The United States men’s national team will kick off its 2026 World Cup on Friday night, facing Paraguay in a primetime opener at 9 p.m. ET on Fox as one of the tournament’s three co-hosts.
The draw put the U.S. in Group D alongside Paraguay, Australia and Turkey; finish first or second and the Americans are guaranteed a place in the round of 32, finish third and advancement becomes complicated. All U.S. games will be shown on Fox in English and Telemundo in Spanish, including each broadcaster’s streaming services, and The Athletic will carry live coverage of every U.S. match.
Expectations are clear and modest in sequence: a win in the round of 32 is the baseline. Pushing past the round of 16 would be widely judged a success; a third knockout win would vault the U.S. into the semifinals, a stage the country has never reached in the modern era. Historically, the Americans’ best modern-era showing remains the 2002 quarterfinals, though the side did reach the semifinals at the inaugural 13-team World Cup in 1930.
The 26-man U.S. roster, unveiled in Manhattan in late May, mixes established faces and Europe-based talent. Christian Pulisic remains the public face of the squad. Weston McKennie provides a do-everything presence in midfield for Juventus, Tyler Adams brings the kind of abrasive defensive energy he showed as captain in 2022, and Sergiño Dest, now at PSV, offers the kind of audacity that can change games. Tim Ream supplies veteran calm in the back; Adams has privately cast Ream as the team’s elder statesman and teased a teammate as the group’s social butterfly.
Availability questions shadow the back line. Chris Richards is listed as a central defender who could anchor the U.S. back four if he can get past an ankle problem; his fitness will matter when the bracket tightens. The team arrives in the tournament carrying the label of a potential golden generation — a group that matured in Europe as teenagers — but it also arrives off underwhelming regional form, having flopped at tournaments in 2024 and 2025 under coach Mauricio Pochettino. That contrast between talent and results is the clearest friction before kickoff.
How Group D plays out will dictate the U.S. route through the world cup bracket. A top-two finish keeps the path straightforward and inside the guaranteed round-of-32 berth; a third-place finish could force a more convoluted march through the bracket and reduce margin for error. Home-soil advantage is real — the U.S. will play all of its matches at home venues — but it does not erase matchup risk from Paraguay, Australia or Turkey.
Practical details for viewers are simple: Friday’s match is 9 p.m. ET on Fox, with Spanish-language coverage on Telemundo and both networks streaming the game. The U.S. next moves through two more group games that will determine seeding in the bracket and, by extension, the difficulty of the knockout draw.
The most consequential question as the whistle blows is also the simplest: can Pochettino’s side, which has more club pedigree than recent tournament form, convert home advantage and high expectations into results deep into the world cup bracket — far enough to reach a first modern-era semifinal?
