Long Island's Joe Scally reported on U.S. World Cup roster

Joe Scally’s reported place on the U.S. men’s World Cup roster is another reminder that Suffolk County has produced more than weekend youth-soccer memories. The 23-year-old right back, who grew up on Long Island and went to Sachem North High School, was the youngest player on the U.S. roster in Qatar in 2022, when he was 19.

Scally’s path runs through the same local system that still shapes thousands of Long Island players. U.S. Soccer says he came up in the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association and played for Long Island Junior Soccer League sides, including the Sachem Destroyers, where he was coached by his mother, Margaret Peragine. His parents are Joe Scally and Margaret Peragine, and Peragine had been a soccer player herself. For Suffolk families, that detail matters because Scally’s early development was not built in a far-off academy first. It started on Long Island fields, with local clubs, local coaches and a local school route.

The climb has been unusually fast. CBS New York reported that Scally signed with New York City FC at 15 and moved to Borussia Mönchengladbach at 17 after hip surgery. A Long Island Rough Riders feature said he had been part of the club’s youth team about a decade before reaching the World Cup stage, another sign of how deeply rooted his rise has been in the region’s soccer network. By 2024, Scally had become a regular starter for Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Bundesliga, giving the Suffolk connection a proven professional edge rather than just a sentimental one.

His national-team role has also grown. Reporting in 2025 said Scally started 11 of 14 U.S. men’s national team matches in 2024, including all three games at the Copa América. That kind of usage shows why his name keeps surfacing around major tournament decisions. In the 2022 World Cup, Scally was one of three 19-year-olds on the roster alongside Yunus Musah and Giovanni Reyna, and he was 19 years and 313 days old when the squad was announced.

For Suffolk County, Scally’s reported return to the World Cup picture is more than hometown pride. It is a concrete example of how a player can move from Sachem North and LIJSL to a European club and the national team, while leaving behind a roadmap for the next generation of Long Island players who want to follow the same route. The official U.S. roster announcement was expected Tuesday, May 26, 2026.