The most pivotal moment of the U.S. men’s national team’s disastrous run at the 2024 Copa América was Tim Weah’s untimely red card.
Weah, a player responsible for so many positive moments in his 49 caps, uncharacteristically lashed out and struck Panama defender Roderick Miller off the ball. The incident was spotted on video review and resulted in Weah’s 18th-minute ejection. Despite taking a lead a few minutes later, the U.S. would lose that game, ultimately leading to an embarrassing group-stage exit on home soil.
The tournament had massive reverberations for the program. Those matches featured the highest stakes and were the most important games for the U.S. leading into the 2026 World Cup, given that there was no qualifying campaign for one of the host nations. The early ouster ultimately cost head coach Gregg Berhalter his job. A few months later, Mauricio Pochettino took over.
That moment, the fallout in the locker room and around the team and the transition, was captured by a documentary crew — just like all other key landmarks dating back to just before the 2022 World Cup. Now, on the cusp of this team’s biggest tournament, fans will get to see it all.
On Tuesday, HBO will release the first episode of U.S. Against the World: Four Years With the Men’s National Soccer Team, a five-part documentary series that can also be streamed on HBO Max. Episodes will be released every Tuesday night leading into the start of the 2026 World Cup.
The world’s biggest stage comes home.
U.S. Against the World: Four Years with the Men’s National Soccer Team, a new HBO Documentary Series leading up to the World Cup, premieres May 12 on HBO Max. pic.twitter.com/E96FLrcyRk
— HBO Max (@hbomax) April 28, 2026
“It’s definitely a vulnerable moment,” Weah told The Athletic, looking back on his pivotal act. “I’m happy fans will experience it too, how low it was. I’m very open in sharing that.”
Beyond the on-field highs and lows, the documentary brings viewers inside the locker room and into the homes and personal lives of the USMNT individuals and their families, showcasing who these players are off the field and setting the stage for this summer’s home World Cup.
“You’re going to learn a lot about different players, what we like to do,” Weah said. “You’re going to learn who the class clowns are, who the tough guys are. I can’t wait for people to get to know us as individuals and not just performers or athletes.”
The series starts in the buildup to Qatar 2022 and brings the audience to today, the brink of a historic home World Cup. Over the course of four years, the video crew has accrued over 300 production days and 600 hours of film shot. It has all been distilled down to five episodes, the last of which will conclude with the naming of the 2026 World Cup squad. It’s slated to be released on June 9 – three days before the U.S. opens its tournament vs. Paraguay.
Just as the U.S. has high hopes for this summer, the production company that has crafted this series has its own lofty ambitions.
“We wanted to create the highest quality sports documentary of all time,” said director and executive producer Rand Getlin of Park Stories Productions. “That’s the aspiration.”
USMNT midfielder Tyler Adams plays vs. Mexico in the 2025 Concacaf Gold Cup final (Tim Warner / Getty Images)
Getlin and executive producer Janina Pelayo filmed a mini documentary centered on U.S. midfielder Tyler Adams as part of the 2020 “Prodigy” series on Quibi and were fascinated by the human being himself and the subject matter, which ultimately led them on this journey. That was their entry into the world of soccer, where they’ve since been immersed. Getlin and Pelayo, who are married, joked they have no idea how it took them so long to discover their love of this game.
Their production company began speaking with U.S. Soccer about an idea for a documentary in 2020, but it wasn’t until a phone call in May of 2022, hours before a national team camp was set to kick off in Cincinnati, where they were asked if they wanted to begin filming. They scrambled and got a small team together, hitting the road with the group for about a month.
“It was very much building the plane as you fly it,” Pelayo said.
That first camp involved a four-person crew, which eventually grew to five.
“Our structure is small, intentionally,” Pelayo said. “We do a white-glove service for a lot of athletes. Very high stakes. We understand their world and we want it to feel safe. We go in small, but hypertalented creators. It’s like going in with a SEAL team. When it’s high stakes there’s no redos. You go in with the best of the best.”
The initial relationship and proof of concept with Adams served as a massive testimonial within the U.S. locker room. Trust is constantly earned, they said, but having Adams vouch for their professionalism got them off to a good start with the players. It also led to a meeting with Berhalter. He had questions but ultimately gave them carte blanche.
From then, any time the USMNT was together, Getlin, Pelayo and their crew were there. They also flew to visit players at their clubs, many of which were in Europe, as well as to meet their families back home.
“Honestly, we were so comfortable with them, it just became the norm for us,” Weah said. “We knew we have people we trust with us, we rarely looked at the cameras. They were doing their thing, we were doing our thing. They kept it a safe space to show our personalities.”
Tim Weah’s red card vs. Panama at the 2024 Copa América served as a pivotal moment in the story of the USMNT’s journey to the 2026 World Cup (Eduardo Munoz / AFP / Getty Images)
There was one significant missing piece to the puzzle, though. As hours of filming began adding up, and the 2022 World Cup creeped closer, conversations with potential buyers for the documentary came and went without a deal.
“Basically the entire town passed. Everybody said no to us,” Getlin said. “Very few people in Hollywood understood what soccer meant to the country and the world.”
So Getlin and Pelayo bet on themselves, funding the majority of the operation on their own. At some point during the tournament, the bigwigs in Hollywood came around, giving this documentary a home.
Initially, the idea was for it to center on just the 2022 World Cup. It morphed into much more, beginning with the journey to and in Qatar, along with the winding road to this summer. That includes the Berhalter-Reyna family drama that centered first on Gio Reyna’s playing time in Qatar and then the ugly fallout between the families that followed. Given the scope of what the series is attempting to cover — effectively four years in just five episodes — that saga is not covered in extreme depth.
“We don’t know everything, but we know what we saw,” Getlin said. “In camp … we could not tell anything was going on.
“The way we approached it in the show was logical for our show. Our show is one that is moving. We cover it, and we move on, we don’t spend a lot of time on it. You need to spend a ton of time to really do it, talk to everybody and spend 25-30 minutes in-show, because it’s so complicated. We just decided within the concept of the show, which is a story about the team and its (journey) to the World Cup … we cover Gio really quickly and then move on.”
The mid-cycle shift from Gregg Berhalter to Mauricio Pochettino was a defining move for the 2026 USMNT World Cup team (Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
The USMNT has evolved significantly from the start of filming to today.
It’s gone from one of the youngest teams at the 2022 World Cup, to one with massive expectations at home in 2026. Plenty of players have cycled in and out of the group, with some careers going in different directions than hoped or expected and new faces emerging. But the biggest shift came when Berhalter was fired after that fateful Copa América exit, leading to Pochettino’s arrival in September 2024.
“I hope people walk away understanding how hard Gregg worked and how much he cared, because it was clear to us,” Getlin said.
Berhalter built up a group of young players with potential, rebuilding a program that had failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. But after being brought back in June 2023 following the fallout of what happened in Qatar and immediately after, he was unable to bring the team to the next step of growth, and U.S. Soccer acted accordingly, moving in a different direction.
Pochettino was seen as the answer. The Argentine manager, best known for his success with Tottenham, is taking his first foray into international management. The results have been mixed, with a number of high-profile losses — particularly in the kind of games Pochettino was hired to win.
Inside the group, there has been a noticeable shift after the coaching change, and the documentary is able to capture that with its inside view of it all.
“(Pochettino) is very passionate and very charismatic,” Pelayo said. “He took on this endeavor with no national team experience, that was very brave. He’s very warm, almost like an uncle. He likes to create personable, high-touch relationships.”
Above all else, the documentary’s chief objective has been to show fans who the players are off the field, which could create a greater connection to the final 26 Pochettino selects for the World Cup in two weeks.
“This is raw and real,” Weah said.
The crew had access to all intimate spaces – including the locker room – before, during and after games. Cameras were at team hotels, practice fields and training tables, focused on players and their loved ones. Beyond the games, pitchside interviews, press conferences and mixed zones, there are different lights in which these players and this team can be cast amid an emotional and aspirational quest.
“Go show me another sports documentary where you see athletes anywhere being as vulnerable as these guys are,” Getlin said.
“It’s a collection of young guys coming together trying to make the country proud. This is the kind of thing we should cheer for. It doesn’t mean they’re always perfect, it doesn’t mean it’s always pretty … you want to live in all of it.”
