Juan Agudelo is intent on working as hard as he possibly can during the USA national team camp.
The US side is now in Cyprus ahead of Wednesday's international friendly with Ukraine, after spending a few days in Frankfurt, Germany, and the young striker is looking to put his best foot forward.
The Stoke City man is on loan with Dutch club FC Utrecht, where he is receiving consistent game time, and he is hopping to bring that experience and touch into the US team in order to enhance his chances of making Juergen Klinsmann's World Cup squad.
"I think any move to a European club is a big deal," Agudelo told reporters at US national team training on Tuesday.
"If you do well there, it shows you can perform well against the kind of top class teams that go to the World Cup.
"I need to make it hard for [Klinsmann] to not pick me to go to the World Cup. I can only do that through working hard and working even harder than the rest, because the competition is there and there aren't enough places to please everyone."
Agudelo, who has scored once in six Dutch Eredivisie outings for Utrecht, is not hanging his Brazilian hopes on one game however.
"If I don't perform well in one game it doesn't [knock me out of contention for the World Cup]," Agudelo added.
"It's different if I don't perform well on multiple occasions. Then I wouldn't deserve to go to the World Cup. But I'm not worried about that. I'm just going to try and have some fun and if I make it, great."
