Most of the players on this U.S. men’s national team would have acted it out in their backyard, or in a friend’s basement, or maybe a youth soccer field: The final minutes of a World Cup final, added time, game tied, scoring the winner to lift the trophy for … the United States!
It is the dream of every young soccer player. Stepping on the field at a World Cup is the pinnacle of what one can do in the sport. But there’s a next level up from that into rarefied air.
“For a player, winning the World Cup is the ultimate achievement,” said Lionel Messi, whose own World Cup journey proved how elusive such a feat can be, even for the greatest players in the sport. “There’s nothing more after the World Cup. You can’t ask for anything more.”
This summer, the U.S. men will take the field at the World Cup with higher expectations than any American team before them. That’s due in part to the unprecedented career success of what many dubbed a “golden generation” of players, from Champions League winner Christian Pulisic, to Juventus’s Weston McKennie, Marseille’s Tim Weah, Bournemouth’s Tyler Adams and Crystal Palace’s Chris Richards. It’s also because that group, now in its prime, will play the tournament at home.
Ultimate success at the 2026 World Cup is a hope those in American soccer have harbored for about a decade.
“In 1994, I think the U.S. was looked at as this emerging frontier in the game, and FIFA wanted to bring the U.S into the world’s game,” former U.S. coach Bruce Arena said in 2017, when the USA, Canada and Mexico’s United Bid to cohost was launched. “In 2026 we’re going to be fully emerged into the game and a big player. I think 2026 will be the time where we’re going to start talking about winning a World Cup. It wasn’t going to be in 1994, it wasn’t going to be in 2010. But 2026 could be our time.”
So, with the 2026 World Cup on the horizon, the question is: Can this U.S. team actually win a World Cup?
The most likely and logical answer, of course, is no. There is a long list of reasons why.
For starters, only eight nations have ever won a men’s World Cup, and the U.S. has never come close to looking like it could. The 2002 run to the quarterfinals was thrilling, as was a narrow 1-0 loss to eventual finalist Germany. But the U.S. was fortunate to draw Concacaf rival Mexico in the round of 16. The Americans have never beaten a non-Concacaf opponent in a World Cup knockout match. To win the World Cup this summer, it’s likely the U.S. would have to do that five times in a row.
History, simply put, is not on the Americans’ side. In 1930, they won one of four groups to reach the semifinals, then promptly lost to Argentina 6-1. In 1934, they lost to Italy 7-1 in their one and only match. In the last home World Cup, the margin was tighter but the result was the same, a 1-0 defeat to Brazil in the 1994 last 16. The U.S.’s World Cup record against European sides in the modern era (1990 and on) is putrid: one win, 12 losses, seven draws and a winless streak that sits at 12 following elimination at the hands of the Netherlands in the 2022 last 16.
But take a closer look at the last few World Cups, and the alternative-reality path to a World Cup win doesn’t feel entirely implausible. That glimmer of hope? That’s what Mauricio Pochettino and his staff want the team — and its fans — to grasp onto.
“We really believe that we can win it,” Pochettino’s top assistant, Jesús Pérez, told the U.S. Soccer podcast. “We know that everything has to be on your side to win it, but it has to be on the other’s team’s side to win it, as well. … We have to win matches and the most important is to keep always alive the wish and the dream that you can win matches. There are different examples and moments of teams that did it, they made it. And then whatever football takes us, that will be the final result. But we don’t want to set any limit.”
Mauricio Pochettino has tried to instill belief in Tim Ream and the rest of the USMNT that big things are possible next summer (John Dorton / ISI Photos / USSF / Getty Images)
So what does “everything on your side” look like for the U.S.? Sometimes it’s a matter of being on the right side of some fine margins.
That 3-1 loss to the Netherlands in 2022 was not as close as the scoreline indicated, but you have to wonder what might have happened had Pulisic buried his 1-on-1 look two minutes into the game. That famous 2-1 loss to Belgium in extra time in 2014 has the Chris Wondolowski miss as its sliding doors moment. In 2010, the U.S. had a golden opportunity to make another run, but lost to Ghana in the round of 16 in extra time. A win there would have sent the Americans into a quarterfinal vs. Uruguay. And in 2002, their best run of the modern era, the infamous handball-that-wasn’t kept them from a potential win over Germany and a semifinal against South Korea.
For the U.S. in this World Cup, before the advantageous bounces on the field, success would start with a favorable draw on Friday. An easy (relatively speaking) group the U.S. could win would mean a date with a third-place finisher from another group. In an expanded World Cup, winning that first knockout game is the minimum barrier for meeting expectations.
A victory there could put the U.S. on track to face a team like Portugal, Belgium, Spain or Argentina in the round of 16 – all depending on Friday’s draw, of course. That’s where the belief will either go to a next level and the host nation’s aura will grow … or where history will repeat itself.
Nonetheless, there has to be room for that belief. Morocco was a Pot 3 team in 2022 and drawn into a group with Belgium, Canada and Croatia. It not only topped that group, but it went on to beat Spain and Portugal en route to the semifinals. No African team had ever made a World Cup semifinal before. The “impossible” can happen.
So when people ask: ‘Can the U.S. win the World Cup in 2026?’ Pochettino would rather another question be posed instead: ‘Why not?’
“For me it’s winning, I think if you don’t win, what does it matter?” Pochettino said in a recent Fútbol de Primera interview with Andrés Cantor. “I believe we should aspire to win it. Then you (might) tell me, (if you) reach the quarterfinals or semifinals, have a great tournament and due to different factors you can’t win — I think we have to give (the team) credit and merit. But if Morocco did what it did in Qatar, they got to where they got because they always had the mentality of saying that ‘I’m going to go for it, I’m going to win it.’ They eliminated Spain and eliminated a lot of national teams. That’s fundamental, especially playing in our country.
“I believe it’s important to think big.”
