GoKawiilLandon Donovan after scoring the winner against Algeria in 2010. Getty Images.
The World Cup kicks off on Thursday, and we hope our World Cup predictions page will give you everything you need to follow the tournament. We’re monitoring injuries and friendlies as our model makes last-minute adjustments. And we’ll update the forecast after each match day to show you how the games affect everyone’s advancement and championship odds. Most of this detail is for paying subscribers. But since more than three-quarters of the Silver Bulletin mailing list is in the United States, today’s newsletter focuses on the co-hosts.
It’s been a satisfying few months as a sports fan. “My” Knicks have their best chance at a championship since 1973. And Jack Hughes’s overtime winner over Canada in the Gold Medal Match in Milan represented a triumph for the men’s hockey team.
So is it too much to ask that this is also the year when the U.S. men’s soccer team breaks through, with the World Cup set to kick off this week on North American soil?
The 23 previous hosts have a pretty good track record, with 6 outright wins (though none since France in 1998). Another 7 hosts made at least the semifinals. So an optimistic spin on this data might suggest that the U.S. has a 50/50 chance of making the final four, something we haven’t done since the inaugural World Cup in 1930.
But that’s not what the smart money thinks. Prediction markets give the U.S. only a 10 percent chance of reaching the semifinal. No spoilers, but our forecast is in the same broad range.
Most host nations, of course, have better soccer legacies than the United States. (Or at least, better legacies in men’s soccer; our women’s team has won 4 of the 9 Women’s World Cups.) The two tune-up matches the U.S. played in advance of the tournament are typical of our not-quite-arrival on the scene. We beat Senegal 2-1 last week but then lost by the same scoreline to Germany in Chicago yesterday, conceding a goal in the second minute. These aren’t bad results: Germany is our 6th-ranked team in PELE and Senegal is 16th. But it’s more of the win-some, lose-some outcomes that have long characterized American soccer.
A future that has never arrived
Soccer has long been considered the “sport of the future” in the United States, but that’s sort of a running joke: the future has never really arrived. Soccer exploded as a youth participation sport in the 1970s and 1980s, and by 1978, the New York Cosmos were drawing almost 48,000 fans per game at Giants Stadium. But by 1985, the North American Soccer League was defunct.
Perhaps there was a little spark of something there, because American soccer had truly been through its Dark Ages. The U.S. failed to qualify for a single World Cup between Brazil 1950 — when we miraculously beat England 1-0 but lost our other two games — and Italia 1990, when our return to the global stage was marked by a 5-1 loss to Czechoslovakia.
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