SEATTLE — The last time the U.S. men’s national soccer team played Belgium, in a March 2026 match billed as a World Cup tuneup, it got “a good reality check.”
Those were head coach Mauricio Pochettino’s words after a 5-2 Belgian drubbing. The game spiraled out of control in the second half. Wave after wave of talented Belgium attackers turned a balanced contest into a bloodbath.
It felt, at the time, like evidence that the U.S. still couldn’t measure up to Europe’s best.
But now, as the teams prepare for a World Cup round-of-16 clash, it feels mostly irrelevant.
“Last time it was a friendly game, so it’s not the same,” U.S. wingback Sergiño Dest said of the March exhibition. “Then, you can try things out.”
It feels irrelevant for a variety of reasons, but largely because the U.S. did “try things out.” Pochettino tried a tactical system that he had not used in several months and has not used since.
Namely, he played not one but two attack-minded fullbacks, and only two stay-at-home defenders. Belgium exploited the space left gaping when one of those fullbacks, Tim Weah, a natural right winger, pushed high up the field.
Ever since, the U.S. has played with a third stay-at-home (or mostly-at-home) defender, Alex Freeman, who has given the team a blend of stability and dynamism that’s been crucial to their World Cup success.
It was also part of their turnaround last fall. After a 2-0 loss to South Korea in September, Pochettino switched to a formation with three true center backs. In October, the shape then morphed into a hybrid, but the key, from Sept. 9 to present, has been that the right-sided defender — whether a center back like Miles Robinson or a fullback like Freeman — did not bomb up and down the wing.
Except once.
That Belgium match was the lone exception.
Pochettino asked Weah to attack as a right winger, and sometimes even to press Belgium’s left fullback …
… while also defending the best player on the field, Belgian left winger Jérémy Doku.
Doku, for many reasons including this one, terrorized the USMNT on that Saturday afternoon. Belgium’s first three goals, plus a fourth that was disallowed for a handball, all started at his feet on the left wing.
Three months later, Doku has battled illness and has not scored or assisted a goal at this World Cup. The U.S., on the other hand, has never again looked so vulnerable. Its approach that day in Atlanta now looks like such an outlier that it’s fair to wonder whether Pochettino saw the possibility of a World Cup matchup on the horizon and chose not to give Belgium an up-close look at his true plans.
The U.S. vulnerability in that friendly was exacerbated, too, by the absence of Chris Richards, the team’s top center back, and Tyler Adams, its terrier-like defensive midfielder. Both missed out due to injury.
Adams in particular would have helped contain Belgium’s counter- or quick-strike attacks. In addition to being a world-class front-foot defender, he is a speedy safety net, an eraser of mistakes, a saving grace when the U.S. loses possession of the ball in a perilous moment or area.
He will slide over to aid Freeman and double-team Doku on Monday in a way that Tanner Tessmann, Johnny Cardoso and Cristian Roldan — three central midfielders who are either not on this World Cup roster or haven’t played a minute at the tournament — couldn’t do consistently enough back in March.
Adams, as if to emphasize the point when asked about the “rematch,” said Wednesday night: “I didn’t play against Belgium last game. I’m looking forward to playing against them.”
He watched that March game, though, and previously recalled seeing it “snowball” in the second half. He surely felt it would’ve been different if he were there.
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There were other extenuating circumstances as well. There was the color clash of the two teams’ kits, which, according to multiple players, made reading the game difficult. (This will be rectified on Monday; the U.S. will wear its dark jerseys, according to FIFA.)
There were also countless media and marketing responsibilities heaped onto players’ plates that week in Atlanta. Their schedules were jam-packed with meetings and photoshoots. Some, coming off flights from Europe and battling jetlag, were kept up past 10 p.m. some nights. “The demand,” Pochettino admitted, “was really intense.”
The day after the Belgium match, he said, the players “were so tired and they cannot visit the training ground, because they wanted to rest a little bit.”
He even said that “sometimes, we didn’t do meetings because players (were) going to I don’t know where. … Until last day, we cannot talk about nothing.” All in all, he concluded, “the situation wasn’t the best.”
But it was “tough” so that it wouldn’t have to be as tough two months later, when many of the same players gathered for their World Cup camp, when results started to matter.
Unburdened by all those responsibilities, they quickly eased into a daily and weekly rhythm, first at U.S. Soccer’s new national training center south of Atlanta, then in Irvine, Calif., at their World Cup hotel and training facility.
They have been flying on the field ever since, winning three of four games by multiple goals and keeping two shutouts.
Belgium, on the other hand, has often looked laborious and stagnant — until its furious comeback from 2-0 down to beat Senegal in the round of 32.
The Belgians still have technical quality, arguably more than the USMNT. They are still, by a considerable margin, the USMNT’s most difficult 2026 World Cup opponent yet.
But they are not the world-beaters they looked like in March — because the U.S. is not the same team that got beat. That result should not dampen American optimism. It was inconsequential, and it is buried in the past.
“Now,” Dest said, “it’s for real.”