\u201cFor the first time I said, this is it, we have something here,\u201d Garber recalled to The Athletic this week. \u201cThat if we keep doing what we\u2019re doing, with the right owners, with the right cities, in the right stadiums, we\u2019re going to crack that code.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garber was right. Seattle changed minds about the potential for the sport, and it sold expansion teams around the continent \u2014 in Montreal, Orlando, New York City, Atlanta, Minnesota, Los Angeles and beyond. On the heels of Seattle\u2019s success, MLS built out its footprint and its infrastructure, creating a permanence that never before existed for soccer in America.<\/p>\n
That development is the foundation that made this 2026 World Cup possible.<\/p>\n
Nearly two decades later, the Emerald City once again has a chance to host a potential step-function moment for American men\u2019s soccer. This summer\u2019s 2026 World Cup was billed as \u201crocket fuel\u201d for soccer in America. The U.S. men\u2019s national team declared the tournament part of their mission to \u201cchange American soccer forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
After pulling the country onto its bandwagon \u2014\u00a0a record 33.5 million people tuned in to the knockout win over Bosnia<\/a>, a number that outranked the 2026 NBA Finals and would have finished in the top five most-watched television events in 2025 \u2014\u00a0the fate of those hopes rest largely on what happens when the U.S. takes the field on Monday against Belgium.<\/p>\n Win, and they become just the second American team of the modern era<\/a> to advance to a World Cup quarterfinal. Only this team, unlike the one in 2002, will do so on home soil, with record-setting audiences and a sport with a resonance that is radically different in the U.S. today. Lose, and the sport will no doubt lament the missed opportunity of this moment, one that extends beyond even the U.S. result.<\/p>\n \n Seattle Sounders fans march to their inaugural MLS match in March 2009 (Ted S. Warren \/ AP Photo)<\/p>\n That so much hinges on a game that will happen here on the banks of Elliott Bay, where an American soccer culture was established in the 1960s with the North American Soccer League and grew with MLS in the early 2010s, is appropriate.<\/p>\n There is perhaps no city more closely linked to the evolution of the sport in America and none better suited to the moment.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of (Seattle\u2019s soccer history) is, to me, the powder keg on which this recent passion has exploded,\u201d Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer told The Athletic. \u201cBut I\u2019m also a real pragmatist. The World Cup will be over in a few weeks, and then it\u2019ll be back to the grind of how we improve our league, how we bring more fans into the game, how we translate their engagement in the World Cup into engagement in league soccer and participation in soccer.\u201d<\/p>\n Another U.S. win would go a long way toward extending the tail of this summer\u2019s brilliant show and making an American soccer moment evolve into an American soccer legacy.<\/p>\n Why Folarin Balogun’s reaction to his red card set the standard<\/p>\n Henry Bushnell<\/p>\n U.S. national team midfielder Tyler Adams was all of 3 years old when Landon Donovan, Brian McBride, DaMarcus Beasley and the 2002 U.S. World Cup team shocked the world by advancing to the World Cup quarterfinals in South Korea. Danielle Reyna was pregnant with Gio Reyna as Claudio captained that team. Defender Alex Freeman<\/a> would not be born for another two years.<\/p>\n There isn\u2019t just an entire generation of American sports fans with no memory of that team, they\u2019re on the field playing in this World Cup. That the U.S. is here, 24 years later, still trying to reach those levels speaks to the ongoing battle to build American men\u2019s soccer.<\/p>\n It\u2019s why the sold-out stadiums and watch parties have so deeply impacted the U.S. team. This group came into the tournament understanding the stakes. They have been raised as a \u201cgolden generation\u201d of American men\u2019s soccer, a group of players who benefitted from the globalization of the sport, of global scouting networks and greater access to professional academy systems, and who found success on bigger stages at the club level than any American players before them.<\/p>\n What Christian Pulisic did to open doors to Europe for Americans at younger ages, and what those players have accomplished at clubs like Schalke and Dortmund, Chelsea, Milan and Juventus represented progress.<\/p>\n But translating that club success to something that permeates into the fabric of the sport back home requires a bigger moment \u2014\u00a0or movement. And there would be no greater opportunity than this World Cup.<\/p>\n It\u2019s why the last two cycles were built first around the idea of changing how people think about American soccer and then changing American soccer forever.<\/p>\n \n Chris Richards gets playful with Tyler Adams after the USMNT\u2019s win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the World Cup round of 32 (Carlos Barria \/ Reuters)<\/p>\n \u201cAs a team we want to kind of leave our mark on the game and a legacy behind,\u201d Adams said this week. \u201cI want it to be more than just what this moment has created and the hype around it. If we\u2019re talking about the team and the success that they\u2019ve had two years from now, then we\u2019ve done something right. \u2026 We know the further that we go, the more success we\u2019re going to have, and the growth of the game is going to grow (with it).\u201d<\/p>\n Even coach Mauricio Pochettino<\/a>\u2019s favorite mantra \u2014\u00a0\u201dWhy not us?\u201d \u2014\u00a0hinges on that same concept. There has to be belief that American soccer can compete in order for it to compete. But that buy-in has to actually be fortified by something tangible.<\/p>\n A win on Monday propels the U.S. to that stage. It goes beyond the normal expectation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve all said, in one way or another, how (much of an opportunity) this tournament could be,\u201d U.S. captain Tim Ream<\/a> said. \u201cIf we have a good tournament and we do things the right way, it could take us who knows where.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. must do its job against Belgium. But that next part \u2014\u00a0where it goes \u2014\u00a0hinges on others. As Hanauer said, it\u2019s \u201cback to the grind\u201d to convert a summer of soccer into something more lasting.<\/p>\n \t Pochettino stood on the field in Columbus, Ohio, for a heavily-anticipated Texas-Ohio State college football game in August 2025, looked around at stands in the Horseshoe and wondered what needed to happen for similar crowds of 107,524 to show up for soccer.<\/p>\n \u201cMy question was: \u2018Why not?\u2019 If the fans are very passionate, why aren\u2019t they with us, with soccer,\u201d he said earlier this summer. \u201cIf the American people start to show passion in our sport, too. \u2026 That is the most important legacy, the connection between the team and the national team and the fans. It\u2019s not to win the World Cup. Of course we want to win. But that is the legacy that we need if one day we want to be very successful and be consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n It is, of course, the last major step for the sport in this country. Soccer, once a fringe sport, has grown by magnitudes since the last time a men\u2019s World Cup was hosted here in 1994. MLS thrives in several markets. The Premier League on NBC mainstreamed the sport. \u201cTed Lasso\u201d and \u201cWelcome to Wrexham\u201d crossed over into pop culture relevance. Liga MX remains the most popular league on television in the country. CBS\u2019s Champions League coverage has become a globally popular show via social media that has reached the younger generations. The NWSL and U.S. women\u2019s national team remain enormously popular.<\/p>\n But turning that fractured and piecemeal popularity into a more direct competitor in the American sports landscape has proved exceedingly difficult for men\u2019s soccer.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we have the answer,\u201d Hanauer said, when asked how to convert World Cup fans into longer-standing ones. \u201cOne thing that is crystal clear is there are a lot of soccer fans in this country. \u2026 I\u2019m inspired, I\u2019m hopeful, and I know that there is a path to translating all this excitement and energy into continued growth for my league and my team, so that that is exciting. And anybody who thinks that that isn\u2019t possible or plausible isn\u2019t paying attention to what\u2019s going on in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n MLS will soon launch a marketing campaign around the idea of, \u201cThanks world, we\u2019ll take it from here.\u201d How ready they are to do so remains up in the air. The league has already voted to flip its calendar and change its competition structure to encourage more games of consequence and take a more active role in the global transfer market beginning in 2027.<\/p>\n \n USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino meets MLS commissioner Don Garber during his introductory press conference in September 2024 (Stephen Nadler \/ ISI Photos \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n But the most important point of change, altering roster rules to allow the league to better compete, is not yet done.<\/p>\n Garber said the league has focused since 2018, when the U.S., Canada and Mexico were awarded these World Cup hosting rights, on \u201cthe foundational work\u201d in the lead up to this summer\u2019s tournament. That has been done \u201clock, stock, and barrel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But in order to make domestic American soccer resonate, there is much left to do. As the Olympics show every two years, the patriotism and \u201cbig event\u201d feel of a World Cup won\u2019t guarantee people stick around when it\u2019s all over.<\/p>\n Mostly, they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n But this country\u2019s willingness to embrace the World Cup \u2014\u00a0and the evidence that it\u2019ll show up to watch the world\u2019s best players in other competitions like the FIFA Club World Cup, summer Premier League friendlies and even to watch Lionel Messi and Inter Miami \u2014\u00a0indicate there is a path toward capturing more casuals.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ratings for the U.S. game were equivalent to the NBA finals. There are people in this country who love the game if you give them the environment and the product that they could care about,\u201d Garber said. \u201cIt\u2019s no different than them loving one of the other major league teams, or loving a team in any other part of the world. We need to begin to start delivering the product that the country has shown they will get excited about.\u201d<\/p>\n The path to get there will not be easy. In MLS\u2019s own boardroom there are different ideas about how to achieve that better product. And there are obvious questions about if a domestic league can ever deliver the way a World Cup \u2014 or even the Premier League \u2014 can.<\/p>\n But just as the sport has seen these moments of incremental growth along the way \u2014 from the 1994 World Cup, to the launch of MLS two years later, David Beckham\u2019s arrival in 2007 and the Seattle Sounders\u2019 success two years after that\u00a0\u2014\u00a0this 2026 World Cup,\u00a0and the U.S.\u2019s team success in it,\u00a0can be yet another opportunity to move toward a reality where American soccer matters more.<\/p>\n The World Cup \u201cis not a silver bullet,\u201d Garber said. But it can be a pathway to real change.<\/p>\n A win Monday and a deeper run by the U.S. team would only aid in cutting a rough track toward that end. It would make people think differently about American men\u2019s soccer. And that belief is needed for progress to really take hold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014\u00a0Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber stood on the pitch in Seattle, looked around at the tens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[5189,49,48,103818,571,573,16525,561,82,575,133140],"class_list":["post-781702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-belgium","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fifa-mens-world-cup","tag-international-football","tag-mls","tag-seattle-sounders-fc","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-sports-business","tag-us-mens-national-team"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AP090319031424-scaled.jpg\")
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