A FIFA World Cup winner with West Germany in 1990, and a former head coach of the U.S. Men’s National Team, soccer legend Jürgen Klinsmann believes Mauricio Pochettino’s side has the potential to go all the way this summer.
The U.S. is set to co-host the 2026 tournament along with Mexico and Canada, with the opener set for June 11 at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, and the final to be held at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19.
Looking to guide the USMNT to its first World Cup knockout game win since 2002 in South Korea/Japan, Pochettino’s side will first have to navigate its way out of Group D, where they will face Türkiye, Paraguay, and Australia.
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Should they make it out of the group stage, the knockout phase will kick off with the newly implemented Round of 32, which has been put in place to accommodate the tournament’s expansion to 48 teams.
Looking ahead with FOX Sports, Klinsmann, who led the USMNT between 2011 and 2016, explained how winning a World Cup “takes such a high capability of suffering, of going through difficult times, difficult moments to play every three, four days once you go in the knockout phase,” adding that “when you think you go through the Round of 16 or the quarter final you think, ‘Oh, now you we're really there.’ Then comes even more difficult games with extra time, maybe penalty shootouts, and stuff like that.”
The 61-year-old questioned whether or not this USMNT is prepared “to really extremely suffer” and to take the tournament “one game at a time.” Klinsmann pointed out how many well-respected soccer nations, such as Mexico, Nigeria, and Japan, have performed consistently well over the years but remain incapable of getting into the right mentality to truly succeed at World Cups.
That being said, Klinsmann also pointed out that the USMNT is in a different place now than it was two or three decades ago. While there have long been Americans playing in European leagues, he believes the fact that so many now play in the UEFA Champions League is a major advantage.
As such, he suggested that should this group of players prove capable of forming “exceptional chemistry” and if they can “help each other when things get nasty, dirty, and it will get nasty and dirty, then maybe they can really surprise [people] one game at a time.”
It is this mentality of approaching the World Cup with just the next game in mind that Klinsmann highlighted as pivotal to success, as the next hurdle is always a bigger one come the knockout rounds.
But when it came down to the fundamental question of whether or not this USMNT is capable of going the distance, Klinsmann remained cautiously optimistic. “Is it doable? Yes, it's doable, but everything needs to work perfectly.”
The USMNT’s World Cup campaign will begin on June 12 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, when they take on Paraguay.