Louisa Thomas

The 2026 World Cup’s approach has felt strangely muted, and the U.S. team has had a rough few years. Then the games began.

The power of the diaspora is the story of this World Cup—and the U.S. team, which beat Australia 2–0 on Friday, embodies it as well as anyone.

The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to right a wrong, not to beat Paraguay and Australia on the pitch—but then, American history is a long succession of accidents that lead to choices that, in retrospect, come to manifest as destiny. Here is one: when Florence Balogun, a Nigerian who lived in London, visited New York twenty-five years ago while heavily pregnant, airline staff refused to let her on the plane home, and so Folarin Balogun was born in Brooklyn. He was not even two months old when he went home to the United Kingdom—with American citizenship as his birthright.

With Erling Haaland watching from the bench, Ousmane Dembélé scored three times as Les Bleus won, 4–1, in a much-anticipated World Cup matchup.

For a moment, it looked like the forty-four-year-old would pull off another stunning comeback in the tournament she has won seven times. Then reality sank in.

The Yanks won their first knockout-round match in more than twenty years. But, after a controversial red card, they will be down their breakout star in the round of sixteen.

The video was clear; the moment rarely is. In the sixty-fourth minute of the U.S. men’s national team’s game against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Folarin Balogun, the U.S.’s breakout-star striker, who, in the first half, had scored the lone goal of the game to put the hosts up 1–0, lunged for a loose ball up the left sideline, jostling for position with Tarik Muharemović, Bosnia’s center back. Balogun splayed his legs to keep his balance, and his right foot raked down the back of Muharemović’s calf before landing on Muharemović’s ankle.

Despite a strong start to the tournament, and an egregious intervention by President Trump into FIFA 's suspension of its star striker, the U.S. men's soccer team couldn't keep up with Belgium.

The match began as a snooze, then became a romp. But the brilliance of the French team, and of its biggest star, Kylian Mbappé, shone through.

Lamine Yamal, the team's wonderkid, is thrilling, but discipline and patience have seen them through to the final.