PALO ALTO, Calif. — No American in the four years since soccer’s last World Cup has scored more goals in competition than Chris Wondolowski. Few of the other 29 players on the United States men’s national team’s provisional roster can match his story, either, partly because no others have scored three goals in an international game with their names misspelled on the back of their jerseys.  As the team convened at Stanford University on Wednesday for its final training camp before the June start of the 2014 World Cup, plenty of attention focused on Wondolowski, the late-blooming 31-year-old with an underdog’s tale.  His background is sure to elicit a lot of supporters, especially here. Wondolowski grew up in nearby Danville, Calif., and now stars for Major League Soccer’s San Jose Earthquakes.  “I knew my way here,” he said, referring to Wednesday’s commute, not his career’s serpentine route.  Not recruited out of high school and not a regular starter in M.L.S. until he was 27, Wondolowski is a goal-scoring machine and a league most valuable player. His tardy rise in American soccer has been compared to the American football ascent of the former quarterback Kurt Warner, the grocery clerk-turned-Super Bowl hero.  But Wondolowski might not make the American squad that opens World Cup play June 16. The team, under Coach Jurgen Klinsmann, will train at Stanford for most of May, and more cuts are coming. The 30-man roster must be pared to 23 by June 2, and Wondolowski is far from guaranteed a spot alongside experienced talent at forward.  Wondolowski will compete with Jozy Altidore, Clint Dempsey, Landon Donovan, Terrence Boyd and Aron Johannsson for roster spots.  It is unclear when Klinsmann will make the seven cuts, or if they will come at once. The national team will play the first of three exhibitions on May 27, against Azerbaijan at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.  Wondolowski, if still on the team, is sure to have his own cheering section filled with family and friends. He will probably attract some of the Earthquakes’ faithful, who regularly serenade him with a song, to the tune of “You Are My Sunshine.” (“You are my Wondo, my Wondolowski ...”)  But Klinsmann has grown increasingly familiar with Wondolowski, and has seen many of his right-place, right-time goals firsthand.  “He doesn’t have to change anything,” Klinsmann said on a conference call when the 30-man roster was announced at the start of the week. “Every time he’s in, he gives everything he has. He gives 1,000 percent. He has built his own case, and built it stronger and stronger.”  Klinsmann added: “He’s determined. You give him a 1 percent chance, and he wants to make it 100 percent by the end of the day. He will be one of the drivers in camp.”  By the start of Wednesday’s training session, 21 of the 30 invited players had arrived, Klinsmann said, the others granted excused absences as they finish games with current teams or take an extra couple of days off from the grind of their European seasons. All players should be in attendance by the weekend.  Klinsmann named 30 players to provide competition and hedge against injuries, though many teams take only 23 players to their final preparations, as Klinsmann’s Germany team did in 2006.  Wondolowski was asked which method he preferred — a camp with 30 players needing to be pared, or one set with 23.  “Whichever one includes me,” he said.  Unlike so many soccer stars, Wondolowski garnered little attention through his teens and early 20s. He received no soccer scholarship offers (though he had some for track, for running a mile in 4 minutes 14 seconds in high school) and walked on at Division II Chico State. His professional career almost ended before it started when, after the first day of the 2005 college combine, an Earthquakes assistant forgot to invite him back for more. But Wondolowski made enough of an impression to be taken in the 2005 M.L.S. supplemental draft. Surprisingly, he made the final roster.  He spent most of his first season with the reserve team. After the franchise moved to Houston, he scored four goals in four seasons with sporadic playing time. His career blossomed in 2010 after he was traded back to the Earthquakes, which rejoined the league in 2008.  Finally a regular starter, just as the United States national team was in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup and while he was still coaching his high-school team on the side, Wondolowski scored 18 goals in 28 games. He was named San Jose’s M.V.P. and earned the league’s Golden Boot as its top goal-scorer.  In 2012, Wondolowski scored 27 goals for the Earthquakes, tying a league record, earning another Golden Boot and his first league M.V.P. award. But his goal-scoring prowess did not immediately translate to his appearances with the national team. He had no goals in his first nine games.  But he has nine in his past 10. Three came against Belize last July while Wondolowski wore a jersey with his name spelled with an extra “W” — “Wondowlowski.” The superstitious sort, Wondolowski now plays with his name spelled correctly, but a third “W” sewn into the collar of his jersey.  According to the Earthquakes, his 85 goals since the end of the 2010 World Cup are the most in competition of any American male player. His 34 career game-winning goals in M.L.S. (33 since 2010) rank third in league history. All others in the top five have played at least 125 more games than Wondolowski, the Earthquakes said.  That was enough to land Wondolowski on the 30-man roster. Whether he survives seven cuts in the coming weeks will be determined by what he does now, not before.  “I’m not content yet,” he said. “I want to make the 23. And once I make the 23, I want to try to make an impact, whether starting, coming off the bench — whatever it is, I want to do it.”  An earlier version of this article misstated the country that Chris Wondolowski scored against last July while wearing a jersey on which his name was misspelled. It was Belize, not Guatemala. The article also misstated the number of goals Wondolowski scored in that game. It was three, not two.  An earlier version of the article misstated the circumstances of Chris Wondolowski going from San Jose to Houston in Major League Soccer. He moved with the San Jose Earthquakes when they relocated to Houston and became the Dynamo; he was not “traded to the Houston Dynamo.”  A version of this article appears in print on May 15, 2014, on page B18 of the New York edition with the headline: Top Scorer May Fall Short of Ultimate Goal: The World Cup. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
Chris Wondolowski has been a potent goal scorer in Major League Soccer, but his chances of making it to the World Cup in Brazil appear to be slim.