Thoughts On: Belgium 4 -1 USA
Disjointed, migrainic thoughts on probably not the worst but maybe the most disappointing USMNT loss of my lifetime
I had a migraine hit around 11:00pm last night that kept me from falling asleep for much of the night and left me with too much time to think about the loss:
It's odd, you know — I don't think things felt that badly in the moment, it wasn't until I was trying and failing to fall asleep that the USMNT’s loss to Belgium started to really feel bad. I felt fine down the stretch, I laughed obnoxiously loudly in the back of the concert venue where we watched the match at off-hand comments made by my friends. I had random, serendipitous encounters with friends that I know are not soccer fans on the street while on the way out, and we laughed.
To some extent, the fact that it ended with so many fans ready to laugh underscores how severe of a failure this match was by the US Men's National Team.
I guess that I don't know for certain, but I have to think that the mood on the main streets of the average mid-size city in Mexico or Portugal immediately following their losses were far less jocular than ours. If I didn’t know better, the mood on Mass Street last night fit a street party for a neutral match more than it did a devastating failure to fulfill a once in a generation opportunity.
But this is who the USMNT is to the average American. They turn on the TV once every four years, watch the team disappoint, and turn back to their business after they disappoint. The wins are nice, and the losses are nothing to cry over. Part of me believes that this is just how Americans will always be with most US national teams — I took off work to watch Noah Lyles in the 100m in 2024 but haven't watched a single track and field event since — but there was this pervading sense that a deep tournament run for the USMNT would have made a deep dent in the American zeitgeist. A quarterfinal match against Spain on Friday, one in which we entered with a home crowd as underdogs, I really think would have been a huge moment for the sport in this country, but the team blew that chance. Even a competitive match against Belgium, like a repeat of the 2014 Belgium game, the 2010 Ghana game, or the 2009 Spain game, would have at least left Americans with a positive feeling about the team. Now, after that performance, I think they're safely forgettable, easy to relegate back into the realm of other international failures who we briefly paid attention to. This was a feel-good story for a few weeks, one which turned into a bitterly controversial story on Monday morning and dissolved into the abyss by nightfall.
This feels like the end of several cycles. There’s the one that started with failure in Kansas City in the 2024 Copa America, the one that started after getting outmatched in Qatar in 2022, the one that started in tears in Couva in 2017, maybe even some that started with Wynalda’s goal for the San Jose Clash in Spartan Stadium in 1996, the Brazil loss in Stanford Stadium in 1994, and Paul Caligiuri's goal in Trinidad in 1989. This tournament felt like a sort of peak to which the entirety of American men's soccer had been building for years. How many friendlies, MLS matches, USL matches, or lower-level European matches did I watch while wondering if we might identify a young prospect who would hit his peak in the knockout rounds of the 2026 World Cup? It's all been building to this, so it's just devastating to see it fall apart in such embarrassing fashion.
And yet, this is not the lowest moment for the USMNT that I've ever seen. Other losses left the program in worse places. The floor here is not nearly as low as it got after the Couva loss in 2017, but the ceiling seemed so high leading into this tournament, and it feels like this match has lowered it back down.
As I tossed and turned, head throbbing in the darkness last night, I kept thinking back to where I was and how I felt during prior disappointments. I was at Arrowhead for Uruguay two years ago, rushing out down the spiral ramps into the parking lot and speeding out before I could really grasp how angry I was. The 2023 Panama loss was the first sporting event I watched in a house that I just moved away from this month, confused over where the program was supposed to go from there. 2020 Canada and 2019 Mexico I watched alone in San Diego, hoping to see Gregg Berhalter canned before the sun came up.
I couldn’t watch the Trinidad match in 2017. I went to bed that night confused and disappointed, then found myself strangely invigorated the next day. It felt like the entire program had burnt to the ground, and I wanted to be a part of the rebuilding process. I was 22, almost done with college, with what felt like the rest of my life ahead of me, so I dove more intensely into caring about this team than I ever had. Now, here I am, 31, just about as disappointed, far less sure of what the program’s trying to build towards from this point while far more sure of what I’m personally trying to build towards from this point. It will hurt this much again, I’m sure of that, but will it ever feel this important again?
As the match wound down, John Strong made what felt like a desperate plea to the viewing public to not stop caring about soccer after this match ended. "Go out and see your local club," he said in around the 87th. I kind of laughed at this because my local club is profoundly disappointing, but I understand where he's coming from. He's a Portlander, he watched the Timbers turn from a USL side playing in a minor league baseball stadium into MLS champions within the past two decades. I’ve seen something similar with soccer in Kansas City. I hope that the people who got swept up in this year's tournament come out to a match at whatever level and in whatever league they have access to.
This tournament has reinvigorated the soccer fan within me. I want to go watch Sporting KC, the Current, and the Jayhawks in a manner that I wasn't really feeling back in May. I love this sport, this sport has changed my life for the better and I want other people to have theirs changed too. Perhaps naively, this felt like an opportunity for that to happen en masse. I suppose it's nice that we'll never truly be able to tell how badly this match squandered that.