The US men's national team enters the 2026 World Cup with genuine hopes of a deep run, a remarkable turnaround from six decades of near-total absence on the global stage. After a third-place finish in 1930, the team endured a 7-1 loss to Italy in 1934 and a shocking 1-0 win over England in 1950, sandwiched between heavy defeats to Spain and Chile. Then came decades of futility: from 1954 to 1958, they lost four matches to Mexico by a combined 20-3, and even fell 8-3 to a Canadian team that hadn't played in 30 years. In the 1950s and 1960s, the USMNT went 11 years without a win, often playing without a manager or with two coaches who thought they were in charge. Before a 1974 World Cup qualifier, they pulled a fan from the stands to field a full team. Players routinely declined call-ups due to the chaos and $5 daily per diems.
The Team America Fiasco
In 1983, a broke and disorganized US Soccer Federation entered the USMNT into the North American Soccer League as Team America. Several top players refused to leave their clubs for the experiment, and Team America finished last in the league with the fewest goals scored. The team folded after one season.
A Remarkable Turnaround
Despite this troubled history, the USMNT returned to the World Cup in 1990, nearly reached the semifinals in 2002, and now consistently reaches the knockout stages. Leander Schaerlaeckens, author of The Long Game: U.S. Men's Soccer and its Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, spent three years researching the team's rise. He interviewed over 150 players, coaches, and administrators, uncovering untold stories of key figures.
Key Player Profiles
- Tyler Adams: Overcame geographical obstacles that nearly ended his career and now works to improve player pipelines.
- Matt Turner: Went from being overlooked by college coaches to becoming a starting World Cup goalkeeper.
- Ricardo Pepi: Navigates a dual identity between Mexican and American heritage, common in border regions.
- Antonee Robinson: Benefits from globalization and what one coach called American imperialism.
- Christian Pulisic: The first true male soccer star in the US, yet uncomfortable with fame.
- Weston McKennie: Nearly never made it to the professional level; his success would have been unlikely if born a few years earlier.
Bigger Trends
The USMNT's history reveals a pattern of hiring foreign managers (Alkis Panagoulias, Bora Milutinovic, Jürgen Klinsmann, Mauricio Pochettino) when the incumbent American (Bob Gansler, Bob Bradley, Gregg Berhalter) is deemed inadequate, only to later insist on an American coach. The team's World Cup camps are either harmonious or contentious, directly affecting performance.
The USMNT's story is one of yearning, stumbling, momentum, disillusionment, cohesion, dysfunction—flying batteries and bags of urine in Central American qualifiers, outsized personalities, brotherhood, betrayal, and fights. Yet through it all, there has been an unshakable strangeness and an almost imperceptibly slow but relentless climb up the global soccer hierarchy.
The Long Game is available Tuesday. Schaerlaeckens teaches at Marist University.
