Jersey Numbers Explained

May 3rd, 2006 | by: Daryl | View Comments

Is anyone wondering about the slightly odd looking jersey numbers?

If you have questions like:

Why is Reyna wearing 10?
Why is Donovan wearing 21?
And why is Hejduk wearing 2?
He’s not going to start at right back is he?

Then read on…

1 Howard, Tim
2 Hejduk, Frankie
3 Bocanegra, Carlos
4 Mastroeni, Pablo
5 O’Brien, John
6 Cherundolo, Steve
7 Lewis, Eddie
8 Dempsey, Clint
9 Johnson, Eddie
10 Reyna, Claudio
11 Ching, Brian
12 Gibbs, Cory
13 Conrad, Jimmy
14 Olsen, Ben
15 Convey, Bobby
16 Wolff, Josh
17 Beasley, DaMarcus
18 Keller, Kasey
19 Hahnemann, Marcus
20 McBride, Brian
21 Donovan, Landon
22 Onyewu, Oguchi
23 Pope, Eddie

Rather than a heirarchy of “who’s best”, the jersey numbers are assigned via seniority, which seems to be measured by number of caps. So, while Donovan (77 caps) would probably like to wear the 10, Reyna (108 caps) does too, so he gets it. Luckily Donovan wore 21 in 2002, so he’s happy to keep that number. Similarly McBride wore 20 in 2002 and probably wants to hold onto that.

And don’t worry, Hejduk won’t start at right back. He just has more caps than Cherundolo and wore the number 2 shirt in Japan/South Korea.

Of course, you can purchase your USA jersey here.