American Exceptionalism expects U.S. men's soccer to be better than what they are, and we can write endless think pieces with valid critiques about what the problem is, but the truth of the matter is, the World Cup is really hard to win.
In 23 World Cups, there have only been eight winners.
Brazil has the most wins with five, but they haven't won in 24 years. They also went 24 years or 6 World Cups between their 1970 and 1994 win.
The gaps between Germany's four wins are 20, 16, and 24 years, and this year's Round of 32 result is their best since their last win in 2014, meaning they didn't even get out of the Group Stage in 2018 and 2022.
Despite also having four wins, Italy hasn't even qualified for the last three tournaments, and they have gaps of 44 and 24 years between wins.
Before Argentina's latest win in 2022, their last victory was in 1986, a gap of 36 years. Messi himself had to play in five tournaments before winning.
France didn't win their first of two World Cups until 1998 after not qualifying the previous two, and their resurgence is in large part thanks to one player, Mbappé, who helped them win in 2018, 20 years after the first win.
Uruguay's two wins were in 1930 and 1950, and England, despite being home to the Premier League, has only won it once in 1966, which negates the MLS argument. Their second-best finish? Third. This year.
Spain is the newest winner, and they took 16 years to win it again.
Statistically, that's 8/84, or 9% of teams that have qualified for the World Cup.
In comparison, 20/30 teams have won the NBA Finals, 20/32 NFL teams have won a Super Bowl, 25/30 MLB teams have won a World Series, and 22/32 NHL teams have won a Stanley Cup: at least half of all teams.
Sixteen out of 32 MLS teams have won a title, which is the lowest percentage among major American sports leagues, but when you dig deeper and look at the world's top soccer leagues, you will see how staggering the disparity is and much it parallels with the World Cup statistic: 7/51 (13%) teams that have competed in the Premier League, 13/58 (22%) Bundesliga teams, and 9/63 (14%) La Liga teams have won championships.
In contrast, the EuroLeague, Europe's top basketball league, has produced 22 different winners with 20 active teams. Soccer is the difference: it is the hardest sport to play and win, and the World Cup is the biggest and best display of that excellence because in order to win, you truly have to be the best, and the U.S. haven't played quality soccer for a long time, as evident in Leander Schaerlaeckens' history of the team, The Long Game: U.S. Men's Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts.
After the 1950 World Cup, the U.S. did not play in another one until 1990, 40 years later, missing nine World Cups during the duration.
In the 1970s, teams were assembled at the last second, even composing of someone in the stands (p. 37).
They played a total of one international game between 1980 and 1981 (p. 69).
Despite qualifying for the 1990 World Cup, the U.S. did not earn a point until their home 1994 World Cup (p. 134). It would be another two years before MLS would kick off, ending a twelve-year drought of professional soccer in America after the North American Soccer League folded in 1984. It would be even longer until the league actually made money, having plans in 2002 to fold in case things didn't go well (p. 167).
While critics were disappointed in the U.S.'s final result at the 2026 World Cup, it set record-breaking results: biggest win, 4-1 v. Paraguay, most wins total (3), and most wins (2) in the group stage since 1930. Until Folarin Balogun did it against Paraguay, no player had even scored multiple goals in the same World Cup game for the U.S. since 1930. By resting players for the Turkey game, they were unable to be the first USMNT to win all of their group stage games.
If the USMNT are ever going to win a World Cup, it's going to take some time. After a friendly with Romania in the spring of 1993, their head coach, Cornel Dinu, remarked "They'll need a hundred years to play soccer" (p. 137). The timeline restarts now, or maybe they'll shock the whole world, four years from now in 2030, on the 100th anniversary of their 1930 World Cup third place finish.
