The United States Men’s National Team’s two best moments in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar were a 0-0 draw against England in arguably the worst game of the entire tournament and the team’s lone goal against Iran, which came at a tremendous cost: It only went in because the team’s talismanic young winger Cristian Pulisic crashed into the goalkeeper, groin first, with such force he had to be subbed out at halftime. Both came in the group stage; the USMNT was eliminated, with minimal fuss, by a substandard Dutch team in the round of 16. It was, nevertheless, a triumph—or at least it felt like one at the time. 

“America is a young country with an old mentality,” wrote George Santayana almost two decades before the United States’s still best ever World Cup finish, which came when it placed fourth in the first ever tournament in 1930. “It is a country with two mentalities, one a survival of the beliefs and standards of the fathers, the other an expression of the instincts, practice, and discoveries of the younger generations.” The 2022 team embodied Santayana’s dual mentalities. It was stodgy, resourceful, and more than a little abject like the USMNT’s of old; but it also had a zip and sense of youthful pizzaz—as well as a technical proficiency that American soccer had previously lacked. Here was a team you could be hopeful about. Here was a team that embodied the youthful promise we once associated with the United States but had never, until that point, associated with the United States Men’s National Team. 

The United States met expectations in Qatar by making it out of the group stage—and following its humiliating failure to qualify for the 2018 tournament, the fact that they were there at all was its own reward. But the sense of excitement surrounding that team had more to do with what would presumably come next. The United States had brought the second youngest team to the World Cup in Qatar; four years later, it would host the tournament and, it practically went without saying, field a team that could finally announce the United States’s arrival as a global soccer powerhouse.  

Well, here we are. With the World Cup here at long last, it seems that the team has taken a step back, possibly a significant one. Pulisic is arguably a superstar—he is inarguably one of the best players in Italy’s domestic league, as is his national team teammate, the do-everything midfielder Weston McKennie. Still, these are players who aren’t easy to embrace. Pulisic is at best MAGA-curious—he did the “Trump dance” a week after the president’s re-election, finally settling years of rumors that the most talented player in the history of the USMNT was both right-wing and stupid. McKennie, meanwhile, celebrates goals with a campy flick of the wrist—a tribute to Harry Potter. 

The United States is not sending its best to its national team, in other words. And from a talent perspective, at least, the situation gets significantly more dire from there. No one seems to know what position Tim Weah, son of Ballon d’Or winning striker (and former Liberian president) George, plays anymore. Mauricio Pochettino opted to only bring four midfielders, dropping Yunus Musah, a standout player in 2022, after he did not learn how to pass, defend, or shoot in the intervening period. Still, it’s not that surprising. After Pulisic, McKennie and Tyler Adams—the only natural holding midfielder on the team—are the USMNT’s two most important players and should play every minute. If anything happens to either of them, the team is screwed.

We have forgotten how to produce goalies—once the only thing we knew how to put out into the world—and center-backs. 38-year-old Tim Ream will captain the side and probably play a lot, since he’s the only of the large crop of defenders Pochettino opted to bring who is a competent passer.

Four years ago, the U.S. boasted a promising crop of young strikers, none of whom have really fulfilled their considerable potential. That said, this is undoubtedly the best group of center forwards the United States have ever brought to a World Cup—Folarin Balogun, Ricardo Pepi, and Haji Wright are all competent and it doesn’t seem far-fetched that one of them, probably Balogun, could get hot. But would you take any of them over, say, South Africa striker Lyle Foster? I’m not sure I would but the fact that it’s a debate is a problem.

Thanks to a weak group that may or may not have been produced via FIFA corruption, the USMNT is all but guaranteed to make it to the knockout stage. But make no mistake: This is not a very good team. 

The fact that this World Cup is primarily being hosted in the United States may prove to be a strange kind of blessing. Ordinarily, a national team this abject—a team that has failed to deliver on the promise it showed four years earlier—would be a national embarrassment. But the real star of the U.S. is not Pulisic or McKennie, it’s Donald Trump. The spotlight throughout the tournament will be on the president, which will provide a form of relief for the U.S.’s young, hopeless team. They can disappoint us without remorse because Trump will, several times over, disappoint us more. 

And the pathetic state of the USMNT should be a relief for us all, especially given Pulisic’s apparent political predilections. If the team was good, it would be co-opted by the country’s Keystone Kop wannabe authoritarians. It’s not. Its fundamental lack of quality undercuts any attempt by Trump to turn the tournament into an authoritarian spectacle from the start. When Mussolini made the 1934 tournament in his own big, dumb image he knew, on some level, that Italy had a decent shot at winning it (which it did). The U.S. has no chance of winning in 2026, a reality that is politically limiting for Trump’s grandiose and incoherent goals. In any case, it’s hard to use a World Cup to further your grandiose, incoherent authoritarian ambitions if Spain or Brazil—or, god forbid, France—wins. This motley bunch of losers are highly unlikely to be embraced on the right as a surprise cultural avatar for the MAGA agenda. Indeed, they’re far more likely to serve as a metaphor for its decline. When Pulisic did the “Trump dance” it was a potent reminder that the president was ascendent with young men like him. What will it represent when his World Cup campaign ends with a whimper?  

But there is also a sense of missed opportunity for U.S. soccer as a whole, one that may reverberate for years to come. All of the limited success the United States has had in international soccer stemmed from the last and first time it hosted the World Cup in 1994. That tournament foisted an inaugural bunch of losers onto U.S. soccer—namely Alexi Lalas—with the players from the 1994 USMNT continuing to occupy key roles in both punditry and team governance, despite having shown little competency in either field. But in altruistic terms the trade-off was worth it. The 1994 tournament was the World Cup at its best—vibrant, multicultural, thrilling. Though objectively not very good, the U.S. team was scrappy and exciting and easy to root for; it fought its way to the quarterfinal, where it lost by a goal to Brazil, the eventual champions, who played most of the second half with ten men. A loveable national team and one of the best World Cups ever combined to change the history of soccer in the U.S. 

After decades of spurning the most popular sport on the planet, the United States realized it may just be missing something. Soccer, it turns out, is pretty great. And its greatness stemmed from its accessibility. Everyone loved it. Everyone could play it. Everyone could watch it. The U.S. experienced soccer in a new way, which created the conditions that could produce stars like Pulisic and McKennie. 

This tournament is shaping up to be the opposite. For one, it is profoundly inaccessible; excessive costs for ticketing, parking, and public transportation have made it available to the superrich—global, American, or otherwise—and no one else. FIFA sees the tournament as a unique opportunity to mine the world’s most brazenly capitalistic country, not as part of a long-term plan to build the United States into a country that appreciates soccer—let alone one that competes for its most coveted international trophies. Trump, meanwhile, sees it as yet another moment to put himself front and center and line his own pockets. American soccer authorities—the people who manage the sport’s long-term future in the U.S.—are on the sidelines. Instead of growing the sport domestically, the World Cup will boost Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino. And the U.S. will stay on the sidelines for another couple of decades until Barron Trump—an avowed Arsenal fan—becomes president and finally does what it takes to bring us glory.