The US has a chance to make history at the 2026 World Cup, and I'm not necessarily talking about lifting the trophy, reaching the final, or producing the Golden Boot winner. There are a few other things we have yet to accomplish on the world's biggest stage. I have decided to single our four of them: 6+ points: The US has won two group games once before, but that was in 1930 when wins were only 2 points instead of 3. We've come close to accomplishing this a couple of times, notably in 2010, when we could have had 9 points if Green hadn't parried Altidore's shot against the post and Coulibaly had his head screwed on straight, and 2014, when we were mere seconds away from beating Portugal but a lazy MB giveaway led to them scoring a heartbreaking equalizer with the final action of the game. Comeback victory: We have never won a World Cup game in which we trailed. The Portugal game and Coulibaly fiasco mentioned above would have satisfied this accomplishment, but as it stands, we have still yet to turn a match around completely. 2+ KO wins: Undoubtedly the least likely option of the four, even with the extra KO round. For the purposes of this poll, a penalty shootout win counts as a KO win, not as a draw, which would be the FIFA-mandated official result of any such match. Speaking of... Penalty shootout appearance: None of our 10 modern era knockout stage matches have ever gone to penalties. Two (2010, 2014) were decided in extra time, but neither went the distance. I don't even want to imagine how nerve-wracking this would be for me as a fan, nevermind the players on the pitch.
With the way the World Cup is, I'll say we compete in a penalty shootout. The chances are that we'll eventually play in one of those. I think we've played in 10 penalty shootouts in our modern history. The most recent being the quarterfinal of the 2025 Gold Cup against Costa Rica.
Getting 6 points: Gambling odds imply 6 points is basically a coin flip, from a sheer probability standpoint this is probably your answer and the prediction I've leaned on Comeback Victory: In The Premier League comeback victories happen about 20 to 25% of the time, but international soccer tends to have less goal scoring in it, making comebacks less likely. I took the 299 matches from the most recent World Cup as well as the most recent championship from all 6 confederations. There was a comeback victory in only 12.7% of the matches and 12.5% in Qatar specifically. I do think we're slightly uniquely positioned here as we seem to be allergic to clean sheets. There's a good chance we're gonna have to win games 2-1 or even 3-2, so if you're inclined to think we can win 2/3 of those then it's reasonable to think the other team might score first in one of them 2 Knockout Victories: Heavily draw dependent. We should be favored in the first one and underdogs in the second. Gambling odds seem to imply we have about a 1 in 4 shot of making the quarters Penalties: Over the last 10 World Cups (when the Round of 16 started) about 21.8 % matches have gone to PKs. If you use the most recent most recent World Cup and Confederation Championships that I used above, it goes up to 25.6% however that does come with the caveat that The Copa America and Gold Cup went straight to penalties after 90 minutes and accounted for 7 of the 21 penalty shootouts being factored in. If you think The US is gonna go 1 and done in the knockout round this is fairly unlikely, but the odds grow quite a bit if you think we're gonna play 2 or even 3 knockout games
I think we will see three of four of these things. Since Penalty shootouts do not really count as wins and I think the Round of 16 is about as far as we can go right now.
The US has played 7 national teams on more than once at the World Cup and has a positive record against only two of them: England (1-2-0) and Portugal (1-1-0). A US win or draw against Paraguay would make them the third national team out of eight that the US has a positive record against.
The US has been eliminated in the group stage four times: 1950 (despite beating England), 1990 (just happy to be there), 1998 (thanks Harkes), and 2006 (Jan Koller will forever haunt my nightmares).