Birthright citizenship helped build it. Meet World Cup USMNT. | Opinion

A lot of American teams have captured the imagination of fans and earned such monikers as the “Dream Team.” But none is quite like the gathering of soccer talent that thrashed Paraguay 4-1 on June 12 and will take on Australia on June 19 in its second World Cup match. 

It goes by the rather ordinary name of U.S. Men's National Team (USMNT). But there’s nothing ordinary about this diverse assortment of brash, driven, articulate, enterprising, hip, multilingual and immensely likable young men who defy convention and sneer at boundaries.  

They cut quite the figure, to say the least, with their fascinating backgrounds and engaging stories. 

From a son of a former president to a striker who got an assist from the 14th Amendment

One of them, winger Tim Weah, has four nationalities and is the son of a former president ‒ George Weah, who led Liberia from 2018-24 and who also was once FIFA World Player of the Year. 

Another, winger and midfielder Christian Pulisic, chartered a jet in 2016 to get to his high school prom in Pennsylvania. (Don’t we all?) It then brought him back to Kansas City the next day in time for him to score against Bolivia. 

Midfielder Weston McKennie is equal parts comic and keen analyst of the human condition. Defensive midfielder Tyler Adams answers questions – including hostile ones from Iranian media at the 2022 World Cup ‒ with such grace, aplomb and insight that he’s a good bet to be our president someday. 

Goalkeeper Matt Freese is a Harvard man, in a sport where few players go to any college. And El Paso, Texas, native and striker Ricardo Pepi chose to play for the USA even though his father dreamed for him to pick Mexico. 

Then there is striker Folarin Balogun, the accidental American who scored twice against Paraguay and has been an absolute breakout phenomenon in 2026. He has rarely set foot on our shores, but he's eligible to play for us because he was born in New York City ‒ a fact that he attributes to airline employees not allowing his pregnant mom to board a flight back to London in the summer of 2001. Credit birthright citizenship for the assist.

'You had the choice to choose, and you chose America'

In all its insane glory, the USMNT is an apt metaphor for the United States, a nation growing more diverse by the moment and increasingly interconnected with the world. The team didn’t get this way by accident.

Though soccer has grown increasingly popular, the United States is still very much a football-basketball-baseball country at the youth development level ‒ meaning that, in one way or another, the members of this U.S. men's soccer team have had to try harder than other professional athletes to get where they are. 

There are basically two types who dominate the roster:

The first grows up in Europe, holding U.S. citizenship through a parent or place of birth, and takes advantage of its many developmental academies that feed directly into top teams. In this category is forward Sergiño Dest. His mother is Dutch, his father Surinamese American. Apart from brief stints in Spain and Italy, he has lived in the Netherlands his entire life. 

When it came time to pick a national team, most observers assumed he'd go Dutch ‒ for the convenience, for the chance to play for a global soccer power and because its national team really wanted him. But it had been the U.S. soccer federation that had given him a chance on its underage teams, including stints at FIFA Under-17 and Under-20 World Cups. While on those teams, he developed deep loyalties – and deep friendships.  

In a recent HBO documentary, Dest's father, a Vietnam War veteran, explained how he sees things: “You’re more American if you’re not born (here). Because you had the choice to choose, and you chose America.” 

The other type of player is raised in the USA and somehow makes it work through sheer will power and an insatiable desire to be different. Eventually, he makes his way to Europe about the time his peers are finishing high school. 

Center back Chris Richards is a great example. He was drawn to soccer while growing up on the farthest planet from the American soccer galaxy: Alabama.

As he told the "Men in Blazers" podcast, “I felt like an outsider because I was the only kid who wasn’t playing football. But it wasn’t just that. It was that I was the only Black kid that was playing soccer.” 

Despite the challenges, Richards did so well that, at 18, he found himself at the club perched at pretty much the pinnacle of European football, FC Bayern Munich. There, he was battling people from around the world for precious few roster spots. 

In an odd way, Richards' Alabama struggles made things easier: “I finally was seeing people that looked like me playing the sport I loved.”

It is people like these who make the national team so easy to like. They come to the World Cup with the not-so-modest dual mandate of showing the world that the USA is a legit soccer power and exploding on the domestic scene with such force as to drive up interest in their beloved sport.  

No, nothing ordinary about them. Just extraordinary.  

Dan Carney is a former editorial writer for USA TODAY.