The USMNT Isn't a Charity Case Anymore

Byline: Wilson Simons

    I came into this World Cup an optimist. I've believed for a while that this is the best version of the U.S. men's national team in a long, long time. Even I didn't expect them to take Paraguay apart the way they did.

    Four goals in one game. The 2022 U.S. team scored three across the entire tournament in Qatar. This group matched that and then some before halftime was a distant memory, in front of a roaring home crowd in Los Angeles, against a physical CONMEBOL side that was supposed to be the toughest test in the group defensively. Folarin Balogun scored twice, Gio Reyna iced it with a golazo, and the U.S. controlled the ball, the tempo, and the room. That game woke a lot of people up. The USMNT isn't a charity case anymore. They're legit.

    Start with the man at the center of it. Christian Pulisic is, arguably, the best player this country has ever produced, and he's spent a chunk of 2026 in a slump at AC Milan — a roughly six-month goal drought for club and country that he didn't snap until a friendly win over Senegal at the end of May. Pulisic has always been streaky; his highs are sky-high and his lows are a worry. But after Senegal and after this opener, it's clear which version we've got right now. He was gliding past defenders, and his confidence was visibly bleeding into everyone around him. The dribble he used to slip two Paraguayans and set up Balogun's first goal was the kind of moment that tells you a player is locked in.

    Here's what's different from every prior cycle, though: Pulisic isn't carrying this alone. For once, the U.S. has real, high-level European quality stacked behind him. Balogun has scored in the Champions League, the highest level of club football on earth. This isn't one star and a supporting cast of hopefuls — it's a squad of players who've competed in the biggest games club soccer has to offer. That depth is the whole difference.

    It shows up in the tactics, too. Mauricio Pochettino has settled on a 4-2-3-1, and the width comes from the fullbacks. With Alex Freeman overlapping on the right and Antonee Robinson flying up the left, the U.S. stretches the field — which lets the front four tuck inside and do their damage centrally: Dest cutting in from the right wing, Pulisic drifting in from the left, Weston McKinnie pulling the strings underneath, and Balogun leading the line. Tillman may have been the best player on the field doing exactly that, with McKennie and Adams screening behind them in the double pivot. When it clicks, like it did in the first half against Paraguay, it's free-flowing, liquid soccer.

    But that setup comes with a price, and it's the thing I can't stop thinking about. When your wing-backs are pushed that high, they have to be fast enough to recover the second the ball turns over — because if they don't, your last line of defense is a back three that includes a 38-year-old Tim Ream and a Chris Richards still shaking off an ankle injury. You do not want those two isolated in space against a real counter-attack. Paraguay doesn't have the firepower to make the U.S. pay for that more than once, but they did make them pay — their lone goal came through exactly the seam this system leaves behind when the wing-backs get caught upfield. Against Paraguay, that's a footnote. Against Spain, France, or Belgium, you don't live to make that mistake.

    Which brings me to the ceiling. For a while, the thing standing between this team and a run past the quarterfinals, in my mind, was one team: Spain. They're my pick to win the whole thing, and honestly, they still are. Once Lamine Yamal is fully healthy, I think they're close to unstoppable. Their flat 0-0 draw with Cape Verde this week was a genuine shock, and maybe it means they're a hair more beatable than I'd assumed but I'm not talking myself into Spain being vulnerable on the basis of one off night. That's wishful thinking.

    What's changed isn't my read on Spain. It's my read on the USMNT. A cycle ago, the question I'd have been asking was: how badly does a team like Spain beat us? After watching this opener, the question has been upgraded to: can we actually keep up? That might not sound like much. It's everything. Going from "how far behind are we" to "can we hang" is the entire distance between a feel-good story and a real contender.

    That's where I've landed, a few days into the tournament. This team is legit and the Paraguay performance wasn't a fluke, it was a statement. The attack that's been missing for a generation has finally shown up. The ceiling is still real, and it's probably still spelled S-P-A-I-N somewhere in the bracket. But it's a higher ceiling than this program has had in my lifetime, and the one thing standing between the U.S. and a run that genuinely matters might come down to a single tactical discipline: keeping those wing-backs honest and not getting caught on the break.

    Fix that, and the conversation isn't about surviving the group anymore. It's about how far this thing can actually go. Australia's up next on Friday, June 19 at 3 p.m. EST. I, for one, am no longer bracing for disappointment. I'm watching to see how good this team really is.