​Seeing World Cup highlights on my TV and watching the US Men’s National Team games on the West Coast, all while I’m in the near-to-unrecognizable MetLife Stadium (New York-New Jersey Stadium in the background), has nudged my mind toward parallels between the USMNT and the New York Giants. For a moment, it seemed far-fetched to draw such a comparison, and you can be the judge on that. What tipped the scales for me was a tweet I saw on X during the USMNT’s brutal loss to Belgium that ended their World Cup run. The more I thought about it, the more parallels surfaced. So, just for fun (though it may not feel fun to optimistic fans of either side), here are a few thoughts.
Unlike the Giants, who boast four Super Bowl rings, the USMNT has never won a World Cup. Yet they have typically qualified for the tournament and enjoyed a strong run in 2002, a mere six World Cups ago. The lone glaring exception was 2018, when the USMNT failed to advance from their CONCACAF qualifying group, a region comprising North America, Central America, and the Caribbean—nations that haven’t posed a serious threat to win a World Cup since the US finished third in 1930. In that regard, the 2018 USMNT echoed the 2021 Giants, who followed a hopeful debut under head coach Joe Judge with expectations of making noise at the World Cup that year. We know how that Giants chapter ended: by season’s end they were content to run the ball in Chicago, and later, at home against Washington, they lined up in “surrender formation” deep in their own territory instead of pursuing a first down. Judge departed soon after.
The 2018 USMNT, under Jurgen Klinsmann, had reached the knockout stage in 2014 but then suffered a dispiriting home loss to Mexico in qualifying and were shut out in Costa Rica. Klinsmann was replaced by Bruce Arena, and with a World Cup berth on the line, the team lost to lowly Trinidad and Tobago and failed to qualify. Transition then moved to Dave Daboll—pardon me, Brian Daboll—replacing Judge as Giants head coach and delivering immediate success in 2022, guiding the Giants to the playoffs and even a playoff win in Minnesota. Yet the subsequent week in Philadelphia exposed the team, and the season deteriorated from there, culminating in Daboll’s mid-season firing last year. The autopsy on Daboll’s tenure suggested that the first-year success was largely a mirage, with wins primarily against weaker opponents or against better teams that enjoyed mediocre seasons.
On the international side, the USMNT in 2022 turned to Gregg Berhalter, who had already coached the team before. Berhalter steered them through CONCACAF qualifying and into the World Cup, marking an immediate improvement over 2018. The USMNT managed to advance from the group stage into the knockout rounds, but once there they were exposed, losing 3-1 to The Netherlands. In hindsight, their group-stage success often looks like a sequence of two draws and a 1-0 win designed more for SEO than for substance.