Three Thoughts on USMNT's Group D Draw
The United States were always likely to have a reasonable group as a host country, but yesterday's draw might put more expectations back on the team.
A quick thought on the overall draw event from yesterday, which I did not watch live as I was performing a tremendous civic duty of spreading the joys of the work number at a middle school career fair.
But before my speaking presentations began, the social media and TBM group chat meltdown of the nonsense before hand was tremendous. Great work all around.
Note to FIFA, no one cares about anything else other than picking the ping pong balls. GET ON WITH IT!
All right, the USA thoughts are for today, the rest of CONCACAF tomorrow, and Sam already did Brazil’s Group C and France’s Group I if you’re interested in those.
AS GOOD AS IT GETS
Yes, as a host country, the United States was always likely to get a pretty favorable draw. Being a Pot 1 team, you’re already avoiding a lot of the top ten or so teams in the world, and with an expanded tournament, more of the top teams are going to be in said first pot.
But getting Australia, the worst team in Pot 2, along with a solid Paraguay team from Pot 3 and then what I think is the worst UEFA Playoff Group. Yeah we take that.
Now, full respect to everyone who made this World Cup group. Paraguay notched home wins against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay en route to a very respectable sixth-place finish, which was really a four-way tie for third on 28 points, and they had the lowest goal difference. Australia qualified directly for the World Cup out of Asia and did not have to go through an intercontinental playoff (they beat Honduras 3-1 on aggregate in 2018 and Peru on PKs after a 0-0 draw, the infamous dancing Andrew Redmayne in goal for the Socceroos). Now it wasn’t a clean qualifying run for the Aussies; there’s draws against Indonesia and Bahrain on their ledger, but they did claim four points from group winners Japan.
The UEFA bracket is super interesting; top to bottom it could be the weakest of the four mini-groups. While Turkey is the favorite, they’ll likely have to go through two solid teams in Romania and Slovakia (ranked 47th and 45th, respectively) to get to the World Cup. It’s Slovakia that has the easier path through Kosovo, ranked 80th and the lowest-ranked team still alive in Europe.
The biggest fear the USMNT should have in this group is that these are largely defensive-minded teams that are hard to break down, something the USA has struggled with tremendously over many World Cup cycles.
Take away that 6-0 pasting at the hands of Spain, and Turkey’s goals allowed in their primary qualifying group look a lot more respectable. Paraguay only allowed 10 goals in all of CONEMBOL qualifying’s 18 games, tied with Argentina and behind only Ecuador’s absurd five GA. Australia also did very well, allowing only seven goals in 10 group games in Asia’s third round, two of them in a 2-2 draw away to Bahrain.
WE’VE SEEN THESE “FRIENDS” RECENTLY
All three of Australia, Paraguay, and potentially Turkey are teams the USMNT played friendlies with in 2025.
Now, it’s hard to say if the USA played their best lineup in any of these games. I don’t think the USMNT has played their best midfield group for a while, and certainly did not against Turkey in East Hartford in a 2-1 loss. But at worst, you can argue the USMNT played a legitimate rotated squad that could have been at a World Cup and they got six points in this theoretical group, which would absolutely be enough to advance.
While Pochettino was sorting out the U.S. tactics and dealing with the unavailability of some of his star players, he was able to get a lot of very good performances out of players who very well could be playing a vital role for this team next year.
Max Arfsten and Alex Freeman seem to have a lock on the backup full/wing back roles behind Antonee Robinson and Sergino Dest. Christian Roldan had two assists to Haji Wright against Australia in October. Gio Reyna and Folarin Balogun had the goals against Paraguay.
While all of these teams boast great players — Arda Guler for Turkey, Jordan Bos for Australia, and Miguel Almiron for Paraguay — pound for pound for the USA should be favored in all three of these games. And I might think that even if this was on a neutral site, but the USA is at home which should be enough to put them well over the top.
While there are still questions to ask about the USMNT in the friendlies leading up to the World Cup — like the starting front three and midfield combinations ahead of what should be a five-man backline — one of the best things about this U.S. side, in my opinion, could be interchangeable parts. The depth the Americans should have and be able to still perform at a high level.
INCREASED EXPECTATIONS
I’m not going to lie, I do think this draw means the USA should have the expectations to win this group, not merely advance out of it.
Yes, assuming Turkey qualifies out of the playoff, I could see any number of scenarios where any of these four teams make it out of Group D. But I do think the vast majority of those outcomes should have the USA finishing first, or at least tied for first on six or seven points, then the tiebreakers fall where they may.
If in my opinion, the USA can get two wins and a very competitive loss with a heavily rotated World Cup squad against these teams, than a full strength starting lineup should be very capable of doing better.
Long before we sacked Gregg Berhalter a couple of years ago, I thought the expectations for the USA should have been to reach the semifinals on home soil. Much like South Korea did as hosts in 2002, the number of teams outside Europe/South America to reach that stage is tiny. Morocco did it last time around, and the USA did it in the inaugural tournament back in 1930. It’s really, really hard to do.
Tyler Adams thinks setting the bar as high as the semifinals is realistic and I tend to agree with the thought process Adams and teammate Tim Ream outline in the AP/ESPN article above. Everyone wants to show up and win the World Cup, but obviously, that’s not realistic for every team. I think the USA playing really well and losing in a quarterfinal could be both incredibly successful and disappointing at the same time. I also really like Ream’s take on the group games, maybe giving the U.S. a false sense of security when compared to the USA’s group matches in Qatar ‘22.
I would like to think that the USA at home has the potential to etch their name onto that semifinal list again. But recent performances aside, there is very little from the past four years that would make me think the USMNT is capable of such a run. However, the goal should be to improve on their previous tournament, a Round of 16 drubbing at the hands of the Netherlands.
This is a team that should win their group, and I think make a quarterfinal at minimum. Yes, trying to predict the knockout stage this far out is impossible and maybe they run into a favorite that underperformed in the group stage a little early and get bounced. But the combination of the USA’s group draw and I think the expectation they should win that group, should also set them up to win two knockout games as well.
Is that too much ask? I don’t think so.
This is quite a good post, but the evocation of the Netherlands debacle at the last World Cup is worrisome. The USMNT did not belong on the same field with that Netherlands team, so until they perform well against a top tier team at the Trump World Cup, it'll seem like fool's gold.