SEATTLE — Last fall, in an effort to inspire a national soccer team lacking in confidence and belief, coach Mauricio Pochettino came up with a slogan for this summer’s World Cup, one the U.S. would be playing at home.
“Why not us?” he asked.
Why couldn’t the U.S. make a deep run in the tournament? Why couldn’t the U.S. compete with the best teams in the world? Why not us?
Monday he got his answer: Because the U.S. just isn’t good enough.
A couple of rousing performances in group play and a win over a third-place team in the first elimination game had the U.S. believing, had the U.S. hoping. Maybe Pochettino was right. Maybe it was the Americans’ time.
But it all proved to be a mirage.
On Monday, Belgium brought the Americans back to reality, thumping them 4-1 in a round-of-16 game it thoroughly dominated. It was the fourth consecutive World Cup in which the U.S. has gone out in the final 16, a rung on the tournament ladder the Americans have gotten past just once in 96 years.
For all the hope and promise and belief Pochettino inspired, his team finished in the same place just about every U.S. World Cup team has finished in since 1994.
“We’ve had so much faith and belief in each other, and we felt salvation coming together again,” defender Antonee Robinson said. “We let ourselves down.”
“Today,” midfielder Tyler Adams agreed, “wasn’t a good day.”
Afterward, even Pochettino acknowledged he may have oversold things just a bit.
“The improvement, or to grow, is not like you’re in a rocket,” said Pochettino, whose future is unclear with both U.S. Soccer and the coach saying they will discuss it after a post-World Cup break. “We were in a mess and then, in the World Cup, we improved a lot. But it’s not linear, that we’re going to grow so quick.”
Belgium, ranked ninth in the world, was the first top-25 team the U.S. played in the tournament and only the second team that would have qualified for the World Cup under the old 32-team format. And the Americans tripped over the big step up in class, with the loss matching the most one-sided result in a World Cup game since 1990.
The U.S. took just seven shots, the fewest it has taken in a World Cup elimination game in 32 years. Matt Freese, the team’s Harvard-educated goalkeeper, made a boneheaded play in the second half that gifted Belgium its third goal, and Christian Pulisic, who didn’t play a full game in the tournament, lost possession a game-high 11 times in the first half before leaving because of an injury midway through the second.
He won’t get another chance to play a full World Cup game for four years.
“I felt really good this summer playing with the guys, and I thought my level was high,” said Pulisic, who sat alone on the U.S. bench, head in hands, as the final minutes ticked off. “It’s disappointing. I didn’t quite have the moments I was hoping to to help us to really push and get over this next step of beating a really good team.
“So I’m disappointed with myself, of course.”
All in all it was a forgettable end to a tournament that got off to a promising start. The U.S. won three of its first four games, its most victories in a World Cup, while scoring a record 10 goals. Folarin Balogun scored three of those, matching the most by an American in the tournament since 1930.
But Balogun may have unwittingly played a role in the team’s demise as well.
In last week’s win over Bosnia-Herzegovina, Balogun drew a red card early in the second half, a penalty that should have banned him from playing against Belgium. However the day before the game, FIFA announced it was holding the suspension in abeyance, clearing Balogun to start against Belgium.
It was just the second time in World Cup history such a move has been made. And when President Trump took credit for getting the suspension lifting, saying he had called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to lobby on Balogun’s behalf, it ignited a firestorm that nearly overshadowed the game.
The U.S. players say the controversy did not impact them. It was a coincidence, they said, that they played their worst game of the tournament Monday.
“Outside noise,” captain Tim Ream called it.
Perhaps. But it was a noise that couldn’t drown out how poorly the team played.
“I can only be honest,” said Balogun, who was perhaps the most accountable U.S. player in the tournament. “I don’t think we had a good game today. We played well in other games. We were very intense, we were able to generate energy with the crowd. And today we didn’t give the crowd a lot to cheer for.
“That’s the most disappointing thing. That’s the part that hurts the most for me personally. We have to wait four years again to be in this position, which is hurtful.”
Pain and regret. Those were common emotions Monday after the U.S. joined fellow tournament hosts Mexico and Canada on the sideline.
“It’s disappointment,” defender Chris Richards said. “You play for your club, you’re representing a million people at most. When you’re representing your country, it’s 340 million people. I’m just very disappointed with how today went.”
“It sucks,” added Adams, who captained the U.S. team that was eliminated in the round of 16 four years ago.
So what has changed since 2022, he was asked.
“It feels exactly the same,” he answered. “You get knocked out of a tournament, it doesn’t feel great. You start to think about what you could have done better. If no one ever lost, then there probably wouldn’t be any progress.”
The U.S. team did make progress, however. It just came off the field. In the second World Cup played in the U.S., the Americans played before live crowds totaling nearly 350,000 people and a domestic TV audience of more than 110 million.
“A big message throughout the tournament was what kind if impact we would be able to have,” Ream said. “Obviously that all comes to a halt now but I don’t think the conversation changes. There are boys and girls who were watching and being inspired. I’m sure people will say, ‘Oh, it now is going to die down.’ But if you look at what we’ve done, I don’t think that conversation should die down.
“I think it should be how incredible this journey has been with this group. How can we keep the conversation going? Those boys and girls, how can we continue to inspire them now that [our] tournament is over?”
So the slogan becomes “why not them?”
It will be four years before we find out if that’s a mirage as well.
Deputy sports editor Ed Guzman contributed to this report.
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