USMNT: One Year to World Cup—Turnaround or More Humiliation?

The 1994 FIFA World Cup marked a watershed moment for soccer in the United States. A nation which had previously been infatuated with ‘association football’ seven decades prior had the entire system collapse around it while sports like baseball and, eventually, American football rose to dominance.

But 1994 brought soccer back to something of a forefront within the US. The success of that year’s tournament led to the spawning of Major League Soccer, the league which has lasted the longest in the United States’ history with the game.

Slowly, but surely, the tournament helped to build soccer in America up into the industry it is today in the sports’ fastest growing market – with an estimated 83million fans (more than the entire population of the United Kingdom, Spain, Argentina, or France).

A lot of that growth spawned thanks to the performance of the US men’s national team from 1994. An upset over Colombia and a loss to eventual champions Brazil in the knockouts showed that the nation could take this sport seriously and, if given time, maybe even succeed.

Of course, we know that now to be a bit of an unrealized dream. An embarrassing result in 1998 was followed up by a quarterfinal in 2002 – the furthest the US had gone at a World Cup since finishing third overall in the inaugural 1932 tournament. A poor 2006 group stage was followed by the knockouts in 2010 and 2014, missing the tournament entirely in 2018, and then a return to the Round of 16 in 2022 which showed that if the top players developed the right way, they could could compete with the best on home soil in four years’ time.

But with the tournament now officially one year away to the date, that momentum from 2022 has seemingly evaporated into the atmosphere. A 4-0 defeat on Tuesday night to Switzerland featured boos raining down on the field in Nashville – indicative of just how far in the rear-view mirror Qatar is. 

Road bumps – the self-inflicted, the unavoidable, and the accidental – have made the journey to even this moment more hazardous than one had thought after the USMNT’s 2022 World Cup journey had concluded.

In the weeks that followed, a debacle played out between head coach Gregg Berhalter and the family of Borussia Dortmund player Gio Reyna. It resulted in Berhalter’s contract lapsing as the US Soccer Federation investigated what happened in the Middle East – as well as an incident in the 1990s involving a physical altercation between Berhalter and his now-wife.

Following the investigation, Berhalter was found to have committed the necessary steps to rectify that isolated incident and that US Soccer could employ him as a coach without concern.

Berhalter’s time in charge of the USMNT was passable for the task, but the opinion among many fans and media was that there would be plenty of other viable coaching options to take the team to further heights at the World Cup.

So it came as a shock when newly-appointed sporting director Matt Crocker announced in June 2023 that Berhalter would be reinstated as head coach through the World Cup.

Berhalter’s re-appointment angered some of the more particularly vocal fans and followers of the national team, but the coach and the team had the chance to prove everyone wrong with a strong performance in 2024.

They won the CONCACAF Nations League Final in 2023 and 2024, but a bigger test came when South America’s national teams visited the United States for the Copa America.

With all eyes on them, Berhalter’s national team couldn’t even get past the first three hurdles – beating Bolivia, but losing to both Panama and Uruguay to become the first Copa America host nation to fail to reach the knockout stages. 

After the USMNT failed in its biggest test they would face before the World Cup, Berhalter was fired and a new vision for the team was brought in when the USSF hired Mauricio Pochettino.

In implementing his new system, Pochettino has not produced consistent results. He owns record of 5-0-5 with those losses coming in major moments: to Mexico, to Panama and Canada in the Nations League, and again last Saturday against a much better staffed Turkish side.

Despite there being another chasm in quality in Nashville on Tuesday night, the embarrassing loss to Switzerland marked the first time the USMNT had lost four matches in a row since 2007 – when the team would get swept out of the Copa America before falling to Sweden, then Brazil.

But for all the turbulence on the benches, the players on the field have not exactly met the moment either. Many of the Americans plying their trade abroad have struggled to find precious playing time among European clubs.

Not all of that is their fault. Of the 16 players who took the field in the match in Qatar against the Netherlands, only four have not suffered an injury keeping them out at least four matches.

Christian Pulisic, Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie, Timothy Weah, Sergino Dest, and Antonee Robinson – all considered key members of the national team – have been injured at some point. 

Even Reyna has had such terrible injury luck that he’s played in just eight of a possible 19 matches since January of 2024. But when healthy, he too has struggled to earn minutes with Dortmund.

Of those players above, only Adams is in the latest round of callups for the CONCACAF Gold Cup. McKennie, Weah, and Reyna all play for teams in the Club World Cup, Robinson is recovering from a major surgery, and Dest pulled out of the Gold Cup after playing only 375 minutes this season coming off a torn ACL.

Then there’s Pulisic – whose absence has become a prickly point of contention within and around the national team.

As the story goes, Pulisic – the star man at AC Milan – told the USMNT he would not be making himself available for the tournament. He stated that he wished to take the summer off after a long campaign in order to rest up for the upcoming club season and the World Cup in 2026.

His bold decision has drawn ire from fans and former players – including USMNT legend Landon Donovan, who has since gotten into something of a war of words with Pulisic’s father, Mark.

There are essentially two ways of looking at this. First, Pulisic likely needs the rest. He missed eight games due to injury – one of them being muscle fatigue – and still managed to log 3,650 minutes for his club. Last summer, he played all 270 minutes of the USA’s ill-fated Copa America campaign – with a full 90 against Brazil preceding that.

But the other way to look at it is the missed opportunity cost. Pulisic’s absence deprives the USMNT of yet another player in what will serve to be the nation’s final chance at playing competitive international football until the World Cup. 

The counter to this argument is that the USSF hasn’t sent their best men’s team to a Gold Cup in over a decade. But even still, in a time where Pochettino needs every weapon at his disposal to implement his vision, having arguably your best player choose to sit out of a tournament sends a mixed message.

It’s the final brush stroke on a perilously painted picture. The USMNT is not in crisis mode, not like it was after the Copa America. But it is at a moment where fans and the media have begun to look from the sidelines to the pitch to point fingers.

Americans will tune in regardless of form when they kick off their first match against a yet-to-be-determined opponent in Los Angeles on June 12. Between now and then, the best case scenario would be for the 26-man roster to hit a consistent patch of form for both club and country going into that date. 

If not, and if the USMNT would repeat their Copa America performance, it could lead to devastation and a set back for the global brand of American soccer for years to come.