The Verde Report: Qualification for 2022 World Cup Just the Beginning for U.S. Men’s National Team
The future looks bright as USMNT heads to Qatar
By Eric Goodman, Fri., April 1, 2022
When was the last time you thought about Qatar? Like, really thought about it. Can you point it out on a map? Name its capital city? Identify its flag? Don't worry if things are a little fuzzy in that department. In about nine months, the peninsular Persian Gulf nation will occupy more of your daily attention than you ever thought possible.
Why? Because the United States men's national team has qualified for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar! Cue the confetti poppers.
That fact in itself is well worth celebrating. Soccer enthusiasts who predate Austin FC in their footy fandom might remember the American men failing to land a spot at the 2018 edition of the world's most-watched sporting event. What followed were five difficult years of embarrassment, uncertainty, and insecurity. Missing out on a World Cup does funny things to the collective mental health of a nation's soccer culture.
In our case, it kept an ominous dark cloud over the five most exciting years ever for Americans finding success on the global soccer stage. U.S. players have spent the last half-decade making their mark on some of the biggest clubs on the planet, including Chelsea, Barcelona, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund, PSG, Valencia, and more. Those players, alongside a robust complement of more-than-capable MLS stars, combined over the past seven months to shepherd the Stars and Stripes to a relatively comfortable qualification campaign, even if flashbacks from 2018 often kept it from feeling as such.
For that, head coach Gregg Berhalter and his staff deserve plenty of credit. Transforming a diaspora of talented teens and twentysomethings into the core of a formidable national team is much easier said than done, and Berhalter managed it without compromising his brand of aggressiveness, which led directly to two strong performances (a home win and a road draw) against archrivals Mexico.
Put all of that together, now that the qualification hurdle is in the rearview, and stateside fans can finally allow themselves to get excited about what this U.S. team might realistically achieve in Qatar. At 11am on Friday, April 1, the official World Cup draw will take place and the American squad will learn its group stage opponents for the opening round of competition. It's unlikely (though not impossible) that the U.S. will be the most talented team in its group, but it is hard to see them comparing unfavorably to more than one opponent. Even some European nations will look at the U.S. and be envious of our top-level talent.
And the fact that that top-level talent is so uniformly young makes things even more exciting. If you're the kind of person who likes to keep expectations low, you are free to view the entire Qatar experience as a chance for the likes of Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams, Gio Reyna, Ricardo Pepi, and co. to get some invaluable World Cup experience ahead of the 2026 tournament, when those players will be just settling into the prime of their careers and the World Cup comes to American soil. And the best part of that situation? The U.S. is automatically qualified for 2026 by way of being a host nation, so nothing to stress about.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar begins November 21. In the meantime, Austin FC has a season to resume, beginning Saturday, April 2, at 6:30pm, when the Verde take on the San Jose Earthquakes at PayPal Park.
