What does success look like for USMNT ‘golden generation’ of Christian Pulisic, Gio Reyna & Weston McKennie? Targets drawn up by legend of 1994 World Cup as 2026 countdown continues

Barriers were broken down in the United States some 30 years ago, with a global showpiece on home soil capturing the imagination of a nation that had made soccer something of an afterthought for longer than many cared to remember.

The sport is now booming - as superstar performers such as Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Gio Reyna strut their stuff in Europe – and there is plenty to look forward to as the Copa America staged in the States this summer will be followed by another World Cup finals in Northern and Central America in 2026.

Ramos has told FIFA’s official website of what the USMNT should be looking to achieve from here: “People like to judge the team by how far it goes in the World Cup. I think a lot of it has to do with your draw and who you play. What I can tell you is that we expect a lot from this team. We have have somehow branded this group of players as a golden generation because they’ve been together for a long time, so the expectations are higher. How far can we go? I’m hoping we do what we’ve always done, which is get results you’re not supposed to get. We did it in the 90s, we did it in the 2000s. I think we need to win some games that we are not supposed to win and if we do that, I think we’ll be happy with whatever the end is.”

While interest in the USMNT is building, and the presence of Lionel Messi at Inter Miami is aiding the domestic game, Ramos added on what he hopes a Copa America and World Cup cycle will deliver for the States: “MLS is around, but there’s no question that we’re in a moment in which you walk into a bar and people are not talking about soccer. On a Saturday morning you can go to a lot of places where there are EPL games on and people follow that, but you have to be ‘in the soccer world’. I’m hoping that this is the World Cup that gets people into soccer who are not into soccer.”

Positive results are required in order to hit that target, with the likes of Pulisic and McKennie needing to perform at their full potential across a long period of time, while further household names have to be drafted in to MLS across upcoming transfer windows.