The USA has transformed itself from a developing footballing nation into a World Cup contender, from an old-boys’ league into a European-style talent factory. This is its five-year plan in the lead-up to hosting the tournament in 2026…
THE USA’S ROADMAP TO WORLD CUP VICTORY
SOCCER INC Words: Jürgen Schmieder
The USA men’s football team has a real chance of winning the 2026 World Cup.
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“We’ve never had as many talented players before as we do now,” says USA men’s national team head coach, Gregg Berhalter. “The squad is extremely young. Many of them will be at the peak of their careers by the time their home World Cup comes around.” Berhalter is talking about players such as 22-year-old Christian Pulisic, who plays in England for Chelsea; Gio Reyna (18, Borussia Dortmund); Rising stars (and stripes): the USA men’s football team training in Bradenton, Florida
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Sure, it sounds crazy. Especially when you say that of a nation that – in stark contrast to the runaway success of its women’s female football team, which has won four Women’s World Cup titles and dominates the sport – has never got beyond the quarter-finals stage of the men’s tournament. Embarrassingly, the team failed to even qualify for the 2018 World Cup, its under-23s team lost in Olympic qualifying to Honduras this year, and the USA’s top-level league competition, Major League Soccer (MLS), is still seen as second-rate in comparison to Europe’s elite divisions. And yet, isn’t it the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world who end up being the ones who succeed? That’s what Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said in his company’s famous 1997 ad. The slogan he presented was ‘Think Different’, and that’s exactly what the USA men’s national team is doing now, after decades of megalomaniacal bungling. So, here’s a thought… What if we stopped thinking of US football as a federation; stopped thinking of MLS as a league; stopped thinking of clubs such as the New York Red Bulls as just clubs and thought of the whole thing as a huge start-up instead? And the World Cup in five years’ time – which is being joint-hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico – as its IPO? What prospectus would this football start-up produce for investors?
Weston McKennie (22, Juventus); Sergiño Dest (20, Barcelona); Yunus Musah (18, Valencia); Brenden Aaronson (20, Red Bull Salzburg); and, of course, Tyler Adams. The 22-year-old RB Leipzig midfielder is a shining example of how things are shaping up in this football start-up at this present time. “I only really started focusing on soccer when I was accepted by the Red Bulls Academy at the age of 12,” Adams explains. This observation is more significant than it may at first seem. The footballer hails from the village of Wappingers Falls, which is
THE RED BULLETIN
