{"id":571,"date":"2026-06-13T11:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T11:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingtohawaiiguide.com\/?p=571"},"modified":"2026-06-13T11:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T11:34:12","slug":"friendship-over-fear-how-usmnts-long-held-brotherhood-is-antidote-to-world-cup-nerves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingtohawaiiguide.com\/?p=571","title":{"rendered":"Friendship over fear: How USMNT\u2019s long-held brotherhood is antidote to World Cup nerves"},"content":{"rendered":"
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IRVINE, Calif. \u2014 Nearly a decade and a half ago, two 13-year-old boys stood on the eighth level of a stairwell at a California hotel tossing wads of chewed gum, trying to get it to stick to the fronds of a palm tree below.<\/p>\n

Read more El Nino officially arrives \u2014 with warning<\/a><\/p>\n

The kids \u2014 one from Texas, the other from Pennsylvania \u2014 had just met on the bus taking them to a U.S. under-14 training camp, a random happenstance of choosing a seat one row in front of the other. Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie couldn\u2019t have imagined that 14 years later, they would walk together onto the field of a stadium just a few miles away from that hotel, leading their country into a home World Cup.<\/p>\n

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The U.S. men\u2019s national team will open its tournament today at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. It will carry with it a pressure and expectation foreign to most U.S. men\u2019s teams. This group has been called a golden generation, one expected to deliver a deep run in the World Cup even despite the program\u2019s history of only ever having won one knockout game since 1990. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play in front of home crowds and galvanize an entire nation behind the sport.<\/p>\n

The U.S. team has accepted those expectations without fear, in part because the fibers that run through the group began forming more than a decade ago, when they were just kids dreaming together that they might get a chance to do exactly this.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt helps, it just gives you that extra level of comfort,\u201d Pulisic said on Thursday. \u201cYou want to fight for guys like that. I played with some of these guys for so long, you don\u2019t want to let them down. You want to give them everything, you want to have their back always. And I think that pushes you through in tough times.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to understand this U.S. men\u2019s national team, you have to understand that it isn\u2019t just a group put together over the last two years by Mauricio Pochettino or even over the last nine since the failure to reach the 2018 World Cup in Russia. It is a group in which many of the core players have grown up together, from proms and pro debuts to marriages, kids, trophies and record transfers. They have experienced firsts together \u2014 national team debuts and World Cups \u2014 and gone through lows together \u2014 bad loans at clubs, Copa Am\u00e9rica failure and coach firings.<\/p>\n

There were four players in that under-14 identification camp in 2012 that are now playing for the U.S. in this home World Cup \u2014 Pulisic, McKennie, Haji Wright and Alejandro Zendejas. A few months later, another ID camp was held for the same age group, this time including a winger from Queens, N.Y., named Timothy Weah and a kid from Wappingers Falls, N.Y., named Tyler Adams.<\/p>\n

Three years later, Wright, Pulisic, Zendejas, Adams and Auston Trusty would play together in a FIFA Under-17 World Cup. Others would join as time rolled forward. A 17-year-old left back named Antonee Robinson from Milton Keynes, England, in 2014. A 16-year-old Dutch-American named Sergi\u00f1o Dest at a U-17 camp in 2016. A 17-year-old center back from Birmingham, Ala., named Chris Richards at an ID camp in 2018.<\/p>\n

There are connections like that everywhere, from Joe Scally and Gio Reyna playing together as youngsters in New York, to Mark McKenzie and Brenden Aaronson, who have known each other since they were 10 and 11 years old at the Philadelphia Union academy.<\/p>\n

Just the other day at the team hotel, as they prepared for their World Cup opener, Wright and Trusty scrolled through their phones together, \u201clooking at pictures together from 2014 when we were kids,\u201d Wright said, and marveling at the fact that they were sharing this World Cup together.<\/p>\n

Read more The Knicks, one win from NBA championship, really look like a team of destiny<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely an amazing experience to have been able to go through all that with a lot of my teammates,\u201d Wright said. \u201cI\u2019m happy that we were able to make those experiences and memories and able to bring them onto the field now.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there is going to be a strength of this team, it will be found there, in those relationships and experiences and the trust it built up within the group. It will be the thing the U.S. falls back on when it\u2019s up against tough times in this tournament, whether in Friday\u2019s opener against Paraguay or down the road against Australia or Turkey.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the inside I think we all understand that we have a group that\u2019s very tight-knit, a group that\u2019s been through a lot, a group that goes back,\u201d McKenzie said. \u201cThat unity and resilience is ultimately what\u2019s gotten us here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pochettino is undoubtedly now trying to tap into that, and to empower the new faces to complement those longer-held bonds. Players like Alex Freeman and Matt Freese, who only made their national-team debuts last year, and Malik Tillman and Folarin Balogun, who joined in 2022 and 2023, respectively. All four are expected to be in the starting XI.<\/p>\n

The goal has to be that those players strengthen the well-established connections. <\/p>\n

That it reinforces the bonds around which so much expectation has been built. <\/p>\n

In his introduction to the team, Pochettino stressed that there are \u201conly 26 of us\u201d in the group and \u201cwe have the opportunity to go out there and make history, make everyone proud,\u201d Balogun said last month. \u201cHe said that won\u2019t be possible unless you guys are together.\u201d<\/p>\n

That should not be an issue for a team that has mostly known no other way, a group of guys who find the best respite in each other, in friends who knew them \u201cbefore\u201d and have gone through everything with them since.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s special, and I think these are kind of the moments that you really need to stay present within it all, because no matter the circumstances, and no matter what happens, you\u2019re going through it with your best friends,\u201d Adams said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat connection and that chemistry and that bond is what has allowed us to grow over the past four years, especially. Since Qatar, obviously the roster has changed, you get more fresh faces in, (it) adds a little bit of a different energy and vibe, but the connection hasn\u2019t wavered, and I think that\u2019s the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s move to reopen fishing at monuments draws mixed reaction<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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