In 1990, then-United States men’s national team manager Bob Gansler made a critical and somewhat controversial choice. He left three of the program’s laureled veterans at home and brought a young and little-tested team to the World Cup in Italy, the USA’s first in 40 years. As Gansler recalled later: “I was thinking not only for ’90, but I was thinking about the 90s.” In 1998, Steve Sampson was looking to the future as well.
He had lucked into the USMNT’s managerial gig and had barely clung on to it going into that year’s World Cup, but he nevertheless made a confident proclamation. They never really stopped being that. And this bullishness on the hazily outlined not-right-now-but-definitely-sometime-later-on tended to coalesce around one player, maybe two.
The USMNT made their modern World Cup breakthrough powered by the energy and unfettered talent of 20-year-olds Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley in 2002. When those two foundered at the 2006 World Cup, another young player, Clint Dempsey, emerged. That year, a 16-year-old Freddy Adu made his USMNT debut.
And so a pattern formed: the US soccer community waited to be lifted to the next plane by a savior. Or maybe the one after that. Or else the next one will.
Dempsey outlasted Donovan and faded just as Christian Pulisic emerged. Because even as a golden-ish generation coalesced around him, Pulisic was seen as the player expected to make something happen at the 2026 World Cup, the culmination of an eight-year project of rebuilding the national team. He was expected to activate Hero Mode, the way he briefly had in Qatar in 2022, throwing himself in front of a cross at the expense of a pelvic contusion but bundling the make-or-break winner into the Iranian goal.
Aside from a great first half in the tournament opener, Pulisic’s home World Cup was a bust, and the USMNT’s campaign ended with a whimper. On its face, it felt odd that Mauricio Pochettino should launch a youth movement in the first camp after the World Cup. The core of his team had hardly aged out; all but defender Tim Ream are comfortably on the right side of 30.
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