June 11 in Philadelphia.
