Good Soccer/Bad Soccer Vol. 8: The June Vibe Check
It's June. The World Cup starts in June. That means the World Cup is here. Practically.
It's certainly here in my brain, where a chaotic mess of thought threads has already formed around the tournament and what's about to land when the games actually begin on June 11th in Mexico. Thres countries, 12 groups, 16 cities, 48 teams, 104 games, 208 starting lineups, and more permutations of results than there are stars in the sky.
We keep saying that this is the biggest World Cup of all time and it is most definitely that; but it also might be the biggest sporting event of all time, full stop.
While I won't be on the road covering the tournament (shout out to all of those that will be, godspeed and good luck), I will be busy. My feelings about my schedule are best summed up via meme because it's 2026 and who isn't thinking almost entirely in memes at this point?
Between Morning Kickaround, SiriusXM, and watching the actual games, I figure the the next five weeks is going to be near non-stop. I'm working on a plan to make episodes of The Best Soccer Show, but there are very few windows without games when I'm not on the air.
It's a good problem to have, but it is a problem. Stay tuned for updates.
The USMNT shifted the vibes dramatically with the 3-2 win over Senegal on Sunday in Charlotte and thank God for that. The performance—noting as is necessary that we saw two completely different teams between the first half and the second—only reinforced my belief that Pochettino put almost no stock in anything that happened (from a wider team perspective) before he made his final roster choices last week.
That's not to say that the disastrous March window or other results going back as far as a year don't matter; I've been as frustrated as anyone that Pochettino didn't care about focusing on winning as a means to build excitement around the team going into a home World Cup. I don't know if we can jump to conclusions about "missed opportunities" but hype levels are distressing low as the calendar turns to June. Maybe that was an inevitability (I'm sympathetic to this view about 2018 just tanking interest and recovery being impossible without a deep run in 2022) but even a tiny bit of buzz about the USMNT would have been nice.
Of course, the fractured media landscape and my living in a soccer bubble makes it hard for me to trust my sense of how much popular excitement there is for the USMNT this summer. There's also the not-small issue of the government being a shit show. It's a little more difficult to work yourself up for the prospects of a team that doesn't have a notable track record in the tournament when it costs $90 to fill up your gas tanks and your neighbors are being snatched off the street.
That's nothing to say of FIFA turning this tournament into an exercise in wealth extraction never before seen in sports. While I've already made my peace with the rotten vibes begat by global soccer's governing body and intend to engage fully with every moment of the World Cup I can, I'm also buzzing over the potential smackdown FIFA might get via the investigations in its ticket-pricing practices by the states of New Jersey and New York.
And just today (Thursday) I learned about Reboot FIFA, a seriously approach to the problem of fixing an organization that is morally irredeemable.
As for the outlook for our US men...
The reductive way to explain Pochettino's approach is to say that it was always singularly focused on the World Cup.
Everything that happened before the arrival of the team in Georgia at the new fancy pants National Training Center were mere data points to be used in the process of choosing a team to "unleash" (I use this word with apprehension, Senegal win or no) at the tournament. What you and I want to connect to the team's prospects at the World Cup—every camp roster, every starting lineup, every tactical tweak—was Pochettino in a lab, gathering information.
I honestly believe Pochettino cared so little for winning as a goal in and of itself in the 20 or months he's been on the job that he rarely—if ever—centered "winning" as factor in his choices.
Even the nominally "competitive" games Pochettino coached during his run to the World Cup—the Nations League and the Gold Cup—were treated as glorified scrimmages by the Argentine. You and I might have cared that the US bombed out in the Nations League semis and lost to Mexico in last year's Gold Cup final, but for Pochettino—after the competitive juices of Argentine vintage subsided from his body—none of that really mattered.
It was all in service of bringing everything together at the World Cup.
That approach has two knock-on effects I keep thinking about. One is that by not prioritizing winning in the lead up to the North American World Cup, most of which will be played in the United States, Pochettino (and because they hired him, the Federation) went all-in on a month of soccer to grow the game via the USMNT engine.
I understand that approach, even as I think it's extremely risky. If the USMNT goes on a deep run on home soil, say quarterfinals or better, than it all might have been worth it. Enough of the soccer-curious population and the mainstream media (such that it still exists) could jump on the bandwagon in that scenario to pay off on the bet. You might even argue that there was nothing to lose taking that approach, since any success the team had during a cycle with few competitive windows would have been under the radar anyway.
I mean, it drove many of us who do care about every game absolutely crazy, but I suppose neglecting loyal existing customers in the service of attracting new ones is just the way of the modern world.
We'll see if Pochettino changes anything about his approach to friendlies against Germany in Chicago on Saturday. The scene should be raucous and whether it's possible to carry momentum into the World Cup opener against Paraguay less than a week later or not, it might be time to worry just a little big more about the result.
Vibe check done. Let's get to some GS/BS.
FIFA Doesn't Know You Don't Mess With Texas
As if FIFA hadn't done enough to make this the most toxic World Cup buildup of all time, we have a story out of Dallas that the local tournament organizers painted over an iconic mural in Downtown Dallas and now the artist is suing for $25 million.
Here's what it looked like before FIFA's lackeys obliterated it with blue paint:
The piece was called "Whaling Wall 82" and was completed in 1999 by environmental artist Wyland to bring attention to ocean pollution.
According to denizens of Dallas on the ground in the city, this is just one of many murals destroyed for the World Cup.
this is a terrible, angering & flat out stupid situation. also a wildly confusing mess of dominos that inexplicably fell and allowed this to happen. also frustrating, there are several other FIFA murals that have gone up around DFW, by local artists, that are fantastic & and been lost in this
— peter (@peet2.bsky.social) June 3, 2026 at 8:50 AM
BAD SOCCER
GRANT WAHL, SOCCER TREASURE
The return of the World Cup is a time of celebration, no matter what FIFA does, because it brings together so many different cultures that engage with the game in their own unique ways.
The journalists, broadcasters, and other media types who report on and distill the game for us are a crucial part of every soccer-playing nation's culture. Media is a reflection of the soccer populace they inform even as they have the power to shape understanding and opinion.
With the World Cup here, it's a good time to remember someone who represented the best of what American soccer media could be, Grant Wahl. Grant passed while covering the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and when The Guardian reached out to his brother Eric to get a window into the feelings about the tournament in host city Kansas City, Eric Wahl took the opportunity to share some thoughts about the bittersweet feelings the World Cup engenders for him.
GOOD SOCCER (miss you, Grant)
NICE BEAVER(S)
Toronto has 51 painted beavers in its Old Town area for the World Cup and I really want to go to Toronto to find them. Hidden beavers!
Emily (C) ✨
GOOD SOCCER
PERI-PERI...SAN GERMAIN...SORRY
If you're an Arsenal fan somewhere in America with a Nando's nearby, big news: Nando's special Bakayo Saka sauce has landed on these shores.
Bill Barnwell
GOOD SOCCER
WOW IT'S A SCHOONER
After Ella Brockway posted on Bluesky an image of the USMNT's pre-match top from the game against Senegal—which includes a take on a "USA" logo that makes us think about Magic Eye paintings from the 90s, we did a little research.
Apparently the pre-match top (which let's you know it's a pre-match top because it says "pre-match top" on it) is part of a collection of USMNT's gear dropping from the Virgil Abloh fashion line.
These shirts are BUSY.
If you've every heard of Off-White, or seen sneakers with tags and words in quotes on them, that's Virgil Abloh. Virgil himself passed away in 2021, but his line continues and they're doing a thing with US Soccer for the World Cup.
We're a touch too old for streetwear around here, but this is might hit with a younger subset of USMNT fans.
GOOD SOCCER
LET'S DO SOME PLUGS
The Best Soccer Show is live tonight at 9 PM ET. Let's talk about the USMNT, shall we? Subscribe to the show on YouTube or get it as a podcast on Apple or on Spotify.
Morning Kickaround is back tomorrow at 9:30 AM ET. Simon Evans of The Soccer Business will be on to talk about private equity investment in lower division professional soccer and MLS ratings "spike" on Apple. You can also get MK as a podcast if that's more your speed on Apple or Spotify.
GOOD SOCCER/BAD SOCCER is over now.
