World Cup Reflections: U.S. Soccer's Journey in Qatar

On the eve of Wales, in a Doha hotel ballroom, Gregg Berhalter drew a circle.

Twenty-six players, shoulder to shoulder, stood around their head coach as he handed out a number that meant more than any squad list or depth chart. Not a jersey number. A lineage.

"He said, 'Each one of you guys has been assigned a number specific to you, and it represents what number you are representing the U.S. in a World Cup'," Walker Zimmerman remembers. His was 152. The 152nd man ever to play for the United States at a World Cup.

Back in his room, the jersey was waiting. The number was small. The meaning was not.

"When you think about it, you're like, '152, that's it?'" Zimmerman says. "You realize you're in such an elite group of players who have ever gotten the chance to do it. That, for me, was pretty special."

He wasn’t alone in feeling that weight. Tyler Adams, Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie – they had grown up together in U.S. youth camps, bonded in the rubble of 2018 and tasked with dragging the program forward. Tim Weah, Josh Sargent, Sergiño Dest had their own shared history. By Qatar, this wasn’t just a team. It was a long-running story that had finally reached a World Cup chapter.

"Those are the best memories," Adams says. "It's the memories of us getting to that stage, even more than where we are now."

Life in the bubble

Once the tournament started, the romance disappeared into the schedule.

"It's so quick," veteran defender Tim Ream says. A compressed World Cup, late kickoffs, a warped body clock. "We're staying up until three in the morning, we're all over the place. Breakfast is at 12, lunch at four, then training."

Three group games in eight days. Wales, England, Iran. Training, recovery, tactical meetings. Ten p.m. kickoffs, two a.m. adrenaline, the hum of Doha outside and the hum of the air conditioning inside.

Sargent leaned on a mental coach to slow it down. Deep breaths, gratitude, reminders to look around and actually see where he was. Haji Wright, looking back, can barely piece it together.

"The World Cup was like a fever dream," Wright says. "It went by so fast."

For Joe Scally, it never really started. One of five outfield players who didn’t see the field, he still felt the pull of the anthem, the stadium, the noise.

"Seeing the guys go out there, national anthem, full stadium, the whole world is watching, it's something you want to be a part of so badly," he says. "Of course, I was a part of it, but not on the field."

Different roles. Same tournament. Same gravitational force.

Three goals, three very different nights

Before Qatar, only 22 American men had scored at a World Cup. Three more joined that group in 2022, each in a moment that said as much about circumstance as it did about finishing.

Weah went first. Wales, opening night, the long wait over. Pulisic slid him through and Weah, calm and cold, passed the ball into the far corner. The U.S. were back.

"Leading up to that World Cup, I dreamt of scoring," he says. "For it to become a reality, it was – man, it was amazing."

He had visualized the moment for years. The celebration, the noise, the feeling in his chest. The reality topped the dream.

Pulisic’s turn came with the stakes cranked higher. Iran, win or go home, tension everywhere – political, sporting, emotional. He arrived in the box at full tilt, met the cross, and forced the ball over the line. The price was immediate: a brutal collision with goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand and a pelvic injury that ended his night.

There was no iconic sprint to the corner flag, no pile-on under the lights. No image to live forever. Just pain, a hospital trip, and a FaceTime call back to a jubilant dressing room.

"It would have been, and it was, a huge moment," Pulisic told GOAL in 2024. "Unfortunately, I just had to celebrate that one lying in the goal."

He doesn’t dwell on what the celebration could have been. He talks about tournaments, trophies, legacies measured by wins, not poses.

Wright’s goal came with hope already flickering. Round of 16 against the Netherlands, the U.S. trailing, desperate. A cross arrived, he stuck out a foot, and the ball looped – almost lazily – into the far corner. A freak touch, a lifeline.

"It felt crazy," he says. For a heartbeat, he believed the game had turned. It hadn’t. The Netherlands finished the job, 3-1, and Wright’s place in history became tangled with the worst night of his career.

"Being a World Cup goalscorer is amazing," he says. "Being knocked out of that same game, though? What happened after the goal? The emotions that I felt? That's what I remember."

Only with time have those three goals settled into something they can all process. Clips circulate on social media. Reactions resurface. The noise from back home – bars, living rooms, watch parties – keeps the moments alive.

"We were just seeing the reactions online," Weah says. "Seeing the fans back home when I scored or when Christian scored, it was amazing, man, just to see the impact that we have and the representation that we have in our country."

The quiet hours that really bonded a team

The goals will live forever. For many players, they aren’t the first memories that come to mind.

DeAndre Yedlin, the lone holdover from 2014, knew better than most how quickly a World Cup can consume you. Cameras everywhere, opinions everywhere, every touch magnified.

"It feels like adversity gets multiplied by 10 because there's always a camera on you, always a microscope on you," he said in 2024. After each game, he led teammates back out onto the empty pitch, long after the fans had gone. A quiet walk, a slow lap, a chance to breathe.

"It’s important to find that space and peace," he said. "We're literally just entertaining people. That can bring inspiration, that can bring hope… but at the end of the day, that's what it is."

Some players tried to lock every second into memory. Sargent stayed off his phone and swears he can recall "every single detail." Ream remembers flashes only.

"I'm there and I'm so insanely focused," he says. "It's like tunnel vision. There's a whole lot that you forget."

Qatar itself refused to be forgotten. The call to prayer rolling across Doha. Souqs pressed up against brand-new stadiums. A city built around a tournament and pulsing to its rhythm.

"I enjoyed every bit of it," goalkeeper Matt Turner says. The unfamiliar culture, the soundscape, the sense that faith and football were sharing the same air. "It was special because we were in this foreign land all together… we had just this rock solid bubble."

Inside that bubble, The Pearl and the Marsa Malaz Kempinski became more than a base. They became a memory bank. So much so that Yunus Musah went back the following summer just to feel it again.

"Everything was like a throwback," he said in 2025. "The smell! I could smell it again… it felt like I was experiencing all of those moments from the World Cup all over again."

At the heart of it all sat the Players’ Lounge. Not the stadiums, not the training ground. A hotel room turned sanctuary.

"We had so much downtime with one another that it really just allowed us to connect," Adams says. "That Players' Lounge, watching games of the World Cup, taking it all in, no noise, it was like our own little sanctuary."

Ping-pong, pool, video games, movie nights. Arguments over rules. Sean Johnson and Yedlin inventing their own version of pool that Zimmerman still laughs about: "They barely hit the ball and just tried to make you lose by scratching."

Cristian Roldan avoided his room almost entirely. If he wasn’t training, he was in that lounge, soaking in every conversation, every joke, every shared glance at the TV.

Those hours, more than tactics or team talks, turned teammates into something closer to family.

Families, sacrifices and a section in the stands

The real families, though, were never far away.

Zimmerman remembers the first game against Wales, the anthem building, the noise rising. His eyes went searching for one part of the stadium: the U.S. family section.

"Everyone's story is tied up with what that group of supporters has done to get us into this spot," he says. "All of the sacrifices that those people made, those families, to get you to where you are on the field."

Parents, partners, siblings, children. Dozens of lives stitched into the 26 on the pitch. For Ream, the best moments came in those brief windows when families were allowed into the hotel, when the intensity dipped and life felt normal again.

"Those were the only moments where you felt you could actually sit back and breathe," he says. "My wife and kids and I, we're all here in this place together."

The World Cup didn’t just bring players closer. It connected their families. Weah still talks about that as one of the lasting gifts of Qatar – meeting everyone’s people, seeing the web of support that had carried this group to the sport’s biggest stage.

"It was just this experience that drew us all closer together," he says. "It's something I'll never forget."

Since then, lives have moved on. Some players have become fathers. Others have watched their kids grow into an age where they understand what dad actually does. Roldan, now with a nearly two-year-old daughter, feels his motivation sharpen.

"I want her to watch daddy play," he says. Not just be on a roster, not just be a bench presence. Play.

Sebastian Berhalter saw Qatar from the stands, not the bench. Still early in his MLS career, he went as a son, not a midfielder, watching his father coach the U.S. against the best in the world.

"It's the one time I got to feel like an ultra," he says, laughing. A supporter, a fan, a family member riding every moment.

The fracture: Gio Reyna and the cost of a World Cup

Not every family story from Qatar was clean. Not every memory is bathed in nostalgia.

For Gio Reyna, the tournament became a turning point for all the wrong reasons. He arrived carrying injury concerns and the expectation of a starring role. When that role shrank, emotions spilled over. His limited minutes, questions about his response in training, and, later, the Reyna family’s decision to inform U.S. Soccer of a decades-old domestic violence incident involving Berhalter turned a football story into something far more complicated.

It became one of the defining controversies in modern USMNT history – and it started in that same bubble, in those same weeks.

In the years since, everyone involved has tried to move on. Berhalter returned in 2023, then departed after Copa America 2024. Reyna stayed in the player pool. Mauricio Pochettino is now the man in charge.

Reyna speaks about 2022 now as a lesson.

"I think just individually and collectively, we were all very, very young and maybe a little bit inexperienced at the time," he says. The U.S. ran into a Dutch team that was "a little bit more experienced, a little bit better, a little bit more savvy with the game."

"It's a World Cup. Obviously, it's an amazing experience. I learned so much from that," he says. This time, on home soil, he wants to play more, contribute more, but he frames it differently now: "It's about the collective. It's about the team… to do something special for our country."

His experience was heavier than most. Qatar showed him how a World Cup can expose as much as it rewards.

The ones who never got there

Some players left Qatar with scars. Others never got there at all.

Miles Robinson had been a cornerstone of qualifying, penciled in by many as a starting center-back. Then came May 2022, an Achilles tear, and the cold reality that there would be no miracle recovery.

When the World Cup kicked off, he had a choice: shut it out or lean into it.

"Man, I was outside watching that sh*t," he told GOAL with a smile. He chose life, crowds, energy. Parties and watch-alongs. "I really wanted to experience that real-life energy because that's who I am."

Chris Richards never had that runway. A late hamstring injury with Crystal Palace left him rehabbing in London while his friends walked out to World Cup anthems.

"I'm in London watching the boys kill it at the World Cup," he says. "I was so, so happy for them, but for myself, it was lonely."

He ducked the sport for a while. The dream had been too close, the timing too cruel.

Mark McKenzie’s pain was different. No injury, just omission. A coach’s decision. After breaking into the national team and collecting his first 10 caps, he felt ready. The phone call said otherwise.

"Missing out on the 22 World Cup? It ripped me apart, bro," he says. "It was gutwrenching because I was so close."

The hurt eventually turned into perspective. Maybe he had placed too much of his identity on one tournament. Maybe there were parts of his game – and life – that needed attention. The sting remains, but so does the lesson.

Now Pochettino holds the pen. Another 26 names, another set of dreams realized and others postponed. Another generation about to discover how a World Cup can rearrange a life.

What Qatar changed – and what 2026 demands

For Adams, the impact only truly landed when he went home. A walk through New York City, a place where anonymity is usually guaranteed, felt different.

"People all of a sudden knew who I was walking back home in the streets of New York City," he says. At the same time, he was preparing to become a father, trying to balance a new public profile with a new private responsibility.

The rest of the group felt it in their own ways. A bump in recognition. A shift in expectations. A sense that they had announced themselves, but not yet arrived.

Qatar, in many ways, was the dress rehearsal. The main event is coming to their doorstep.

In 2026, the U.S. will not just compete; it will host. That changes everything. The pressure. The scrutiny. The opportunity.

"It's an amazing feeling, but also a responsibility at the same time," McKennie says. Kids will be watching, not from afar, but from stadium seats in their own country, from living rooms in their own time zone. Social media will amplify every touch, every mistake, every celebration.

"Hopefully, people see that there is a pathway out there for them," McKennie says. It won’t look the same for everyone – not his route, not Pulisic’s, not Richards’ – but the message, he insists, is simple: "Believe in yourself and bet on yourself always."

Soon, 26 more players will step into the circle. Some will bring the scars and wisdom of 2022. Others will arrive fresh, wide-eyed, unaware of how quickly a World Cup can swallow you whole.

Some will score. Some will sit. Some will have their careers defined in a moment. Others will find their defining memories in a hotel lounge at 2 a.m., or in a quiet walk around an empty stadium, or in the face of a child waiting in the family section.

For the class of Qatar, that winter will always bind them. For some, it was a chapter. For others, the hinge on which everything turned. None of them believe it can ever truly be replicated.

"After it was over, it felt like soccer had changed me, in a way," Wright says. "Now you find yourself chasing that same feeling. It's hard to get that feeling again outside of a World Cup."

Turner knows exactly what he’s chasing.

"I had some amazing experiences," he says. "That's why I need to get back there, because I really want that feeling again."