United States National Football Team

The United States Soccer Federation was founded in 1913 and the USMNT has played international football for more than a century, but it is only across the past decade that the country's senior team has consistently fielded squads drawn from the top five European leagues. Christian Pulisic (AC Milan), Weston McKennie (Juventus), Tyler Adams (Bournemouth), Gio Reyna (Borussia Dortmund) and Tim Weah (Juventus) anchor a 'golden generation' that grew up inside top-tier European academies and entered the senior team in the late 2010s. Tim Ream is captain. Goalkeeper Matt Turner remains first choice between the posts. USA hosted the 1994 World Cup, the first time the tournament was held in North America, and the 2026 edition is the second — co-hosted alongside Mexico and Canada, with the United States staging 78 of the 104 fixtures including the final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The 1994 tournament was the trigger for the launch of Major League Soccer in 1996 and the long-term infrastructure that has carried the country from a CONCACAF afterthought to a credible knockout-round threat. Mauricio Pochettino was appointed head coach in September 2024 after Gregg Berhalter's departure following the 2024 Copa América group-stage exit. The former Tottenham, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea coach is the highest-profile coaching appointment in USMNT history — and was brought in specifically to extract a deeper tournament run from the existing player pool at a home World Cup. The federation's stated ambition is the round of 16 as a floor and a quarter-final as a target.

The 1-0 win over England at the Estádio Independência in Belo Horizonte on 29 June 1950 remains the single most famous result in American football history. Joe Gaetjens, a part-time dishwasher in New York City born in Haiti and playing for a USA side made up of amateurs and semi-professionals, scored the only goal of the match midway through the first half. England were 3/1 favourites to win the tournament. The result was reported as a typing error in some European newspapers — '10-1 to England' rather than '1-0 to USA' — because no one believed the actual outcome. The run to the 2002 quarter-finals in South Korea remains the United States' best modern World Cup performance. Bruce Arena's side beat Portugal 3-2 in their opening fixture, drew with co-hosts South Korea, lost to Poland but advanced as runners-up, then beat Mexico 2-0 in the round of 16 — the only US win over Mexico in any World Cup. A 1-0 quarter-final defeat to Germany ended the campaign, with Gregg Berhalter (later USA head coach) clearing a ball off the line in the closing stages that the match officials missed had crossed. The 1-0 win over Iran at the Al Thumama Stadium on 29 November 2022 — a politically loaded fixture between the two nations — sent the United States through to the round of 16 in Qatar on a Pulisic goal that left the captain hospitalised after a collision with the Iranian goalkeeper. He recovered to start the round-of-16 fixture against the Netherlands, which ended in a 3-1 defeat.