r/ussoccer

Edit: Despite Egypt’s unfortunate loss, I believe my point still stands. Egypt showed up to play soccer, and gave it all they had. Unfortunately that only lasted the first 70 minutes. It’s still pretty clear though that people who watched the game can acknowledge that Egypt has skill and the potential to beat a top tier team. The US performance last night only served to reinforce the narrative that we cannot, for whatever treason, show up and play our best against top tier teams.

PS: Sorry for jinxing it. My bad.

For years, Landon Donovan and Tim Howard have been preaching that this current iteration of the USMNT wasn’t as complete as the fans may have thought. Fans have complained that the “old heads” weren’t being supportive enough of players who were more talented and had achieved things those guys never did.

But after last night, I’m starting to think those guys were right. Is this team more talented? Of course. Do they play more competitive club soccer? Absolutely. But what was missing from last night was that grit and fire our teams are known for. Clint Dempsey played with a broken nose against Ghana. Tim Howard stood on his head against Belgium. There was an edge to those previous teams that was nonexistent last night.

So as a fan who wanted more support from the prior generations for these younger guys, I’ll eat my plate of crow for breakfast. They were right.

On one hand, I want the sport to grow in popularity in the US. It deserves more respect and admiration than it gets and this World Cup tournament is proof of that. Many of the games have been exceptional and filled with drama, the displays of skill and athleticism have been great, and the fan atmosphere has been tremendous. And when we have a bad performance, I can certainly accept the criticisms from the longtime fans that really know the sport and have been emotionally invested for years. Those fans deserve a moment to vent.

But I honestly don't wanna hear from the soccer-hating meatheads, including those in American sports media, who watch their first game in 4 years and start shitting on the USMNT the moment we lose.

For a little perspective, there have been 22 World Cup champions. 13 of those titles were claimed by Brazil, Germany, and Italy. Brazil just got eliminated in the same round that we did by a team ranked #31. Germany got eliminated in the round of 32 by a team that we beat 4-1 in the group stages, and Italy didn't even quality for the tournament and lost to the same Bosnia and Herzegovina team we just beat 2-0 despite paying with only 10 men for 37 mins.

And do the non-soccer fans have any idea how good Belgium actually is? This is a top ten team loaded with international stars who spent 3 1/2 years leading up to the last World Cup as the #1 ranked team in the world.

Also, can we just STFU with the LeBron James nonsense, as if we could just put NBA or NFL stars in soccer jerseys and they'd play better than the guys we've got? The best player in the history of the game is 5'7" tall and 160 lbs. It calls for an entirely different body type and requires dedication to developing elite skills from childhood. If it were just about strength and speed, Argentina certainly wouldn't be the defending champs, and if it were just about population, China and India wouldn't be ranked #91 and #136 respectively.

And where exactly do all these presumptions of American superiority come from anyway? It's easy to be the best at a sport that no one else plays like American football. But despite inventing the game, the US has only won the World Baseball classic once in 6 tournaments. We finally won a gold medal in ice hockey, but it was the first time in 46 years that we had done so. It's been 23 years since an American male has won a tennis major. In golf, Europe has beaten the US in 9 of the last 12 Ryder Cup tournaments. Only 1 American has won the Indy 500 in the last 10 races. Heck, even in basketball, we haven't seen an American NBA MVP since James Harden in 2018. Point being, even in the sports that we do care about, we're still not dominating. So yeah, it's gonna be kinda hard to dominate a sport played by 200 countries where it's the #1 national pastime in most of them, yet an afterthought in the US.

Credit to Belgium for capitalizing, but the US handed them three of the easiest goals all tournament. Every time we got momentum, we made a stupid mistake and sucked the life out of the game. The 3rd goal was especially painful bc before that it looked like we might have been able to sneak another equalizer.

There was no midfield presence, pressure on the ball, or productive possession. When we did finally manage to win the ball, it was given away carelessly.

There were definitely some positives about this World Cup run, but our team picked the absolute worst time to come out flat, scared, and aimless. I just hate that this feeling is so familiar and pray that we can do better in the future.

I didn’t feel like this after losses with the Dempsey, Donovan, and Howard teams. When they lost, they gave absolutely everything they had. You could never question the fight.

I don’t know, it’s hard to see past this being the most unlikable generation of U.S. soccer. Howard gets cleated in the chest against England in 2010 and stays on. Dempsey breaks his nose against Ghana in 2014 and stays on. Then you have players like Pulisic.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but this group is nowhere near as fun to watch. I even question the talent level and how we have tried to convince ourselves they are any good.

That was an embarrassing, insanely disappointing way to go out. Pretty much every single player on the squad had a terrible or at least below average game. When the sting of such a massive bummer wears off, I hope we keep backing our players.

PLEASE keep showing up to home games, convincing friends to tune into competitive matches, and don't fall into the negative discourse that the internet makes so easy to participate in. People's feelingsball about previous World Cup squads who barely got a sniff of the ball in the round of 16 but "cared", or "hustled", or "were dawgs" is nothing more than nostalgia (we scored 1 fewer goals and had the same amount of wins in this World Cup as the 2022, 2014, 2010 World Cup teams combined).

Like it or not, we'll need a lot of these players to tee it up again and keep grinding, improving if we want a shot at getting over the round of 16 hump in 2030. Singling out players or tearing down the squad is not productive. Don't be like the embarrassing Argentina fans who even turned on Messi prior to 2021. We are the ones who get to decide how to build OUR soccer culture, and I think it would be a shame to waste the positive momentum we built during this World Cup prior to last night.

Yes, the US didn't play well but, in general, non-European teams can't seem to beat European teams in the knockout stage.

You take away Messi from Argentina and it gets way worse.

Wonder how much is driven by European leagues getting more successful and thus have more money to develop talent

We don’t need to dogpile on these guys and demand a top down overthrow of the whole system. We played bad game and a good team took advantage of it. That’s going to happen, even to good teams. We’ve got a lot to build off of going forward.

Tillman & Balogun are stars who will perform on the biggest stage.

Robinson’s still a top left back.

Adams & McKennie have highly technical teams afraid to try to play through them.

Richards is a beast. Freeman had a breakout tournament. Ream was a great servant to this time for a long time, but that was probably his last game before international retirement.

Reyna might be reigniting his career, he looked good and hungry when he played.

We’ve got huge prospects coming up in Cavan Sullivan, Mathis Albert, Noahkai Banks (maybe), Montrell Culbreath (maybe), Zavier Gozo, Julian Hall, Adri Mehmeti, & Diego Kochen to just list the tip of the iceberg.

A strong program is being built and this is just a bump in the road.

The game did not go our way. Belgium beat us 4-1, and the truth is, it was the loss we always feared. Between Belgium and Switzerland, these were the two teams we wanted to avoid, and Belgium most of all. Not because of star power. Their golden generation is aging out, Kevin De Bruyne did not even play, and outside of Jeremy Doku they do not have a single truly elite player in his prime. Their weakness is that they have no world-class talisman anymore. Their strength is that they do not need one. Belgium can play every style, adapt to every opponent, and pick a lineup based on the matchup in front of them. That is exactly what they did to us.

This Was a Scripted Beatdown

Go back to the friendly earlier this year. Belgium beat us then too, but that game was reconnaissance. They did not know who we were yet, so they spent ninety minutes reading us. This time, they knew. The US has run the same system all year, the same diamond that gave Paraguay fits, and Belgium built a game plan specifically to kill it. They benched the players who struggled against our shape in the friendly and started the players they felt matched up. Then they went to work.

The plan was obvious from the opening whistle: cut off the passing lanes that feed our tiki-taka from back to front, and physically wear down the three players they considered integral to our attack. Dest, Pulisic, and Balogun were doubled and tripled every time they touched the ball in the first half. Balogun got the most respect of anyone on the field. Belgium refused to give him even a single one-v-one opportunity. If he had a sliver of space, they kicked the ball out of bounds. They conceded throw-ins and corners on purpose rather than let him run at a defender. That is not disrespect. That is the highest compliment a defense can pay a striker.

Then, right around the hydration break, Belgium loosened the grip. Suddenly Pulisic and Dest were getting one-v-ones. Fans watching live saw two guys who looked like they did nothing and called them trash. I rewatched the game this morning, and that is not what happened. Those guys were gassed. They spent an entire half defending deep, getting targeted, and dribbling into two and three defenders at a time. By the time Belgium let them play, they had nothing left in the legs. Dest actually graded out better than it felt watching live. His numbers were higher than usual. It was a concerted plan to drain him, Jedi, and Pulisic, and it worked.

The McKennie treatment told you everything about their scouting. Belgium only respected McKennie in motion. When he was cutting and running at them, they tracked him. When he was stationary, they treated him like he did not matter. That is the same evaluation Juventus makes every single year, which is why he starts every season on the bench before playing his way back in. This was a game McKennie should not have started. But we have locked-in starters, and we are not good enough to have locked-in starters.

Adams, Cardoso, and the Matchup Problem

I missed Cardoso in this one badly. Adams is the destroyer, and there is a time and place for the destroyer: CONCACAF, South America, Africa, the physical Eastern European sides, maybe England. But against Western European possession teams, against a Spain or a Japan or a Belgium, we need the interceptor. Cardoso was cutting out exactly the kinds of crosses and entry passes in the friendly that Belgium feasted on here. They play the same position, but they are not the same player, and we need both. It has to be matchup-dependent, the way Belgium deploys its own roster. Stop worrying about who "starts." Start asking who gets us the result today.

The Goalkeeper Crisis Is the Whole Story

Here is my honest belief: we can play this style. The high-press, possession football Pochettino wants is playable with this player pool. The back line is not there yet, but by 2030 I think it will be. The keeper position is the one I cannot promise you, and it is the biggest issue in the program.

Right now, we do not have a goalkeeper who could play for a top-200 club in the world. Not one. We used to have keepers who played at top-ten clubs like Tim Howard, top-thirty like Friedel, top-fifty like Keller. Even Guzan, past his prime, early Atlanta version, is a tier better than anyone we have now, and by then he was no longer a top-100 or even top-150 keeper. That is how far this position has fallen.

And do not tell me it is because our guys play in MLS, because Curacao's Eloy Room plays in USA too and he was one of the best keepers in this tournament. Some of the highest-graded goalkeeping in this World Cup came from keepers at clubs nobody would call elite. They are shot-stoppers. They rise to the occasion. Meanwhile we had arguably the worst goalkeeping in the entire tournament. I think Haiti had a better keeper than us. Matt Turner regressed exactly the way Zack Steffen regressed before 2022. Four years ago we projected Turner as a top-100-club keeper, and it just did not happen. It happens. Confidence goes, composure goes, and the talent you once had is not there anymore. We love the Tim Howards, the guys who never stop improving. Sometimes you get the other kind.

Rewatch 2014 and you understand what we lost. Omar Gonzalez was rough. Beasley at left back would have made you long for Robinson. Half that midfield was invisible. We always talk about "Messi and pray." That 2014 team was Tim Howard and pray, and it worked, because Howard erased mistake after mistake. Every US team makes mistakes. Ream against Belgium was not much different from Omar in 2014, except Ream offered more going forward. The difference is nobody was behind him cleaning it up.

Run the counterfactual with a Howard-level keeper this cycle. We probably win the Turkey game instead of dropping it. Bosnia is a comfortable win either way. And Belgium becomes a game we lose 2-1 on a late Lukaku goal instead of a 4-1 humiliation, and we walk out a prouder nation saying we just need depth. We are a Plan A team with no Plan B, and the reason there is no Plan B is that there is no keeper to buy us out of our mistakes.

So here is the mandate. Stop scouting the "best goalkeepers in the league" and start scouting shot-stoppers, period. Watch USL keepers. Watch second-division keepers. Watch American-eligible keepers buried in Mexico and Brazil that nobody knows exist, the way Balogun existed in England's system before we got him. Bring them all into camp. We already missed one Zion Suzuki, a keeper we should have identified and forced into a decision years before Japan locked him in. Somewhere out there is a keeper we missed who is making highlight saves in anonymity because he did not come through an academy or play college ball. Find him.

And to be blunt about the incumbents: Turner, Freese, Brady. They are done. They had their chance, they did not perform, and I do not want to see them in a US shirt again. When you look at their international careers, the chart should read the same for all three: last cap, United States, 2026.

The Big Eight

Let me be clear about who I trust, because the core is legitimately good: Dest, Jedi, Chris Richards, Adams, McKennie, Tillman, Balogun, Pulisic. And one clarification before anyone runs with these numbers: when I say top fifty, I mean top fifty in the world at the position, not top fifty overall. The US does not have a top-fifty player in the world at any position right now. Balogun is the closest, and he is not there yet.

Chris Richards is a top-fifty center back, and that is what he is going to be. That is fine. Our best teams historically never had top-thirty center backs either. The problem is he is currently our number one, and he is built to be a number two. We need someone like Banks to develop into the top-thirty guy so Richards can slot into the role he is made for.

Jedi is a legit top-fifty fullback, and before the injury last year he was top twenty. Robinson did not have his best tournament, but the Fulham year before, you could argue top fifteen, some would say top ten. Our wingbacks were genuinely one of the bright spots of this tournament, Belgium game aside. Dest is top 40 for his position.

McKennie is top 100 at the position on pure ranking, but his impact is top-forty impact, and unlike some of our Europe-based guys, he actually performs at a high level for his club, not just in a jersey. Adams is top thirty for what he does, and Cardoso belongs in that same range, which is exactly why the two of them need to be deployed by matchup rather than by hierarchy.

Tillman is the swing piece. There is no real backup for him in the pool, and that is a structural problem. But this is the year Tillman has to stand up for his club the way he stood up in this World Cup, because outside of Balogun he is the one player who can be elite, who can join the tier Pulisic occupied for years and may be aging out of. Weah might honestly be better up top for us than what he showed this tournament, but the consistency has never been there, and a reserve role at Marseille is not the environment that fixes it. If you are not starting in Europe, you need to at least be a key sub. Pepi remains Balogun's backup. This tournament was hard on him, but we knew the European adjustment would take time. Nineteen league goals at PSV and nearly a hundred career goals tell you the finishing is real. He just needs runway.

Pulisic deserves a fair reading. There are really only two games you can honestly evaluate him on, Paraguay and Bosnia, and he was excellent against Paraguay and did real buildup work against Bosnia. Yes, he was bad against Belgium. He was also the specific target of a game plan designed to make him dribble into three bodies until his legs were gone. Even the truly world-class wear down under that treatment.

Balogun Is the One

Folarin Balogun is the only player on this roster with a genuine world-class ceiling. Right now he is something like a top-fifteen player in the French league. But he is one great transfer away from taking off like a rocket, and four years from now I believe we talk about Balogun the way we once talked about Pulisic: as the best American, full stop. World class in the Raphinha mold, not the put-the-team-on-my-back mold. A self-creator. That is already what he does for us. We do not generate great chances as a team, so he manufactures his own, the same way Raphinha does at Barcelona even when Brazil cannot feed him. Raphinha took the Leeds-to-giant-club path and exploded. I think Balogun does the same.

Belgium already told you what he is. The best-scouted team we played treated him like the one man who could beat them alone. Eventually the whole world sees it the same way. It will be Balogun and the boys, and we need the boys to catch up.

Who Emerges Before 2030

The top eight are real. Depth is the gap, and depth is the hardest thing to build. We need more players forcing their way into that group, and we need them at the highest levels performing, competing against each other, not one starter and then a Marseille reserve behind him.

Cavan Sullivan is slightly overrated by the hype machine and underrated on pure talent. His game makes more sense in Europe than in America, and when he gets there I expect a real jump. I just hope Manchester City actually has a plan for him. He gets his showcase at the Gold Cup, then Nations League next year and Copa in two, and Pochettino is going to want a long look. The under-21 pool is genuinely talented. But talent is not the question. Somebody has to actually do it. Somebody has to be the next academy kid who takes the leap and becomes inevitable.

Tessmann could be a top-fifty-at-his-position guy, though he does not naturally fit what we are building. Scally is technically a top-seventy fullback, but the profile is wrong for how we play. We need fullbacks who attack and build with skill from the back. Freeman is that profile, turnovers and all. And this is the broader point about the pool: fit matters more than resume. A player can succeed in Europe and still not move the needle for this system.

The one hole nobody is talking about enough: we have no wingers. Real ones. Guys who attack the flank at full speed and run at you. You can argue the last true ones were Beasley, maybe Landon if you stretch the definition, and that is a quarter century ago. We knew it was a problem in the 2010s, we knew it in the 2020s, and I have watched the youth system: I do not see one coming. We have players who operate in wide spaces and arrive from behind. We do not have anyone who scares a fullback in a footrace. Nobody has a Dembele, fine. But we do not have anything close.

The Bottom Line

Belgium did not beat us with better players. They beat us with a better idea of who we are than we have of ourselves. They pick eleven for the opponent. We pick eleven for the depth chart. Until we treat selection the way they do, until we find a keeper who can erase mistakes, and until more players force their way into the Big Eight, we are a Plan A team in a tournament that always, eventually, demands a Plan B.

2030 is far away and also right around the corner. The core is good enough to dream on. The margins are where World Cups are lost, and yesterday, the margins wore red, yellow, and black.

Balogun: “I accepted the decision when I was given the red card. Then I also accepted the decision when I could play. There’s not much else I can really say on the matter. I just congratulated Belgium. Similar to when I was given the red card, you have to handle it the right way."

I have plenty of negative things to say after last night, but I figured we could use a little boost of positivity this morning. What were some of your favorite parts of the run? Here are my takeaways:

- The first half against Paraguay is the best this team has ever played at a World Cup. I'll be watching those highlights for years.

- Seeing out the Bosnia game with 10 men after a highly suspect red card was legitimately impressive. Our guys lost their heads in the same situation v Panama at the 2024 Copa, but buckled down and saw the game out this time.

- Tillman and Balogun both had excellent tournaments. They are 24 and 25, so they will continue to be a big part of the team for the upcoming cycle.

- Alex Freeman is a star in the making. His game is still a bit rough around the edges, but he's already improved massively from last year and I'm excited to see how that continues in the years ahead.

- Berhalter deserves to keep getting called up. He has a dawg factor you can't teach and is a weapon on set pieces.

- Our team scored 11 goals at this tournament. They scored 13 combined at 2010, 2014, and 2022.

- Finally, just seeing the world come together and seeing so many foreign tourists enjoy the USA has been a great reprieve from all the political BS that fills our feeds. We're all just people at the end of the day.

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