If you haven’t watched the World Cup before, this is typically how it ends for the USMNT. It doesn’t end in such a brutal fashion, but all roads lead to a Round of 16 elimination. It has happened in four of the last five World Cups, with the fifth being that infamous, incomprehensible failure to qualify in 2018.
So then, what’s different? We’re faced with the same issue as years past when the World Cup concludes: needing a new coach, needing better players, and facing questions about the players we have. The only difference is that this one stings a whole lot more. Because with all those questions and frustrations lies the dead hope and the original belief that this USMNT could do something special.
How did that hope arrive? It’s not just because American fans finally got a firsthand look at the World Cup as the main host nation. That certainly helped, but that’s only a small part of it. That hope arrived because these players and this team demanded it. They certainly let everyone down after building up that hope, but we have to remember the reason we had hope to begin with, not just the abandonment of that hope.
The 2026 USMNT Has Come and Gone: A Eulogy
This was supposed to be the year. This was the time the USMNT could make a deep run in the World Cup. It was on home soil with the best crop of players in this nation’s history, mostly all in their primes.
The setup was perfect, and yet, it all came crumbling down in worse fashion than ever before. Most of the other Round of 16 exits were at least respectable. Those teams didn’t get dominated in every fashion (it could’ve and should’ve been a lot worse than 4-1) by an out-of-form Belgium team.
It hurts. It stings. It’s going to for a long while. In 2030, when the World Cup leaves America and heads to Morocco, Portugal, and Spain, this team won’t be there, at least not in the same shape. We can expect some holdovers to remain, like Christian Pulisic, Folarin Balogun, Chris Richards, Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams, Gio Reyna, and Malik Tillman.
Put simply, we will never have this group of players, and even if we host the World Cup again sometime, it will never be like this one. It’s totally understandable to be heartbroken about that. A lot of fans are. There are young players coming up who are exciting, like Cavan Sullivan, Zavier Gozo, Peyton Miller, and Julian Hall. They could be really good.
But they won’t be this squad, and while this squad is currently synonymous with the biggest heartbreak, letdown, and embarrassment in US Soccer history, it will one day once again be synonymous with the best run this country has seen.
Let’s put aside the fact that they were dismantled by Belgium for a second. They scored 11 goals total, a USMNT record. They won three games, another record. They topped the group and played even for 99.99% of a match against the initial group favorite with one starter in the Starting XI.
They won their second-ever knockout stage match and earned their first win over European competition since 2021. It was the first competitive win over a European opponent since 2002 in the World Cup. They throttled Paraguay with four goals, a team that would go on to score three total goals the rest of the way, and allowed one each to Germany and France.
They lost star player Christian Pulisic to injury and still throttled a pesky Australian team. They unfairly got knocked down to 10 men in a knockout game with a one-goal lead, extended the lead, and won despite playing a man down for over 30 minutes.
It’s not fair to fans that the lasting impression will be an absolute drubbing by many of the same members of the 2014 Belgium team that knocked the USMNT out. But it’s not fair to the players or the team to ignore everything else. The feeling now is dark, but it won’t always be. One day, we’ll fondly remember this run, even if it means our standards for soccer in this country are lower than those of other nations.
