USMNT confident they can end recent struggles vs. Europeans

ATLANTA — Buoyed by a squad stacked with regulars from the Bundesliga, Premier League and La Liga, the U.S. men’s national team arrived in Atlanta this week convinced that their next European exam can produce a different result. Belgium and Portugal, both top-ten residents in the current FIFA rankings, will face the Americans in a pair of weekend friendlies that serve as the final tune-ups before this summer’s World Cup.

“We have a lot of guys on the team all playing at top European clubs, so we play these players every single week,” said Long Island-raised defender Joe Scally, a starter for Borussia Mönchengladbach. “We’ve all won at the highest of levels. We showed against Uruguay, against Paraguay—even when we played Brazil a couple years ago before Copa America—that we have it in us. We can beat any of these teams.”

The optimism clashes with a sobering trend line: the U.S. has lost five consecutive matches against UEFA opposition and has prevailed in barely a quarter of its World Cup meetings with European sides. Those numbers will be front-of-mind when the squad steps onto the Mercedes-Benz Stadium pitch on Saturday against Belgium and again three days later versus Portugal.

While the Americans sharpen their shape, the World Cup draw continues to crystallize elsewhere. Turkey’s 1-0 playoff semifinal defeat of Romania, coupled with Kosovo’s dramatic 4-3 comeback in Slovakia, sets up a Tuesday final in Pristina. Should the 23rd-ranked Turks prevail at Fadil Vokrri Stadium, they will join the U.S., Australia and Paraguay in Group D, adding another UEFA hurdle to the Americans’ group-stage slate.

Back in Atlanta, defender Miles Robinson trained apart from teammates Thursday, but the remaining 22 field players completed a full session under the watch of interim staff. With kickoff against Belgium looming, the message inside the camp is uniform: the talent gap that once separated the program from Europe’s elite has narrowed, and the time to prove it is now.