The United States Men's National Soccer Team will be the home squad in next year's World Cup, and they could make a big splash.
Eleven of the 16 host stadiums in next year's tournament, which begins exactly one year from Wednesday, are in the United States, with New Jersey's MetLife Stadium hosting the final.
After 1994, Major League Soccer was born, and it goes without saying that the immediate rise of soccer's popularity in the country was exponential.
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But it's seemingly hit a wall in recent years as the USMNT hasn't exactly given Americans a chance to grasp on.
The squad got into the Round of 16 in 2010 and 2014 but failed to even qualify for the tournament in 2018. The USMNT returned to the Round of 16 three years ago but couldn't get out of the Copa América group stage on their own home soil last year.
Team USA legend Landon Donovan, though, feels that soccer is "secure" in the country, even if Team USA disappoints, and its popularity can only go up from here.
"There's going to be a lot of pressure, for sure, on this team. You play a World Cup in front of your home crowd, there's certainly going to be pressure. Is the state of soccer in trouble if they don't do well? No," Donovan said in a conference call with reporters this week.
"There is a massive, massive opportunity [for this team]. In my experiences from the '02 World Cup, when we did really well, my life changed, and the trajectory of USA Soccer changed a little bit."
But then again, Donovan scored one of the most famous goals in United States soccer history: his goal in stoppage time against Algeria put the U.S. through the group stage for the first time since 2002.
"In 2010, it was that on steroids when we had an iconic moment. So if this team can do one of two things, either go far and/or have an iconic moment or two, it will catapult soccer through the roof in this country."
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Alex Lasry, the CEO of the NYNJ Host Committee, offered similar sentiments, saying the global stars coming to the United States will be enough to grow the sport itself.
"If it ends up being not what we're hoping, I don't think that's going to dampen what the World Cup means to the United States," Lasry told Fox News Digital at Jersey City's Liberty State Park, which is the home of the official 2026 World Cup fan festival and hosted a one-year countdown launch party on Wednesday.
"I don't think it's going to dampen how that 6-, 7-, 8-year-old looks at it. Having [Lionel] Messi, [Kylian] Mbappe, [Cristiano] Ronaldo, [Christian] Pulisic, the stars of the sport here, is what's going to lead to that next generation of athletes saying, 'I want to be a part of that.'"
Fellow USMNT alum Alexi Lalas took the other side of the coin. While agreeing with Donovan in that all it takes is one special moment to get the country latched on, he said he isn't letting this squad "off the hook."
"This is a generation that, over the last 30-plus years, everybody has worked to make sure that they have everything they possibly need in terms of the opportunities and the resources they have; and with that comes higher expectations and fair expectations," Lalas said. "Whoever is ultimately on that field next summer, I hope they recognize the opportunity and responsibility to further the game. What [does that look] like? It can come in a lot of different forms. But when that final whistle blows for the U.S. team, you want to leave thinking, 'That was something I'm going to remember. That made me proud to not just be a soccer fan in the United States, but to be an American.'"
"You've got to be ready for that and embrace that opportunity with both hands and make the most of it," he said. "I don't want to let them off the hook, because I think they can do things we haven't seen before. They need the soccer gods to smile, but every team in the World Cup needs a little bit of luck going forward. And over the next year, they're going to have to work at what's going on, and I think the attitude off the field, to make sure they maximize next summer."
The 2026 FIFA World Cup takes place in North America next year and will be featured on FOX Sports.
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