How Good Is the U.S. Men’s World Cup Team, Really?

Pochettino’s approach seems to involve preaching optimism and a “why-not-us?” ethos, channelling a dash of “Ted Lasso” into his sunny messaging. He insists that the key ingredient for World Cup glory is conviction, and has argued that American players don’t form an “emotional relationship with football” until they are teen-agers, while children in other countries develop it from the time they can walk. All he needs to do is get the players to buy in. But, with such a small sample size of Pochettino’s leadership, nobody seems entirely sure if this incarnation of the U.S.M.N.T. is any good—it still has no track record of beating the sport’s leading powers and has regularly lacked intensity against more physical opponents. Meanwhile, an existential angst seems to be running through the community of fans and pundits that orbits the U.S.M.N.T. Nobody has quite distilled this anxiety down to its chemical elements, but it seems to be some kind of mix of impostor syndrome in a sport where the U.S. remains an upstart, a fear of being embarrassed on home soil, and a sense that the opportunity to weave the sport deeper into the American fabric mustn’t be wasted.

“The stakes are really high because soccer in this country has always felt like it has been on the precipice,” Trevin Wurm, one of the leaders of the American Outlaws, told me. The Outlaws are the largest fan club for the U.S. national teams, and count some twenty-five thousand members in more than two hundred chapters worldwide. “Soccer has always been the sport of tomorrow in this country. And, for people that have always been long-term supporters, having a home World Cup, having these games in prime time, having this team that’s spicy and fun, it’s such a big moment for soccer here. If there is an underperformance, or if they do crash out early, that sets back soccer. So that’s definitely the big anxiety.”

And the roster does have potential. Forward Christian Pulisic, of Pennsylvania, is arguably the team’s best player and is a star in Italy’s Serie A league, capable of scoring goals from places that no prior U.S.M.N.T. players ever have. But Pulisic, playing for A.C. Milan, has found himself in the throes of an epic scoring drought, failing to score since late December. McKennie, the cheery Army brat, is also a star in Serie A, and is a versatile player with an unconventional body for soccer—squat, rather than lean—allowing him to bully opponents. Midfielder and sometime team captain Tyler Adams, hailing from upstate New York, is no-nonsense and is so intensely competitive that he refuses the traditional post-game jersey swap between teams on principle. Chris Richards, from Alabama, is an uncompromising defender whose Afro towers above the back line and whose lankiness masks a quickness that covers gaps in the American half. (Richards is, however, in a race to recover in time for the World Cup: he tore a pair of ligaments in his left ankle earlier this month.) Both Adams and Richards play in the English Premier League. Matt Freese, the presumptive starting goalkeeper, is also from Pennsylvania and is the son of a late, well-known neurosurgeon who pioneered gene therapy. Forward Folarin Balogun was born in New York but grew up in London, one of several players who were raised outside the U.S. Also up front, Ricardo Pepi is a sweetly shy striker from West Texas who reportedly agonized over his decision to represent the U.S. over Mexico.

And in a touch of irony, the final roster may include both Reyna, the ultra-gifted son of two former U.S. national team players, whose petulance about being benched by Berhalter triggered the team’s crisis in the wake of the last World Cup, and Berhalter’s son, Sebastian, a hard-edged midfielder with a soft touch, who has apparently become one of Pochettino’s favorites.

These players, and Pochettino, bear the burden of an entire country’s expectations. “Really, from the beginning—in 2019, 2020—they were already sort of tapped with the responsibility of building a project for 2026,” Tabaré Ramos, a pundit, a coach, and a veteran of three U.S. World Cup squads, told me. “There’s a tremendous amount of obligation for this group that, by the way, has not really delivered for the last six or seven years. They have been below expectations, I believe, the whole time. Now it’s down to these next couple of months.”