‘The objective is to win’ – Change in the air for USMNT as World Cup gets serious

The United States Men’s National Team are bidding to do something they haven’t done since 2002 – win a World Cup knockout game.

In the 2026 summer tournament, which the USA are co-hosting with Canada and Mexico, the USMNT topped Group D to set up a Round of 32 clash with Bosnia & Herzegovina.

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For Mauricio Pochettino’s team, there is a huge opportunity to use their home advantage to go on a deep tournament run.

USMNT opened up their 2026 World Cup account with an emphatic 4-1 victory over Paraguay, before following that performance up with a 2-0 win over Australia.

But with the early success, they were quickly brought down to earth with a 3-2 defeat to Türkiye after a late stoppage-time winner from Kaan Ayhan.

Nonetheless, they emerged out of Group D in first place, and now comes the pressure on the players to deliver on home soil.

For striker Folarin Balogun, though, it’s what the biggest players thrive on.

“It’s just more serious,” Balogun told reporters of the energy in the group on Sunday. “It’s crunch time, it’s knockout football. You lose, you go home.

“So this is the business end, and this is the stage where, in my opinion, the big players step forward, and the big players carry the pressure and make things happen.”

The furthest stage that the USMNT have ever reached in the competition’s history is third place, which they achieved in the inaugural World Cup back in 1930.

Since then, though, they have progressed past the Round of 16 on only one occasion, doing so in 2002 in Japan and South Korea.

Balogun still not satisfied with USMNT

With World Cup fever rife around the country, there is no better time to equal – or surpass that, and the players feel that energy within their camp too.

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“I feel like I can feel the difference in the atmosphere,” Balogun said. “There’s a change in my mindset and mentality.

“Not that I wasn’t taking it seriously before, but you can just go into another gear because you know you want it more, and I don’t want the journey to end.”

Balogun, who famously earned U.S citizenship because his mother was too heavily pregnant to fly back to the United Kingdom, has been instrumental to the USMNT’s success so far in the tournament.

The 24-year-old Monaco striker scored a brace in the win over Paraguay, making history by becoming the first American man to do so since 1930.

But those individual accolades won’t mean anything to him if the team doesn’t achieve their ultimate goal this summer.

“For me, it won’t mean much,” he added. “The objective is to win. I’m not somebody who would look back and think we’ve done well.

“That’s not really my mentality. I’m just looking forward to Wednesday and looking forward to going out there and winning.”

This USMNT has already been dubbed as the ‘greatest ever’ and so it’s time for the country’s golden generation to go out and prove it.

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