James Sands has suffered a major blow as he tries to help Rangers get back to winning ways against Hearts tonight.
It has been
that the 21-year-old defender will not be part of the USA's squad for the World Cup with the official announcement due to be made in New York just moments after the action at Ibrox finishes.
Sands, who has been capped seven times. probably knew the bad news was coming as he was left out of Gregg Berhalter's group for friendlies against Japan and Saudi Arabia in September at a time when he was in the Rangers side and playing regularly. And it now appears that his worst fears have been realised.
Gio van Bronckhorst has had to call on the American regularly in this campaign due to the major injury difficulties at Ibrox with three central defenders all missing - Connor Goldson, John Souttar and Fil Helander - with Ben Davies also having his difficulties of late, coming off at half-time in last Sunday's massively damaging defeat to St Johnstone.
Sands, who is on loan from New York City until the end of this season, was one of the better players in the 3-0 defeat by Napoli in the Champions League and looked very strong in the holding midfield role in the 4-1 win over Aberdeen.
He was the first academy player to make it into the New York first team where he won the MLS Cup under former Celtic boss Ronny Deila, who is now in charge of Standard Liege in Belgium. And he was part of the US team that won the Gold Cup in 2021, beating big rivals Mexico in the final.
It's a meteoric rise for Tillman who played for Germany's youth teams then switched allegiance last summer due to the his American father and only made his debut in June against Morocco in what was his first ever visit to the United States.
And it has been a late rally by English-born and bred Carter-Vickers who also qualifies through an American dad - NBA star Howard Carter. He hadn't been involved for three years when he played in that Morocco game but has claimed 17 caps and is well thought of by Berhalter.
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