The groundwork for spectacle was put into motion over July 4th weekend, culminating in Folarin Balogun being ruled eligible to play against Belgium in the World Cup round of 16. An entire country was already enchanted by the USMNT’s run in the tournament, translating into record-breaking television viewership. Balogun’s red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina broke through as a pop culture moment where everyone had to have an opinion. America’s 250 year celebration mixed in an extra layer of national pride. All it needed was a spark, which was provided by FIFA’s announcement that it had suspended Balogun’s one-match ban. 

The whiplash of reactions highlighted the uniqueness of being a sports fan in 2026. Balogun was a victim of soccer’s harsh ruling heading into Sunday, then the USMNT was fully back that afternoon. In a different soccer world, Ricardo Pepi would have started at striker against Belgium and the suspension would have been a footnote. But not here, not in front of record-breaking television audiences for the USMNT. 

The soccer world reacted to Balogun playing in the match from a sporting perspective, with UEFA even releasing a statement about how the decision “crossed a red line” that questioned the “credibility of competition.” Yet scale comes at a cost, even a competitive one. With this many potential eyeballs and consumer dollars in play, it’s not good enough to just put on a round of 16 match. There needs to be more: more buildup, more attention, more narrative. There are livestreams. There are brand activations. Sporting fairness or not, there is a 24-hour attention economy to be battled over. 

Belgium were unwitting characters to the circus. The suspension getting overturned did give Belgium a newfound purpose, with manager Rudi Garcia saying that beating the USMNT was not only about his country winning a match but about “defending football.” Midfielder Nicolas Raskin spoke of the “sense of injustice” that galvanized the squad. But despite Garcia comparing the decision to an April Fool’s Day joke, the whole sequence wasn’t personal; the spectacle would have swallowed any opposition.

We now know that the sound and fury signified nothing, with Belgium comprehensively beating the USMNT 4-1. Even with Balogun as the U.S.’s player in the match, the levels between the two sides weren't particularly close. After showcasing a new, dynamic style throughout the World Cup, the U.S. reverted to the “old” style of reactive hesitation. The USMNT dream defined by a rebranded front foot energy under Mauricio Pochettino crumbled under first contact with a top European side. 

The U.S. also lost to Belgium 2-1 in the round of 16 of the 2014 World Cup, but the match at least went to extra time. That team didn’t have the branding of a Golden Generation and was ostensibly just a group of players. It was a sobering realization that through the excitement over the past month, the gap between the two sides hadn’t closed but had actually widened. 

A befuddled Pochettino explained afterwards that his side never “connected with the game” and that it just wasn’t their day. The inability to identify a specific moment or tactic highlighted how the match was lost on a fundamental level before strategy entered the equation. It was as if Pochettino realized the limitations of the USMNT in real time, that his side couldn’t outstructure or outpress world class talent. After reflection, we also quietly realized that the U.S. lost to Turkey, and that No. 28 Australia was the highest-ranked FIFA team they actually beat in the World Cup. 

If you stared closely enough through the fog of attention and disappointment, spurts of humanity emerged. Balogun said he didn’t react to the initial red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina because he wanted to set an example for the “boys and girls who are watching” to “show them the correct way to handle things, even when you think it’s unjust.” Garcia complimented Balogun for meeting with him after the match, adding that the striker wasn’t to blame for the controversy. Regardless, the whirlwind of the noise and clicks couldn’t cover up the fundamental truth of where the USMNT stood within the world soccer hierarchy. 

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The USMNT actually did go out with a crescendo in another sense: the 4-1 loss was the most-watched soccer game in national team history, peaking at over 41 million viewers. There was no place for U.S. soccer to hide. The attention economy predictably turned to asking questions of how and why they were so outclassed, turning its aim towards pay-to-play structures within youth soccer. The conclusions were passive, that pay-to-play is what it is, all while acknowledging that U.S. soccer will be selecting from a smaller group of players who can afford the fees. In the meantime, the NFL season kicks off in less than a month.

So for all of the College GameDay-inspired visuals and record-breaking television audiences, the round of 16 is the ceiling. The USMNT did not have a Kevin de Bruyne, Jeremy Doku, or Senne Lammens off the bench like Belgium did. We cannot produce our own Charles De Ketelaere or Youri Tielemans despite the time we spent dreaming, buying, and singing. We grew a unique fandom this summer, then crashed right into its limits. 

The cliche is true: maybe all we have to show from the 2026 World Cup was the memories we made along the way. 

U.S. soccer fans are familiar with the dance, how every four years, we ask if this is the year that soccer will break through into the mainstream. But what does that mean exactly? This tournament bifurcated between the record-breaking viewership and likely advertising investments to follow and the gulf in technique between the USMNT and the rest of Europe. As the loss to Belgium listlessly came to an end, the commentators reminded the audience that soccer doesn’t happen every few years; MLS is set to resume its season this weekend. The Premier League will start in late August. If you were captured by the past month, you can hang around.

But developing world class technique and the raw talent of a player who can compete against the likes of Belgium is also antithetical to the attention-oriented economy. The connection between player and ball happens away from televisions and social media timelines, in unregulated games, in makeshift fields, away from the instant feedback of clicks and views. We won’t see the rewards of that for years, for decades, or even for generations.