On the third day of the U.S. men’s national team’s pre-World Cup training camp, players spent the hours after training trying to answer a simple question.”We don’t know if it’s a no-phones wedding. We’re trying to get clarity on that,” midfielder Cristian Roldan said, hours before their teammate Brenden Aaronson got married to his longtime girlfriend Milana D’Ambra. “Gio [Reyna]’s wife will be FaceTiming in and we’ll all be able to watch kind of like a live stream if it is a phone wedding.”Preview: USMNT battle Paraguay in opener on Friday nightIt was an unusual but joyous way to spend an evening on the road to the World Cup and the latest in a years-long journey for this particular group of players. The majority of the 26-player squad met in their teens as prospects on the youth national teams, some linking up even earlier – Tim Weah says he first played with Tyler Adams when he was around the age of eight. The bonds they formed along the way are so strong that national team settings have been likened to family reunions, the buzz around Aaronson’s wedding similar to that of a familial event even though the nuptials took place in New Jersey while the rest of the team was at the U.S. Soccer National Training Center in the suburbs of Atlanta.This is not only a story of lifelong friends-slash-teammates, though. This tight-knit version of the USMNT were handed the keys to the program when most people their age were starting college, not only in response to the previous generation’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup but because this group in particular boasted promise their predecessors did not. They not only had more opportunities than those that came before them, the first genuine beneficiaries of soccer’s professionalization in the U.S.; they burst onto the scene with a collective talent few had seen from USMNT players before.Their peak years coincide with the life events that are fairly common for people in their mid to late 20s, members of the USMNT’s golden generation returning to the World Cup as husbands and fathers. This moment in their careers could not come at a more timely juncture, a World Cup on home soil just days away. The task of furthering the growth of American soccer is greater than these 26 players but as global attention turns towards them, they will become the conduits of the sport’s most fascinating subplot – the casual embrace of the world’s game in a nation that feels like a most intriguing outlier.The USMNT are coming of age at just the right time, one might argue; the group is technically experienced enough to handle the demands and hopefully live up to the promise at a World Cup that will be the greatest test of their peak capabilities. Time will tell if they can actually live up to the potential many spotted in them roughly a decade ago – and if, in an uber-competitive sport, their true qualities will actually be enough to see them accomplish a grand feat many desperately hope awaits them.
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