What time does the United States play? The bigger answer is that it plays Belgium on Monday in Seattle for a place in the World Cup quarterfinals, a match that will tell whether Mauricio Pochettino’s team can keep building on a run that has already carried it past Bosnia-Herzegovina. Pochettino watched training in Seattle on Sunday, July 5, 2026, with a starting group expected to be available for the knockout game.
The game matters now because the United States has not reached the quarterfinals since 2002, and it has never won back-to-back knockout matches in a World Cup. A victory would change both of those numbers at once. Belgium arrives with its own history intact: it beat the United States 2-1 in extra time in the 2014 round of 16 in Brazil, and it also came through Senegal 3-2 in extra time after trailing by two goals with four minutes left.
There is one question that has hung over this matchup from the start: whether the United States can finally carry a good result into the kind of game that usually exposes it. It has lost 10 straight times against European opponents over four years, a streak that sits awkwardly beside its 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina in the previous round. Christian Pulisic said Belgium has many players who can hurt a team, and that the Americans need to be sharp in many areas. Tim Ream put it more simply, saying the two teams are very different from the ones that met in March.
That March meeting is part of the reason this rematch has teeth. Belgium’s Maxim De Cuyper said the 2-5 loss to the United States in Atlanta gives a distorted picture and could easily have ended another way. Folarin Balogun is also available again after FIFA suspended the red-card ban he received against Bosnia, giving Pochettino another attacking option as the bracket tightens.
By Monday night, the search for what time does the United States play will be answered by the kickoff itself, and the more important number will be the one on the scoreboard. The winner moves on to face Spain or Portugal in the quarterfinals, while the loser goes home with the kind of result that has defined too many U.S. World Cup runs before this one.
