They assembled a roster teeming with players who went abroad as teenagers and earned call-ups to top-tier European clubs. They shelled out millions of dollars to secure a respected, big-name head coach. They played every match on home soil in front of crowds awash in red, white and blue.
There was ample reason to believe that this could be a breakthrough World Cup for the U.S. men’s national team, yet the ending felt achingly familiar Monday night in Seattle when the Americans trudged off the field in defeat.
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A U.S. World Cup campaign that began with such enthusiasm and promise screeched to a halt with a lopsided Round of 16 loss against a superior opponent. Belgium outclassed the U.S. from the opening minute until the final whistle, exposing how wide the gap remains between the Stars and Stripes and a European power, even one whose celebrated golden generation is now past its prime.
If anything, the 4-1 final score was flattering to a U.S team that was vulnerable on defense, slow to 50-50 balls and careless in possession. The lone American goal came on a Malik Tillman free kick that deflected off a Belgian defender’s head and into the net.
Another humbling loss begs the question: If the U.S. can’t seriously contend for a World Cup now, will it ever make that leap? Eight times in nine World Cup appearances since 1990, the U.S. has failed to advance beyond the Round of 16. Only in 2002 did the Americans make the World Cup quarterfinals, famously suffering a controversial 1-0 loss to Germany after Torsten Frings’ goal-preventing handball went uncalled.
The most common explanation for the USMNT‘s inability to level up is that this nation’s biggest, fastest, strongest athletes typically pursue other sports besides soccer. As a Houston criminal defense attorney put it on social media on Monday night, “Every four years we take the best 11 athletes in every other country and put them up against the 4000th best athletes in America, and see if we can win. It’s a crazy exercise.”
Malik Tillman of the United States reacts after a loss during the FIFA World Cup 2026 Round of 16 match between USA and Belgium.
(Jane Gershovich/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
There’s little doubt the U.S. soccer talent pool would be deeper if LeBron James grew up dreaming to become a center back or if Tyreek Hill was using his speed and acceleration to run onto through balls or stretch the field in counter-attacks. The majority of elite NBA, NFL and MLB players never played high-level soccer as kids. Even those who did, like Odell Beckham Jr. or Nolan Arenado, eventually quit to specialize in other sports.
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And yet ask those in soccer circles if siphoning talent away from other sports would transform the USMNT into a global power, and the question will inspire plenty of eye rolls. They are quick to point out that skill is the most important quality in soccer, that many global superstars rely on ball control and technical ability rather than speed and strength.
At 5-foot-7 and less than 150 pounds, Lionel Messi has been known since childhood as “La Pulga,” which in Spanish means “the flea.” Croatian playmaker Luka Modrić is only an inch taller than Messi. Spanish phenom Lamine Yamal is 5-10. So are French superstars Ousmane Dembélé and Kylian Mbappé. For every 6-foot-5 Erling Haaland who dominates by overpowering defenders and winning balls in the air, there are many others who use their decision-making and mastery with the ball at their feet to help their teams win.
“I just don’t think it’s as simple as if we had 10 LeBrons playing soccer, we’d automatically be a better soccer country,” former U.S. men’s national team defender and current Portland Thorns general manager Jeff Agoos told Yahoo Sports prior to the World Cup. “Soccer is such a skilled sport. It’s really hard to control a soccer ball, and it takes a lot of time to learn that skill. I don’t think it’s always about being bigger, faster, stronger.”
To Agoos and many others, U.S. Soccer’s biggest issue isn’t insufficient athleticism. It’s how the athletes who do want to pursue soccer have been developed.
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The annual cost of playing travel soccer is a barrier that prevents many kids from low-income families from participating. Confusion over the numerous different youth soccer leagues and pathways is also an issue, as is the fact that winning is often a bigger priority for youth coaches than showing patience to promote player development.
“Our youth soccer in this country is a disaster,” former USMNT star Landon Donovan told “The Rich Eisen Show” last month. “You have all these youth clubs charge you crazy fees. It’s all about winning. The kids get left behind because the clubs want to make money, the coaches want to make money. They want to win and the kids don’t develop.”
U.S. Soccer first tried to bolster its youth development system in 1999 when it created a residency program to provide an elite training environment for the best 20 youth players in the country. Eight years later came the launch of U.S. Soccer’s development academy, which took the residency program model to the club level in hopes of providing thousands more teenage boys better opportunities to compete and develop.
By the time the developmental academy dissolved in 2020, Major League Soccer clubs had begun investing millions of dollars in youth academies. Some clubs even have programs that begin at the U-9 level.
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Some of the best American players on this summer’s World Cup team came through the MLS Academy system before heading across the Atlantic. Tyler Adams developed through the New York Red Bulls Academy. Weston McKennie, Chris Richards and Ricardo Pepi are products of the FC Dallas Academy. Gio Reyna played in NYCFC‘s academy before joining Borussia Dortmund.
The American player pool has deepened to the point that Mauricio Pochettino, the aforementioned high-priced head coach, left players who are contributing to high-level European clubs off the roster. Atalanta‘s Yunus Musah was a snub four years after he was a fixture in the USMNT starting XI in Qatar. Atletico Madrid‘s Johnny Cardoso was uncertain to make the USMNT roster until an ill-timed high ankle sprain eliminated him from consideration.
“Just because you’re playing in Europe doesn’t automatically mean you’re a national team level player anymore,” former USMNT administrator and MLS assistant coach Renato Capobianco told Yahoo Sports. “I think that shows tremendous growth.”
The U.S. paid a lot to bring in Mauricio Pochettino, and yet it still wasn’t enough to advance beyond the round of 16.
(John Todd/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
The big hurdle that the American developmental system will always have to overcome is that the soccer culture here is different from futbol-crazed countries like Spain, France or Argentina. Yamal, Mbappé and Messi each possess innate physical gifts but they also were born into cultures where soccer was everywhere, where they developed an addiction to having a ball at their feet and where they were pushed to maximize their talents.
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Yamal started honing his skills on a concrete slab that doubles as a soccer pitch for kids in his hometown of Rocafonda, 20 miles up the Spanish coast from Barcelona. It was there he scored his first goals, where he developed a knack for slyly dancing past defenders with an array of tricks and flicks.
Mbappé grew up in the suburbs of Paris with posters of Zinedine Zidane, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar blanketing his bedroom walls. He and his friends all dreamed the same dream — to play professional football.
“Football is just different for us,” Mbappé once wrote in the Players Tribune. “It is essential. It is every day. It is like bread and water.”
Hours of unstructured time with a ball at their feet is more difficult for American kids to replicate. There aren’t as many pickup games in parks or schoolyards in Birmingham, Alabama, St. Louis, Missouri, or Hershey, Pennsylvania.
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Perhaps that’s as big a reason as any that the U.S. has not been able to close the gap with the Belgiums of the world, to make the leap from World Cup mainstay to World Cup contender.
In 1994, Thomas Dooley was part of a USMNT that advanced out of its group on home soil before falling 1-0 to eventual champion Brazil in the round of 16. Thirty-two years later, it surprises Dooley that the USMNT has advanced further than that only once.
“With how big the fan base is right now and all the academies they have now, I would’ve thought we’d at least be in a semifinal by now,” Dooley told Yahoo Sports. “And yet we’re still not really further than what we did in ’94. There must be a reason for that.”
As the USMNT enters a new World Cup cycle, that answer remains elusive.
