Three Weeks of Hope End With One Humiliating Night for the United States

For all the memorable moments this World Cup provided, the United States will ultimately be remembered for how dramatically its dream came crashing down.

Jul 07, 2026

As I stood in front of the television wearing the same outfit — a gray shirt with an American flag and Tottenham Hotspur pajama pants — that I’d worn for all four of the United States’ previous World Cup matches, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been here before. Four years ago, the USMNT fell out of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to the Netherlands in what was a fairly miserable effort. Four years later, the team that had captured the hearts and minds of millions of Americans nationwide had, for seemingly the billionth time, crashed and burned in the Round of 16.

All credit to Belgium. It was evident they took the Folarin Balogun reinstatement as a personal affront. They were quicker to every ball, crisper with every pass and better at finishing their chances. There was never a moment where it appeared they weren’t in control. Even when Malik Tillman, who emerged as one of the best things about this tournament for the United States, tied the game midway through the first half, Belgium had an immediate response. It felt like every time the Americans showed the slightest bit of life, the Red Devils immediately snuffed it out. By the end of the night, there wasn’t much left to analyze other than a team that was simply second-best in every facet of the game.

For three weeks, it appeared the United States had turned a corner when it came to performing at the international level. Mauricio Pochettino had unlocked a swagger, a hunger that this program hadn’t shown in years. Even the Balogun red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32 couldn’t stop the mojo. And when Balogun was subsequently reinstated just 36 hours before the match against Belgium, it looked like the universe wanted the United States’ journey to continue. Maybe destiny had finally decided to throw American soccer a bone.

But sometimes dreams, however amazing they might be, are just dreams. Sometimes reality is harsh. Sometimes the lights are simply too bright.

It’s hard to analyze the United States’ performance at this World Cup because two things can be true at the same time. On one hand, this was a fantastic improvement over what had been a lackluster cycle since 2022. The team looked more dangerous. More confident. More willing to take the game to its opponent rather than simply survive. For the first time in a long time, there was a genuine feeling that this program was building toward something meaningful. But the exit was so disastrous and so embarrassing that it almost wipes away all of that goodwill. The USMNT needed a trip to the quarterfinals to make this run feel undeniably different from the previous ones. This program had reached the Round of 16 before. That wasn’t uncharted territory. It was the next step that would’ve sent everybody to the moon.

Belgium had other ideas. Several of its players admitted after the match that Balogun’s reinstatement served as extra motivation in a game that otherwise lacked much external fuel for the Red Devils. While that certainly wasn’t the sole reason the United States couldn’t keep up with Belgium, I don’t think it can be completely discounted, either. Sports are emotional, and if Belgium genuinely believed FIFA had handed the Americans an unfair advantage, that’s something that can absolutely sharpen a team’s focus. One has to wonder whether Balogun sitting out the match, as originally intended prior to FIFA’s intervention, changes anything. Maybe the United States still loses. Belgium was the better side regardless, after all. But maybe it loses with a little more dignity than whatever the heck that was.

I am still so frazzled by all of this, if you couldn’t tell. It would’ve been perfectly fine if the United States had lost in a competitive match. That happens. Belgium, despite being in what I believe are the twilight years of its golden generation, is still one of the 10 best national teams on the planet. It has world-class players all over the field and enough quality to beat just about anybody when it’s clicking on all cylinders. Losing to Belgium isn’t embarrassing. Going out in the fashion the United States did is. That’s the part that’s going to sting for a long time, especially after FIFA gift-wrapped the team’s star striker back onto the field for some bizarre reason. In other words, the United States was handed a freebie by FIFA and the universe and simply couldn’t take advantage.

Quite frankly, everything and everybody sucked. Sergiño Dest was terrible. Tim Ream was especially abhorrent on the back end. Matt Freese’s error that resulted in Belgium’s third goal was perhaps the most demoralizing moment of my soccer-watching life because any lingering hope that the Americans could somehow find their way back into the game disappeared the second that ball crossed the line. Christian Pulisic, the face of this USMNT and, according to virtually every media outlet on Earth, the team’s best player, was arguably the worst player on the field. It was the type of collective performance that makes an entire nation want to crawl into a hole and avoid talking about soccer for the next four years.

Let’s talk about Pulisic for a moment because he deserves his own conversation. Outside of a tantalizing first 45 minutes against Paraguay in the tournament opener, the AC Milan winger looked average at best and downright poor at worst. He was dealing with an injury for most of the World Cup, sure, but that’s also been the book on Pulisic throughout much of his career. He just struggles to stay on the field. That’s unfortunate, but it’s also reality. When the United States needed its biggest star to put together the performance of his life in the biggest match this generation of American players has ever experienced, it simply didn’t happen. Whether it was because of injury, poor form or some combination of the two really doesn’t matter in the end. The United States needed Christian Pulisic to be the “LeBron James of soccer.” Instead, he looked a lot more like Anthony Bennett.

So, was this a positive World Cup for the United States? I honestly think the answer is still yes, even after everything that happened Monday night. The game is undoubtedly going to grow in popularity because of this tournament being played on American soil. Millions of people who never would’ve watched a soccer match before have now experienced the drama, the passion and the chaos that make the World Cup unlike anything else in sports.

There have been so many incredible stories throughout the past month. Lionel Messi battling Kylian Mbappé atop the Golden Boot race. Erling Haaland finally getting his moment with Norway. Cape Verde stunning the world against the likes of Spain and Argentina. This tournament has had everything, and the United States managed to become one of those stories for a little while, too. The 4-1 win over Paraguay was one of the best sporting moments of my life. So was the 2-0 victory over Australia a week later. Beating Bosnia and Herzegovina the way they did was genuinely uplifting and only made me love this sport even more than I already did.

But losing 4-1 to Belgium, the same nation that ended the United States’ hopes and dreams back in 2014, was such a gut punch that it overshadows almost everything that came before it. Few people are going to remember that Paraguay game now. Even fewer will remember Australia. All people are going to remember from this World Cup run are three things: Balogun’s controversial red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina, FIFA’s bizarre decision to reinstate him for the Round of 16, and then the absolute wet fart of a performance the United States delivered against Belgium. Fair or unfair, that’s the type of stuff history tends to remember.

In the end, everything remains the same. The United States is out in the Round of 16 of the World Cup once again. The program has unquestionably taken steps forward, but it still has a long way to go before it can seriously dream about winning this tournament. Maybe that day is coming in the distant future. Maybe these past three weeks were the first real signs that American soccer is finally starting to mature into something somewhat capable of competing with the world’s elite. I certainly hope so.

For now, though, I’m left trying to process another Round of 16 exit, wondering what could’ve been had things broken just a little differently, and preparing myself for another emotionally exhausting season of watching Tottenham Hotspur.

The universe is cruel sometimes.