Fifty million people watched the USMNT lose to Belgium. That number — the largest broadcast audience for a soccer match in American history — is now the foundation of everything U.S. Soccer wants to build next.
CEO J.T. Batson sat down at the federation's new $250 million national training center outside Atlanta last Thursday, and the tone was clear: the 4-1 defeat to Belgium is already old news. What matters now is whether this summer becomes a turning point or just another moment the sport almost broke through in the United States.
"From U.S. Soccer's standpoint, the 2026 World Cup has been incredibly successful and has fundamentally changed the trajectory of the sport in the United States," Batson said. It's a bold claim after a round of 16 exit, but the broadcast numbers give him something to stand on.
Pochettino stays, Cherundolo arrives, sporting director TBD
The federation has already extended Mauricio Pochettino's contract — that was done before the tournament even kicked off. Batson confirmed talks are "active" but without a timeline, which is the kind of diplomatic vagueness that tends to drag into winter. Pochettino is staying. The paperwork just isn't signed.
The sporting director picture is murkier. Matt Crocker left in April and the role is essentially being run by committee, with COO Dan Helfrich technically holding final authority. Oguchi Onyewu, Barry Pauwels, and national team development heads Tracey Kevins are involved in the interim. Whether that structure holds or U.S. Soccer brings in a high-profile appointment from outside remains genuinely open.
What they have nailed down is the men's Olympic coach. Steve Cherundolo — former USMNT player, ex-LAFC head coach — will lead the U-23 side at the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Pochettino played a direct role in that hire, according to Batson. The Olympics have been an afterthought for U.S. men's soccer for years, with the U-23s failing to qualify in 2012, 2016, and the pandemic-delayed 2020 edition. The federation is treating 2028 differently — home soil, full stadiums, and a genuine medal ambition.
"We will put all the resources of the federation to work to create the conditions to give our team the best chance to succeed and medal and win," Helfrich said. Given recent Olympic history — Mexico, Cameroon, and Nigeria have all won gold — the format genuinely favors underdogs, which makes the USMNT's chances more realistic than they might seem.
The youth problem isn't just money — it's structure
Arsene Wenger, now FIFA's chief of global football development, has been collaborating with U.S. Soccer for years and was present at Thursday's announcement. His diagnosis of American soccer's core problem is blunt: the country doesn't have a tradition of foot skills, which means the window for developing them — five, six, seven years old — gets missed entirely.
"You cannot start at 14 years of age and become an international," Wenger said, drawing on his experience helping build France's academy system in the 1970s. France opened its first academy in 1973. They won the European Championship in 1984. That's the timeline U.S. Soccer is implicitly working from.
The federation's response starts with access. Every school in Atlanta is being offered access to soccer through a collaboration between local government, private sector, and nonprofits. Batson made the comparison directly: basketball hoops in every park are taxpayer-funded. High school football receives $3 to $5 billion annually in public money. Soccer has nothing comparable, and U.S. Soccer wants to change that calculation city by city.
Helfrich was specific about the distinction between making the existing pay-to-play system cheaper versus replacing it entirely. "We are not seeking to make the current system more affordable. We're trying to create a new system that then we make highly affordable." Travel costs — weekly training commutes, showcase tournaments — are identified as a bigger accessibility barrier than club fees in many markets. That's where the structural reform is aimed.
- Philanthropic donors have already funded portions of Pochettino's salary and contributed to the national training center build
- Local governments are being approached as partners, given their existing role funding other sports infrastructure
- Coaching education courses are already being run at the new Atlanta facility
- The federation is hosting youth international tournaments there, including U-20 women's teams from England and Colombia ahead of this fall's World Cup in Poland
The overall ambition — competing for World Cups on the men's side while keeping the women's program elite — is nothing new for U.S. Soccer. What's different is the scale of attention this summer generated and the corporate and philanthropic interest that followed. Batson's phone, he noted, still hasn't quieted down.
"This summer has given me incredible belief in our ability to actually go do it," he said. "[It will] take time. It's of course going to be expensive."
The next real test of whether this is a genuine structural shift or well-funded optimism will come at the 2028 Olympics — on home soil, with a U-23 side now under Cherundolo's charge, and with the world watching to see if 50 million viewers was a ceiling or a starting point.
