USMNT vs. Belgium: Takeaways from USA's regrettable World Cup exit

Practice made perfect—twice—for Malik Tillman

When Malik Tillman stood up to take his now-famous free kick against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32, his teammates knew he had something special in mind from his work in training. “We have these like wave machine thingies. I don't take free kicks, so I don't know, but Malik does it a lot,” laughed Chris Richards after the match. “It’s a lot of practice, man.”

It would appear that practice does, indeed, make perfect. Tillman netted a near-identical free kick from a near-identical angle to bring the USMNT level with Belgium in the first half of this Round of 16 clash. It’s fascinating—and humbling—to know that there’s no special secret behind Tillman’s spellbinding set pieces: he just practices them a lot, and reaps the rewards of all that muscle memory. Tillman is a star in the making for the USMNT, and these knockout rounds have been his coming-out party. He can walk away from this loss with his head held high.

Roster consistency didn't fix the USMNT's back line problem

Inside-the-box marking has always been a tricky thing for the USMNT: it spent many of its 2026 friendlies conceding silly close-range goals because it couldn’t communicate well inside its own penalty area. Much of that was attributed to the USMNT’s ever-changing back line at the time, but the issue didn't improve when coach Mauricio Pochettino locked his starters in place. The relatively stable back line of Freeman, Richards, Ream and Robinson struggled to man-mark Belgium in the box, and both of the Red Devils’ first-half goals came from the USMNT’s failure to pick up their final runners.

Attitude remains everything

There's no getting around it: this was an unchanged lineup from the one that beat Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0 in Santa Clara, but it looked like a completely different team. It could've been anything—nerves, frustration, exhaustion, poor preparation, or just a collective off day—but regardless of the cause, the USMNT's failure to deliver was a mental one. Its lack of crispness on the ball and unwillingness to press Belgium made it look like a team that didn't believe in itself.

That, more than anything, is the biggest shame. The USMNT made plenty of mistakes (and had plenty of problems) in its opening World Cup games, but it never, ever looked like it doubted its ability to compete. Its self-belief was strong enough to get the country believing in it, too. Where all that bravado went is anyone's guess, but it took the USMNT's hopes of advancing to a World Cup quarterfinal right along with it.