The U.S. men have reached the knockout phase of the World Cup after winning Group D, and they now face Bosnia-Herzegovina in a round-of-32 match Wednesday night in Santa Clara, California. For this team, that is not just progress. It is the point where the tournament starts to measure what kind of side it really is.
That is why people are asking how far has the US made it in the World Cup now, not after it ends. The Americans beat Paraguay 4-1 and Australia 2-0 in group play, then clinched first place in Group D before their match against Turkey. They earned two wins in a World Cup group for the first time since 1930, a mark that makes this run feel different from the recent versions of the same story.
Mauricio Pochettino, hired in September 2024, framed the team’s mentality in simple terms. “Why not us?” he said, adding that it matters to believe. Folarin Balogun sounded just as direct. “I think there’s definitely belief,” he said. “Whether I would call it magic, I’m not sure. But there’s definitely a belief we have within ourselves.”
That belief now meets a standard that has changed. Reaching the round of 16 in 2014 and 2022 once felt like a decent finish for the U.S. men, but just getting out of the group stage no longer carries the same weight. The benchmark has moved because the team has already shown more in this tournament than simple survival. It has also done it in a 48-team World Cup, where the path to the knockout phase is wider, but the consequences are just as sharp once that phase begins.
The next test is a hard one because it is the first one that truly changes the conversation. A win Wednesday would give the U.S. men their first knockout match victory since 2002, the year of their deepest World Cup run, when they fell in the quarterfinals to Germany. If they get through Bosnia-Herzegovina, the question stops being whether they have advanced far enough. It becomes how much farther this group can go when the tournament starts to shrink around it.
