This World Cup has been amazing. Genuinely, it’s had everything you could ask for on U.S. soil. My new pastime is watching World Cup visitors experience America for the first time. Watching them bring their chants and traditions to Times Square. Bringing the beautiful game to our NFL stadiums. And the European and South American atmospheres are being transmitted to our television sets for the rest of America to experience.
The country got behind the boys. The stars have been as bright as ever. The games have been fantastic. Argentina vs Cape Verde. Mexico vs England at the Azteca. Argentina vs Egypt. Portugal vs Croatia. England vs DR Congo. We’ve had some real bangers, and I’m sure there’s more to come before this thing is done.
I had the privilege of going to two of them myself.
The first was USA vs Australia in Seattle. The crowd was already buzzing after the U.S. had just put a 4-1 thrashing on Paraguay, and that energy walked straight into the stadium with everyone. Honestly, I’m not sure how the players managed to focus on the game after hearing the entire crowd belt out the national anthem before kickoff. I’m sure everyone in the stands felt something. I felt patriotic. It was also the introduction to “Country Roads” as the USMNT’s unofficial anthem. It was emotional in a way I didn’t expect a soccer game to be.
The second game I attended was USA vs Bosnia and Herzegovina, the first game of the knockout stage. I bought those tickets the day after I got home from Seattle. It was midnight. I was sitting in my closet, refreshing the janky FIFA ticketing site, looking for a deal. I finally just took a breath and bought the most expensive tickets I’ve ever purchased in my life. I had a little buyer’s remorse the next morning. Then I remembered this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and got over it quickly.
Both games were electric. I’ve never experienced anything like it at a sporting event. The whole crowd was locked into every touch. The pop and party in the stands after Malik Tillman’s free kick against Bosnia was unlike anything I’ve ever felt in a stadium.
Said Folarin Balogun of his World Cup experience, “Is this real life?” Needless to say, the vibes were good.
Then Reality Hit
And then came USA vs Belgium. To put it kindly, the U.S. sucked. They looked timid. They looked scared. The moment was too big for them.
That’s honestly what stings the most. Watching teams like Cabo Verde and Egypt refuse to back down to Argentina, throwing every last ounce of energy into those games. Then, watching a U.S. team, with more talent one through eleven than either of Cabo Verde or Egypt, looked completely star-struck.
Said The Athletic:
How, after so much glee over the past month, had it suddenly turned so sour? How, after so much dynamic soccer, could each thought seem so slow and each touch look so sloppy?
U.S. players entered Monday’s round-of-16 match with confidence, so much confidence that the prospect of a World Cup exit on the banks of the Elliott Bay barely registered.
“We all had in our minds that we were definitely gonna be heading back to L.A. tomorrow (for a quarterfinal),” midfielder Gio Reyna said.
Instead, they rode a bus back to their team hotel, and over the 24 hours that followed, they said emotional goodbyes. They shared a last night of drinks and debriefing at the team hotel; sent farewell messages in their WhatsApp group; then trudged through Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and went their separate ways.
Belgium didn’t even let us get into our high press. They played long balls over the top and won every second ball. They attacked our weakest link, Tim Ream, by overloading his side of the field. Pochettino tried to adjust, but there were too many mistakes to overcome. Once Belgium got its third goal, they were content to sit in a low block and see the game out. We never found a way through it.
The USMNT has taken plenty of criticism since the Belgium loss, Christian Pulisic especially. And honestly? That’s a good thing. It means people are starting to care. The media is starting to take notice. Expectations have been raised.
According to insights from Fox, 50 million people tuned into the U.S. vs Belgium game in the United States. The reported numbers keep going up, but that’s the highest-watched sporting event in the States outside of NFL games since the 1994 Olympics. That’s more than double this year’s NBA Finals, a series that featured the Knicks, arguably the league’s most popular team not named the Lakers. So, all this criticism, all this noise, I welcome it. It’s a sign of life for soccer in America.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Before the postmortem starts, let’s reflect on what went right. This team won the group with a game to play. USMNT players became household names. For about three weeks, this team gave the entire country a reason to care. People believed. Some even thought we could make a run and win the whole thing.
This was our golden generation. Back in 2022, we had the second-youngest squad at the entire tournament. Now those same guys are in their prime. However, and here comes the tough part, we didn’t make it any further than we did four years ago.
By the next World Cup, most of the core of this team will be past their prime. This tournament was it for a lot of them.
Chris Richards will be 30
Antonee Robinson will be 32
Sergino Dest will be 29
Alex Freeman will be 25
Tyler Adams will be 31
Weston McKennie will be 31
Malik Tillman will be 28
Christian Pulisic will be 31
Folarin Balogun will be 29
If you don’t weigh this against how far past U.S. teams have gone, this is still the most talented group we’ve ever fielded. The U.S. World Cup squad carries a higher transfer market value than Switzerland, Ecuador, Uruguay, Colombia, Japan, Mexico, and Egypt. In fact, only 16 other countries in the entire World Cup have a more valuable squad than ours.
Of course, the record book doesn’t care about transfer valuations. We lost in the Round of 16 with the 17th-best roster in the tournament by transfer value. On paper, we performed about as well as we were supposed to.
The next step for the USMNT isn’t just getting more players onto rosters at big European clubs. It’s getting them real, meaningful minutes against the toughest competition week in and week out. We need these guys starting Champions League matches, not just sitting on the bench. If you look at total minutes played by World Cup squads in Europe’s top five leagues, the U.S. ranks 18th. Right now, there are 30 Americans playing in the top five leagues. Spain has 523.
Folarin Balogun is a good example of what that gap means. He’s been embraced as one of the best players we’ve had this World Cup. He plays for an okay AS Monaco team that finished 7th in the French top flight, which will have to qualify for the Conference League next season.
Even though he was the leading scorer on his team with 13 goals, he’d probably have a difficult time making the England World Cup squad had he committed to the Three Lions back when he was deciding which country to play for. With that said, he may be on the move this summer to a more prestigious club. I just hope he goes somewhere he can get meaningful minutes.
The thin depth of the U.S. becomes a problem when it’s time to pick a squad. We only have a handful of guys playing at the top level, and even the ones who get there often aren’t playing much once they arrive.
Alex Freeman is a good example of this. He arrived at Villarreal mid-season in January 2026, a team that finished 3rd in LaLiga. He got a total of three starts and nine appearances in his first four months with the team. Now, it’s definitely difficult to break into a team mid-season, and I would hope he can win a regular spot in the starting XI this coming season, but sporadic playing time like this isn’t uncommon for Americans in Europe.
World Cup 2030
A lot can change in a World Cup cycle. Half the starting lineup turned over between the Round of 16 in 2022 and the Round of 16 in 2026. There’s no reason to think 2030 will be any different.
It’s going to be up to the next generation to pick up the slack. Alex Freeman should hopefully be one of the veterans come the next World Cup. There are other good prospects coming, but we still don’t have a true top-tier player in the world wearing the U.S. badge.
Everything about American soccer is trending up. Attendance, ratings, buzz. Records were set all tournament long, even in defeat. But how we perform when the lights are brightest is still an open question.
I keep coming back to Seattle vs Australia, a country falling in love with the sport in real time. It was evident by the way the team, fans, and internet embraced the new unofficial anthem of the USMNT. I think The Athletic reported it best:
It struck a chord with players.
“Part of being American is knowing ‘Country Roads,” defender Chris Richards said that afternoon. “We’re all singing it together.”
Fans latched on too, humming the tune, playing the video — of players and supporters soaking up the scene — on repeat ever since.
Immediately after the match, Spotify saw a 74% increase in streams of the song, a company spokesman told The Athletic.
Google searches for “Country Roads” also spiked on Friday afternoon, and have remained higher than usual levels.
A few days later, Fox’s Jenny Taft reported that the song was rolling from the office of U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino.
The golden generation’s window is closing. The next group of players, hopefully better than the last, is going to inherit a country that knows how to show up. Whether that team lives up to the hype is the only thing left to find out.
Great article! Appreciate you reflecting on the good more than the disappointing. And I agree, "Country Roads" does something to your heart unlike any other song, especially when you're singing it with 60,000 fellow citizens!
We hear a lot about home field advantage -- especially the Seattle environment that supported the team so vociferously. So why did they come out so flat? Was it overconfidence due to the Balogun reversal? Was it a feeling of destiny? Would be an interesting study to learn why players with everything going their way show up so flat.