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The Nature of the Belgium Loss Makes the USA World Cup Campaign a Failure

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jul 7th, 2026 · 10:33 AM EDT

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Sometimes you lose a close game.

Maybe it comes down to the final buzzer, or a defensive stand in the red zone, and you fall just short while playing well otherwise. The other team was better on the night, so you shake hands, take the L and move on.

Other times, you get blown off the field entirely, dog walked in embarrassing fashion, and that’s what happened to the United States men on Monday night in a 4-1 loss to Belgium.

The confident team of earlier rounds was unrecognizable. They looked nervy and out of sorts from the beginning, like the moment was too big for them. They were playing on home turf in front of a great crowd with all of the world watching, and what did they do? They turned in their worst performance of the tournament, by a country mile. And yeah, the game was 1-1 for a minute, and 2-1 for a bit, but they just never seemed to find their footing and settle in and play their game, looking outclassed by a Belgium team that barely survived Senegal in the Round of 32 after getting through their group with just one win and two draws.

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Now, to some bulletpoints:

• I’m not sure anybody had a good game for the U.S., maybe Malik Tillman and Antonee Robinson. Nobody else was remotely close to their best.
• Folarin Balogun couldn’t do much with a lack of service and interchange. The U.S. wasn’t able to get into their dynamic flank and channel bombing and couldn’t get runners in behind, which left Balogun mostly on an island.
• Tim Ream played well in the earlier games but looked every bit of 38 years old out there. He switched off briefly on the first goal, which wasn’t solely his fault, and got dunked on for the second goal, in which Belgium got off a cross despite going 1v2 down the left side. That ball should have never been allowed in the first place.
• Christian Pulisic did absolutely nothing before coming off injured. He had a quiet and disappointing World Cup.
• Sergino Dest was out there for a stroll in the park. Offered nothing going forward and bears prime responsibility for the first goal. That’s his ball to go up and clear out of the box, and he essentially deferred to other players who weren’t any closer than he was.
• The Matt Freese error was one of the worst you’ll ever see. The backline was beat by a straight long ball, which is bad enough, so he came off his line to help… and decided to take a touch? Then he pulled a Younghoe Koo and double clutched? Just hack it clear and live to see another day. He’ll never live that down. It’s beyond brutal.
• Weston McKennie wasn’t up for it. Didn’t have the required urgency or tempo or alertness or killer instinct or anything. He’s played in big games before and seemed to be treating this one like a Sunday afternoon vs. Como over in Italy.
• The response after the third goal was poor. They had been starting to put some momentum together down 2-1, then the schoolboy error from Freese took the wind completely out of the sails. They needed 10 minutes just to recover from the shell shock, and by that point Belgium had a two-goal lead and decided to pack it in. With Pulisic and Dest off, they didn’t have any firepower to attack an organized defensive block.
• Belgium didn’t do anything amazing tactically, they just shifted into a 4-2-3-1 and flooded the midfield with numbers and decided to play long and stress the U.S. center backs. Smart plan, but not exactly reinventing the wheel. Mauricio Pochettino made the necessary adjustments at half time, and the U.S. looked a lot better initially, but by that point they were chasing and couldn’t play their active game of off-ball running and counter pressing and flank attacking.
• This Belgium team isn’t as good as the Belgium team we lost to in 2014. But we made them look like prime Barcelona, which is ridiculous. They had guys out there from Rangers, Brighton, Lille, Fulham, and Brugge. We had dudes on the field from Monaco, Milan, Juve, Palace, Villarreal, and Leverkusen. The gap in club level isn’t as big as people would have you believe.
• They will never get a better opportunity than this. Home turf, momentum, Balogun situation reversed, etc. It will be much harder if they get to this point in 2030 or 2034. This was the moment, and they blew it.
• People always complain about MLS players on the USMNT. Ream and Freese are the two that were on the field to start the game. They didn’t play well, but Ream spent 12 years, the bulk of his career, in England. Is he truly an MLS player? It just feels like a dumb thing to complain about considering that guys from the aforementioned AC Milan, Juventus, Bournemouth, and PSV/etc no-showed this game.

Naturally, when a season ends, or when a tournament ends, people ask the million dollar question – was this a success or a failure? And that depends on the circumstances and the context. We’d probably all agree that this past Flyers season was a success, because they made the playoffs and won a round in a rebuilding and/or transitional season. But the Eagles’ campaign was a failure because they had no business losing to the 49ers at home in a Super Bowl defense year.

In this case, the USMNT failed to advance beyond the Round of 16, which they also failed to do in 2022, 2018 (didn’t even qualify), 2014, 2010, and 2006. So if you weren’t able to do something you’ve been trying to do for more than two decades now, how can it be considered a success? The whole point of the U.S. national team is to finally break that ceiling and qualify for the quarterfinals, to beat a good European team and reach the final eight. They failed to do it again, so the tournament goes into the history books as a failure.

It’s extra disappointing because of the good will they built early. They looked dynamic and exciting in a 4-1 thrashing of Paraguay. They got the job done rather comfortably against an Australian team that sat back in defense. The Turkey game was meaningless, so we don’t even look at that one, but the Bosnia performance was good and they buckled down and showed a lot of mental fortitude after the Balogun red card. They drew a lot of praise internationally for their performances and got a lot of people here at home interested as well.

So to come out and deliver a total stinker after all of that is pitiful. It negates all of the good things they did well earlier. If they lost to Belgium 2-1, or on penalties, or Jeremy Doku came off the bench and scored a banger, so be it. But they crumpled on the world’s biggest stage and went out with a whimper.

On top of that, the Balogun red card suspension casts the longest shadow. Whatever you think of President Trump and his politics, his decision to contact FIFA and then talk about it publicly did not sit well with the rest of the world. FIFA says Trump had nothing to do with their decision, which matters not, because people will believe what they want to believe, and we were bombarded on Monday with accusations of corruption and cheating. We became the bad guys overnight, fair or not, and it totally killed the vibes from earlier in the tournament, when the team was playing well and getting a lot of praise. There’s no doubt in my mind that it affected the players and weighed on them. We went out and embarrassed ourselves after pissing off the entire world, which is undeniably pathetic and will never be lived down.

If you go out and play well and lose a tough game, so be it. But the players were run completely off the field after the Balogun suspension unnecessarily turned into an international incident. It’s disgrace on top of dishonor.