"I would describe it as being in disbelief that the tournament was over for us." That's Matt Freese, USMNT goalkeeper, trying to put words to what a Round of 16 exit to Belgium actually felt like — and struggling to find ones that quite cover it.
Freese started four of the USA's five World Cup games, sitting out only the dead-rubber loss to Türkiye in a heavily rotated Pochettino XI. He was on the pitch for the Belgium defeat that ended the run, and the weight of that moment clearly hasn't left him.
The squad had been building toward this for two years. "Literally nothing else crossed my mind," Freese told ESPN. They dreamed about it, felt the honour and responsibility of it, wanted it — by his own description — more than anything else they'd ever wanted. Getting out of the group wasn't enough. The whole point was what came next.
Belgium ended it, but the hurt runs deeper than one result
Belgium losing to the USA was never a certainty — 11 million people, generational talent stacked across every position. But Freese isn't making excuses. He's describing a specific grief: not just losing the game, but losing the experience. The locker room. The fans singing "Country Roads, Take Me Home." The feeling of doing something together that mattered.
"Not wanting that experience together and not wanting the memory of 'Country Roads, Take Me Home' to be over" — it's an oddly specific thing to mourn, and that's exactly what makes it real.
The positive spin is already in motion. Freese talks about turning elimination into fuel, channelling the sting into motivation for whatever comes next. Standard post-tournament rhetoric, sure — but the pain underneath it sounds genuine enough that it might actually stick.
Pochettino's future adds another question mark
Beyond the emotional reckoning, there's a structural one. Pochettino's contract expired the moment the USA were knocked out. Whether he stays to continue building what is, by most measures, a genuinely improved national team program is unresolved. He got them out of the group as top seeds and made the football watchable enough to pull in new fans — that carries weight in any negotiation.
But none of that is settled yet. Right now the story is simpler: a team that wanted it badly, got further than many expected, and still came home earlier than they'd planned. "It doesn't take away from the sting," Freese admitted. It doesn't.
