The last time the United States men’s national soccer team failed to qualify
for the World Cup, Ronald Reagan had recently been sworn in for his
second term as President, “Rambo: First Blood Part II” was the No. 1
movie at the box-office, and, with the exception of the
goalkeeper Tim Howard, every member of the current U.S. team’s starting
lineup had not yet been born. Christian Pulisic, the nineteen-year-old wunderkind who has lately carried the U.S. team, wouldn’t arrive for another twelve
years.

I wasn’t born yet, either. Growing up, I learned to expect that the U.S.
would always qualify for the World Cup. My childhood closet was
ornamented with U.S. jerseys of World Cups spanning the nineties and two-thousands—some of my favorite memories are from summers when, with a
ball under my foot and a jersey on my back, I watched the U.S. team go
up against the world’s best players in the largest sporting event on
Earth.

This time around, though, the U.S. men spent much of the CONCACAF Hexagonal—the
six-team tournament that Caribbean and North and Central American countries compete in
to qualify for the World Cup—flirting with disaster. In November, after
disappointing losses to Costa Rica and Mexico, the team’s coach, Jürgen
Klinsmann, was fired, and the former coach Bruce Arena was brought back
to save them from the brink. Then the U.S. lost to Costa Rica again, in
September, and tied Honduras, keeping qualification far from certain.

Last Friday, with a 4–0 win against Panama, the team finally seemed to
move away from its precarious position—with one game to go, the U.S. men
controlled their destiny. Their opponent, Trinidad and Tobago, was, by
far, the weakest team in the Hexagonal. Heading into the U.S. match,
Trinidad and Tobago had lost six straight games. The team was eliminated from World Cup contention a month ago. It was the home team—the match would be played at Ato Boldon stadium, in Couva, which was flooded the day before the game. The
flooding reportedly made training difficult for the U.S. team, but the
Americans would not be facing a raucous opposing crowd: during the
match, the stadium was half empty, with patches of fans scattered by the
dozens.

The U.S. team had three scenarios for qualification. A win would insure
a berth in the World Cup; a tie would likely get it there as well, since
it had a better cumulative goal differential than the other teams vying
for a spot; a loss might even suffice, if both Honduras and Panama lost
or tied their final games. I wasn’t particularly concerned about this
last scenario, though—surely, the U.S. would earn a victory over its
tiny Caribbean counterparts. (Trinidad has a population roughly equal to
that of San Diego, though it’s roughly five times the size of that city.)

Then the match began. Arena had selected the same starting lineup he did
for Friday’s victory against Panama, and it quickly appeared a suspect
choice: the men who had played four days before looked lethargic and out
of synch. In the seventeenth minute, the Trinidadian right back Alvin
Jones crossed the ball from the U.S.’s left flank, toward his teammate
Shahdon Winchester. The U.S. defender Omar Gonzalez attempted to block
the cross, but Winchester deflected the ball off Gonzalez’s shin, and it
looped over the American goalkeeper, Tim Howard: 1–0, Trinidad.

Things got worse twenty minutes later. Jones collected the ball on the
same left flank, and scored a wonder goal with a shot thirty-five yards from
the net.

As the game went on and the U.S. remained behind, I began checking the
scores of Costa Rica versus Panama and Mexico versus Honduras, anxiously
watching the occasional split-screens offered by NBC Universo. The U.S.
pulled a goal back early in the second half, when Pulisic, at the top of
the penalty arc, sidestepped a Trinidadian defender and drove a shot
between two other opposing players and into the net. But, in their
matches, both Honduras and Panama came from behind to tie and then take
leads. When the final whistle on the U.S. game blew, it was official:
the Americans had lost, Panama and Honduras had won, and the U.S. men’s
national team had failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time
in thirty-two years.

The result is devastating for U.S. men’s soccer. There are, of course,
the millions of dollars in lost revenue to consider. The greater loss, though, is the quadrennial opportunity to
attract the interest and attention of domestic fans. There is simply no
better way to generate buzz for soccer in your country than having your
team in the World Cup. Bars that would have been full of fans during
U.S. games will now be empty, or tuned to something else. U.S. Soccer
apparel that might have flown off of shelves next summer will go unsold.
Perhaps most important, young American players will not experience the
euphoria of seeing the sport they love collectively celebrated by an
entire country. When the U.S. team went on its historic run to the World
Cup quarter-finals in 2002, I was thirteen years old. Each game in that
run—the astonishing victory against Portugal, the resilient win over
Mexico, even the gutsy but unlucky effort against the Germans—propelled
me to push my other athletic interests aside and focus only on soccer.
The World Cup generated an excitement that was unmatched by any other
sporting event. It made me want to commit myself to something that
connected the world in ways I had never seen before.

What is even harder to stomach is the realization that America probably
needed the U.S. men’s national team in this World Cup more than we have
needed it in years past. Not only because it would have furthered the
growth and development of the sport but because, in this political
moment, the country is more and more isolated. Adversaries are
emboldened, allies don’t trust us, policies pour out of the current
Administration that further entrench the U.S. in a dangerous
nationalism. The beauty of the World Cup is that while thirty-two
countries get to cheer for their respective teams, the event also
affirms a global pluralism—it is as much a festival of cultural
multiplicity as it is a competition featuring some of the best athletes
in the world. This year, I yearned for the U.S. to be part of that
celebration. I thought it might help remind us that we weren’t meant to
navigate this world alone; that we exist because of the world’s variety,
not in spite of it; that the attitude of “America First” misunderstands
how America came to be America in the first place. Now, as is
increasingly the case, much of the rest of the world will gather
alongside one another, and we will be on the outside looking in.