On the third day of the U.S. men’s national team’s pre-World Cup training camp, players spent the hours after training trying to answer a simple question.
“We don’t know if it’s a no-phones wedding. We’re trying to get clarity on that,” midfielder Cristian Roldan said, hours before their teammate Brenden Aaronson got married to his longtime girlfriend Milana D’Ambra. “Gio [Reyna]’s wife will be FaceTiming in and we’ll all be able to watch kind of like a live stream if it is a phone wedding.”
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It was an unusual but joyous way to spend an evening on the road to the World Cup and the latest in a years-long journey for this particular group of players. The majority of the 26-player squad met in their teens as prospects on the youth national teams, some linking up even earlier – Tim Weah says he first played with Tyler Adams when he was around the age of eight. The bonds they formed along the way are so strong that national team settings have been likened to family reunions, the buzz around Aaronson’s wedding similar to that of a familial event even though the nuptials took place in New Jersey while the rest of the team was at the U.S. Soccer National Training Center in the suburbs of Atlanta.
This is not only a story of lifelong friends-slash-teammates, though. This tight-knit version of the USMNT were handed the keys to the program when most people their age were starting college, not only in response to the previous generation’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup but because this group in particular boasted promise their predecessors did not. They not only had more opportunities than those that came before them, the first genuine beneficiaries of soccer’s professionalization in the U.S.; they burst onto the scene with a collective talent few had seen from USMNT players before.
Their peak years coincide with the life events that are fairly common for people in their mid to late 20s, members of the USMNT’s golden generation returning to the World Cup as husbands and fathers. This moment in their careers could not come at a more timely juncture, a World Cup on home soil just days away. The task of furthering the growth of American soccer is greater than these 26 players but as global attention turns towards them, they will become the conduits of the sport’s most fascinating subplot – the casual embrace of the world’s game in a nation that feels like a most intriguing outlier.
The USMNT are coming of age at just the right time, one might argue; the group is technically experienced enough to handle the demands and hopefully live up to the promise at a World Cup that will be the greatest test of their peak capabilities. Time will tell if they can actually live up to the potential many spotted in them roughly a decade ago – and if, in an uber-competitive sport, their true qualities will actually be enough to see them accomplish a grand feat many desperately hope awaits them.
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From babies to adults
The story of the USMNT is ultimately one of player development, a concept that embodies the spirit of being easier said than done in a way few other things do. Before the 1994 World Cup, the U.S. was essentially a soccer wasteland – FIFA required the country to launch a professional league as a prerequisite for hosting the tournament, paving the way for a robust system that could actually foster talent for the first time in the country’s history. The USMNT’s golden generation is made up of products of those systems like Adams, who came up through the New York Red Bulls academy, or those who were recruited by European clubs like Christian Pulisic, who rose up through Borussia Dortmund‘s impressive ranks.
It was not all glitz and glamor for the USMNT’s future World Cup standouts. These stories are now few and far between in American soccer but Chris Richards took the road less traveled. The Birmingham, Ala. native was born far away from a soccer hotbed and was first rejected by FC Dallas‘ academy before a brief stint turned into a one-way ticket to Europe. There’s a period of catch-up for players like Richards, though – and a stigma that is still pervasive.
“Especially when I first got to Germany,” Richards, who took part in a stint in Bayern Munich‘s youth ranks, recalled, “it was a bit isolating because I’m an American coming over potentially taking a German kid’s spot or European player’s spot and they don’t want to help you. I mean, I understand. In America, I think when you’re in the academy, a kid comes in, we’re very welcoming and I think when you get to Europe, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. You’re fighting for the one spot on the first team and there might not even be a spot, so it’s very much a kill-or-be-killed kind of world and I think a lot of it comes from me being American. They kind of want to leave you out.”
Even in the places where the USMNT’s current stars were valued as youth prospects, they faced challenges – and some of their own making. Pulisic, the face of his generation, once said he had to be told by ex-USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter to train harder. Weston McKennie turned down a homegrown deal at FC Dallas to join Schalke’s academy and turned pro within a year of his arrival in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, a mining town near the Dutch border. He had his admirers but for them, there were drawbacks.
“I loved him,” David Wagner, McKennie’s former coach at Schalke and current RB Leipzig academy director, said. “I loved him. He was super young. I think he was 21 when I coached him. I love that he can play several positions. I love that he has his heart at the right place so he never gives up. He really leaves his heart on the pitch. I think at this time, he still had to learn to be a top professional. This is the truth as well. He loved the life, as well, but he’s an honest, very, very powerful kid. Obviously, he does not play for the worst club in the world at the moment and I think that is exactly where he should be. He can play for the top teams in the world and I think every manager loves a player like him who is a proper, honest worker, brave as well even if he’s technically not a super-gifted player but he has some willingness. He’s a fighter.”
Their collective coming-of-age story has seen them overcome a handful of those challenges, either by fixing their own habits or running into people who would help them along the way. Richards joins a long list of colleagues who employ a personal physio; Malik Tillman works with a private chef; McKennie survived two different coaches deeming him surplus to requirements at Juventus before performing so well that USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino described his club as “McKennie plus 10.”
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The list of their greatest supporters is headlined by Berhalter, who first introduced them to the national team in 2019. Their former coach – currently in charge of MLS’ Chicago Fire – now has the vibe of a beloved schoolteacher who takes pride in his former students, running into them in Chicago a week before the World Cup began as the team passed through the city for their final pre-tournament friendly, a 2-1 defeat to Germany. McKennie was delighted to be in the same building as Berhalter, a person he said he’s cried in front of before. The feeling was mutual.
“One thing we have to remember is when I got them, they were young,” he recalled. “They were babies and they were just learning what it takes to be a professional athlete and now when I see them, they’re men and they have kids and they’re adults and they know exactly what it means to maintain themselves as professionals and it’s an amazing thing to see. I just greeted them now and it was like, can’t believe it. They’re grown up and I think they’ll be ready for this moment. If there’s one thing I know about this group is they step up to big moments.”
Slowly but surely, each of them has peaked at just the right time. The majority of the 2026 World Cup team compete for clubs in Europe’s top five leagues but many are MLS standouts, Pochettino unbiased in that particular assessment of the player pool. Just about all of them are regulars at their clubs no matter what pocket of the world they play in, bringing a much-desired experience to an all-important World Cup.
“I think guys have just gotten a lot more experience at club level, international level,” Pulisic said. “Awesome going through that World Cup as a team, going through the really good performances and getting through the group and then having a tough loss against a big team. It all helps you grow, it all helps you learn. I think most of the guys are going to go into this World Cup just a bit more relaxed, ready for these big moments and I think that helps. I’ve seen that so much throughout my career. Every game and every big moment feels just a little bit easier and you feel a little bit more comfortable going into it. That’s the thing.”
The weight of expectation
For a few crucial weeks this summer – and perhaps longer, depending on how things shake out – the world will view American soccer strictly through the capabilities of the 26 players who make up the World Cup roster. The perch is not exactly fair but it is undeniable, to the point that Adams hopes his team would be the catalysts for a much-desired new wave of growth for the sport in the country.
“That triggers me, the sense that the fate of soccer in the United States is now put in the hands of the players of the U.S. national team on the men’s and women’s sides,” Earnie Stewart, the one-time U.S. Soccer sporting director who was in charge as Berhalter ushered in the new generation, said. “I don’t understand that. If everything was well-organized, I guess you could [say that] but that’s not the case. That frustrates me big time.”
Like many, Stewart knows the national team programs live and die on player development and the functional operation of youth soccer, the trials and tribulations of a stifling headache unique to American soccer that is worthy of its own lengthy article – or a book, quite frankly. That particular fact has not stopped many from focusing all of their attention – good and bad – on the current generation of players for American soccer’s shortcomings. That is because the players’ misfortunes exist in a peculiar gray area – they are only as good as a fractured youth soccer system can be at building a generation of talent, but they are not blameless when the opening whistle blows in a game and they cannot find a way to win.
The most pervasive debate of this period in the USMNT’s history is whether or not the team has needed small fixes or not. Pochettino’s hire in the fall of 2024 has addressed some of it, the Argentine introducing a cohesive, attack-minded style of play that is designed to get the best out of their offensive players when all the pieces come together. The thing is that it has rarely all come together – Pochettino’s tinker-heavy approach has been coupled with accusations that the players needed to improve their mentality, criticism that has come from the coach and outsiders alike. The noise is not just from disgruntled fans who hate losing, though; influential former players have bashed the current group in social media posts and podcasts, to the point that Tim Weah once described them as “evil” (and does not regret saying that). There is some disconnect between this group of players and those that came before them, one that has been tricky to understand.
“I have a different point of view because I played a little bit with these guys,” Jozy Altidore, a forward who last played for the USMNT in 2019, said. “I think a lot of [the older] guys, maybe they don’t know them as well, they didn’t play with them, so I don’t know how much of that is a part of it. For me, like I said, I’ve known them, I got to play with them early on, connect with them on a different level and a lot of them before they made different club moves and so I was there at different time so maybe I have a different outlook and I’m incredibly supportive of this group because I’ve seen on the inside how they think, what they want to do, what they want to accomplish and again, to see a lot of that come to fruition.”
Pochettino, too, has been critical in public. The lowest low the USMNT hit during his time in charge came in March 2025 after two consecutive losses in the Concacaf Nations League, when he questioned their commitment. Things have trended upward since but Pochettino still cannot help himself, proverbially breathing sighs of relief every now and again as he relishes in the fact that he is only answering questions about the tactical nuances of the game rather than his players’ mentalities. The whole episode has caused some level of infighting, though it appears to have subsided with the World Cup now days away.
“I’m a former player and listening to these other former players pick these guys apart, throwing rocks at them,” Eric Wynalda, Stewart’s teammate at the 1994 World Cup, said. “Glass houses – rocks guys, knock it off. Support these guys, that’s our role and I can’t wait to be a fan. My son and I are going to go to the games in California. Our job is to support. It’s called supporters. That’s what it’s and once the team was selected, that was our job. Not to talk about who wasn’t there but to support who is and that’s what I meant by that.”
Even then, the issue hangs over the team like a cloud that is floating a bit too close to the sun. The USMNT no longer have the excuse of youth and inexperience, to the point that their World Cup journeys should be defined by their talent alone. It makes this U.S. team hard to truly pin down – nearly a decade after this group became the group, it is still entirely unclear what their ceiling actually is. The best-case scenario this summer is seeing the USMNT advance to the quarterfinals for the first time since 2002, but breaking into the last eight is a difficult feat for all involved. There is a glimmer of hope, though; national teams are built through tried-and-true practices but there is no exact science in creating a successful World Cup run, the sporadic, inexplicable unpredictability of sports always capable of spoiling the party – or creating the most memorable of summers.
“Being in the right place at the right time,” Stewart said. “I saw what we did during Qatar in the games that we played there, especially the game against England is one that pops to mind. You can compete with those kinds of teams. That means with a lot of these players that have those experiences and now coming into this World Cup, why not be able to do the same thing and with that, knowing that you can compete with those countries. I’d say there’s still a lot possible with your home fans and being in your home stadium. I don’t see why it can’t be positive – unless we all keep talking negative, then you also know the outcome of that.”
