How much hope should we have for the US national soccer team less than a year before the 2026 World Cup?

If you follow the USMNT, I don’t need to tell you that the last few years have been rough. The controversy between former USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter and the Reynas, the disastrous showing at the 2024 Copa America, questions about player commitment to the team, and the stalling in career development of many key US players. All of these things have contributed to a dejected mood amongst the USMNT fanbase.

And there isn’t really anything yet on the horizon that should make us u-turn on our assessment of the USMNT. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen a young new American superstar rise up the ranks in recent years.

Sure, Diego Luna has been a revelation. But he is nearly 22 years old. He is not a young upstart at the very beginning of his career. Put it this way; Christian Pulisic made his USMNT debut in early 2016, at the age of 17. No American under 20 now is at the level that Christian Pulisic was then, or particularly close.

It seems that the USMNT has the roster it has. It should be noted that the USMNT is deeper in talent level than any previous US team in history, although that isn’t a high bar.

But anyone who knows soccer understands that how good a team is on paper often does not correlate with how they do in international tournaments. Portugal in the 2000s had much better players than the Portuguese team that won euro 2016. Greece was nowhere close to the best team at euro 2004. You regularly see tournaments where teams that are clearly inferior on paper go farther than better teams.

And it should be noted that this current USMNT is nowhere close to the level of the top teams. So this USMNT losing to any top or second tier European or South American side wouldn’t be them underachieving. Japan and Morocco and even Ecuador simply have better players than the US.

I think what irks many USMNT fans is that previous US teams with less talent on paper have not only done as good or better than this current generation, but seem to care more.

It should be noted that for USMNT fans, as well as fans of all teams in every sport, their perception is colored by results. French fans were criticizing their team all through the 2018 World Cup until they won it. The Argentine side were always a collection of individuals that couldn’t get it done until they won the 2022 World Cup.

If this USMNT side had better results, then Christian Pulisic and others missing the 2025 Gold Cup would be considered smart. It is more that fans are understandably frustrated by recent results and lack of progress, and want an outlet to vent their frustration.

There is an element of overhyping this team. In the beginning (late 2020/early 2021), this USMNT side looked better than any previous USMNT side before by a distance. We had a handful of players in their early 20s playing for teams that were going deep in the Champions League, and many others playing in European first divisions.

For a top tier soccer nation, this would be nothing special. But compared to what the US has had in the past, it was a huge step up. Many, including yours truly, projected that most of these players would continue improving, and that by 2025/2026, there would be one, if not a couple, new top tier players that we at the time (2020/2021) hadn’t yet heard of.

That meant that by now, we’d have over half a starting lineup of players playing on top 15 clubs in Europe, with the rest playing on at least mid table sides in a top 5 European league, and even players off the bench at that level.

Unfortunately, we have seen that we both overestimated how good some of our players were, and some (especially Gio Reyna) have not yet come close to their potential.

What we have now is arguably a team where more players are doing worse in their career now than players who are now doing better. Coupled with underachieving results in major tournaments, things have been quite demoralizing.

With that all being said, it should be noted that much of the understandable handwringing is unnecessary. First, because, while USMNT results have been disappointing, how disappointing they have been has been exaggerated.

Since the 2022 World Cup, the USMNT has won 2 of 3 CONCACAF Nations Leagues. Losing a semifinal off a late goal to Panama is not good, but it’s not indicative of a system-wide failure.

The Gold Cup has always been where the US uses a B or C team, so not winning those makes no difference to the USMNT’s overall strength. The only real tournament that was disappointing was the 2024 Copa America.

But even that disappointment, a group stage exit, does not represent a system-wide failure. In that tournament, the US beat Bolivia as they should, narrowly lost to Uruguay (not an underachievement, Uruguay is a better team), and lost Panama.

Only the loss to Panama was an underachievement. But that was because the USMNT played nearly the whole game down a man. Essentially, the only real competitive underachievement was losing a game that we played nearly the whole time down a man.

Random, narrow moments that go one way or the other completely change the narrative. If the US had beaten Panama, it is quite likely we lose in the quarterfinal, whether to Colombia or Brazil. Is a quarterfinal exit against a superior team really a world of difference better than going out in the group stage because Timothy Weah lost his head and got a red card?

To be sure, the USMNT has stalled, and the feeling is not good. And we shouldn’t be expected to feel confident or even good at this point. I don’t. But I think most of this doesn’t really have any impact on how we do in the tournament.

How the USMNT does in the tournament will depend on the draw we get, and most importantly, how we do in specific moments. If we score the first goal at home against our first opponent and get momentum and win by 2 or 3 goals, how many USMNT fans will be thinking about what happened between 2022 and 2026?

More importantly, is how we do in the knockout stage (I am assuming even this USMNT team will be able to at least be one of the better 3rd place teams in their group).

In the round of 32 against Saudi Arabia, will Weston McKennie score on his half chance in the 78th minute? In the round of 16 against Ecuador or Switzerland, will Christian Pulisic be able to dribble past a player and lay off a pass for Timothy Weah to finish?

In the quarterfinal against Germany, will Matt Turner, or whoever our goalkeeper is, put on a Tim Howard against Belgium performance, and will we nick a goal in overtime or win in penalties?

It’s obviously a long way before thinking about a quarterfinal, but this should illustrate something. For all the handwringing, anger, tactics, and everything we talk about, it’s going to be very specific moments in World Cup games that define how we feel about this team.

You’ve seen home teams play above themselves all the time. Russia going into 2018 we far worse a side than the US. They had either not qualified or went out in the group stage of every tournament in the 21st century besides euro 2008, before they made a run the the World Cup quarterfinals, took a lead in that game, and only narrowly lose in penalties to Croatia. They were a coin flip away from the semis.

I’m not saying the US will emulate what Russia did (not to mention that Russia needed to win only 1 knockout game to reach the quarterfinals). But in the end, specific moments in specific games, not connected to the years of punditry, defined how people perceived Russia in 2018, and how they perceive any team.

If Argentina had lost the penalty shootout to Netherlands in the quarterfinals, would that have changed the essential nature of how good that Argentine side was? Of course not. But it would have made all the difference, and would have defined how Argentina, and even how Messi, is perceived. Same thing with if Randall Kolo Muani had scored at the very end of overtime in the 2022 World Cup final.

This is to say that while things are not looking good at all for this USMNT, and we should have concerns in many areas, all it takes is scoring at the right moment, or gaining momentum, when the tournament is in full swing, for fortunes to change.

The problems this US team has is real, and could be the downfall of this generation. But in soccer, and especially in tournament soccer, how you perform on the day can swing fortunes wildly.

We as USMNT fans should be worried and be open to the possibility have a disastrous tournament. But we should also understand that at the end of the day, the only thing that will matter is how the team performs on the day, and how random events shake out. Therefore, we should allow ourselves a good amount of hope, as dire as things look right now.