Reflections on the 2022 World Cup: U.S. Men's National Team Experience

On the eve of Wales, Gregg Berhalter dimmed the lights and shrank the World Cup down to a single number.

He pulled his 26 players into a circle and told them each where they stood in the history of the U.S. men’s national team. Not in the squad. In the story.

Walker Zimmerman’s number was 152.

“He said, ‘Each one of you guys has been assigned a number specific to you, and it represents what number you are representing the U.S. in a World Cup,’” Zimmerman recalls. “For me, it was 152.”

Back in his room that night, the jersey was waiting. Name, number, and that tiny piece of history.

You are the 152nd man to do this.

“Then you go by position and what, a fourth, a fifth, or a sixth of those are centerbacks?” Zimmerman says. “What about guys who started a game? You realize you're in such an elite group.”

He wasn’t alone in feeling that weight. Tyler Adams, Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tim Weah, Josh Sargent, Sergiño Dest — they had grown up together in youth camps and airports and anonymous training grounds. They weren’t just teammates arriving in Qatar.

They were the same generation finally stepping into the thing they’d been promised.

“Those are the best memories,” Adams says. “My memories with Weston are always going to be more valuable as a kid. It's the memories of us getting to that stage, even more than where we are now.”

Life in the bubble

Once the tournament started, the romance vanished under floodlights and logistics.

No warm-up friendlies. No long buildup. Players flew in from Europe and MLS and were tossed straight into a compressed World Cup played on desert time.

“It’s so quick,” Tim Ream says. “The games are late, so it’s weird because you're playing at 10 PM, so it switches our body clocks. We're staying up until three in the morning, we're all over the place. Even on days we weren't playing, they wanted us to stay up until 2 o'clock in the morning. Breakfast is at 12, lunch at four, then training.”

Three group matches in eight days. Wales. England. Iran. Training, recovery, team meetings, the same hotel corridors. For some, it barely feels real now.

“Looking back now,” Haji Wright says, “the World Cup was like a fever dream. It went by so fast.”

Others tried to slow it down, if only for a breath.

“I have a good mental coach that I work with, and we made that a big priority,” Sargent says. “It's going to be a stressful time, you're going to be nervous, but make sure that, while you're there, take some deep breaths and be grateful and take it all in.”

For Joe Scally, the game never came. He was one of five outfield players who didn’t see a minute in Qatar, yet he still felt the tournament wrap itself around him.

“A World Cup is a World Cup,” he says. “There's nothing better in sports than a World Cup, so to be there was an awesome experience. Of course, it was different for me… but it also lit a fire underneath me.”

He watched the national anthem, the full stadium, the cameras, and felt the ache of being so close and yet not quite in it.

“Of course, I was a part of it,” he says, “but not on the field.”

Three goals, three very different nights

Before 2022, only 22 American men had scored at a World Cup. Qatar added three more names to that list, each goal wrapped in a different kind of memory.

Tim Weah struck first.

Against Wales in the opener, Christian Pulisic slipped him through and Weah finished with the calm of someone who had been rehearsing this scene for years — because he had.

“Leading up to that World Cup, I dreamt of scoring,” he says. “Years were passing by, and I literally always dreamt of that one moment at a World Cup, how it would feel, how I would celebrate.”

When it finally came, it was cleaner, sharper, more vivid than anything he’d imagined.

“Just playing in the World Cup alone was a dream come true,” Weah says. “But scoring? It was an amazing feeling.”

Pulisic’s moment came with more pain than joy.

The U.S. needed to beat Iran in the final group game. Pulisic charged into the box, met the cross, and forced the ball over the line — and straight into Iran goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand. The goal sent the U.S. into the knockout rounds and Pulisic to the hospital with a pelvic injury.

The defining image of his World Cup wasn’t a knee-slide or a sprint to the corner flag. It was Pulisic lying in the net, barely able to move.

“It would have been, and it was, a huge moment,” he told GOAL in 2024. “Normally… I would have had a pretty cool celebration with the team. You could see the team wanted to run over and celebrate, but it was like, I just didn't have that.”

He doesn’t dwell on what might have been.

“Sometimes, things work out that way,” he said. “I wouldn't have changed it for the world… I hope to have many big moments. It's not like I feel like 'Oh, I need that one moment, that iconic celebration'. I want to go in and I want to win these tournaments.”

Haji Wright’s goal came in the Round of 16 against the Netherlands, and even now he struggles to know what to do with it.

The finish was freakish — an instinctive, looping flick that somehow spun over Andries Noppert and into the far corner, a wild lifeline in a match the U.S. were chasing.

“It felt crazy,” Wright says. “After it went in, I kind of felt like the momentum might change a little bit and felt we might get another opportunity. Obviously, that's not how it went.”

The U.S. lost 3-1. The dream ended that night.

“It's your dream for your whole life, and then you get knocked out and everything comes out of you,” he says. “I didn't really ever think about scoring. I still probably haven't really thought about it now.”

The label “World Cup goalscorer” is there. The emotion that clings to it is something else.

“Being a World Cup goalscorer is amazing,” Wright says. “Being knocked out of that same game, though? What happened after the goal? The emotions that I felt? That's what I remember.”

The moments no camera caught

Those goals live forever on highlight reels. Ask most players what they treasure most from Qatar, though, and they talk about something far quieter.

DeAndre Yedlin, the only holdover from Brazil 2014, understood that better than most. Eight years earlier, he had been the kid with the mohawk and the raw pace. In 2022, he was the veteran voice who had seen what a World Cup can do to a player’s head.

After every match, when the cameras moved on, Yedlin led a small group back onto the pitch. No crowd. No anthem. Just a few players walking the grass, trying to freeze a feeling that kept slipping through their fingers.

“It feels like adversity gets multiplied by 10 because there's always a camera on you, always a microscope on you, and everybody has an opinion,” Yedlin told GOAL in 2024. “I think it's important to find that space and peace.”

He had come to see the job for what it is.

“At the end of the day, maybe as bad as it sounds, but we're literally just entertaining people,” he said. “That can bring inspiration, that can bring hope… For me, it's always just about keeping that perspective.”

Others found their own way to hold onto the weeks that were flying past.

“I tried to stay off my phone as much as possible and just be in the moment with the guys,” Sargent says. “I feel like I can remember every single detail.”

Ream can’t.

“I can see glimpses of it,” he says. “I'm there and I'm so insanely focused. It's like tunnel vision. There's a whole lot that you forget.”

What no one forgets is where it all happened.

Qatar was different. The call to prayer rolling across Doha. Souqs and old markets standing next to brand-new stadiums. A city running entirely on World Cup time.

“I enjoyed every bit of it,” Matt Turner says. “Honestly, it was so cool to be in a culture I've never experienced before. The call to prayer was going on and, to me, it was peaceful and it was thoughtful… It was special because we were in this foreign land all together… and we had just this rock solid bubble.”

Sergiño Dest used the rooftop of the team hotel as his vantage point. The players were largely confined to The Pearl, the man-made island where they stayed at the Marsa Malaz Kempinski, but from above he could at least listen.

“I was just living in that moment,” Dest says. “I would just sit there, drink my water, and watch these people enjoy life. They'd have flags and stuff, watching games, and I remember being like, 'This is it.'”

He had a big room with a balcony. In the afternoons he’d open the window and let the noise roll in.

“In the afternoon, you could just open the window and hear the sound of life,” he says. “That's what I miss most about it.”

The heart of the team: one hotel room

Inside the hotel, the soundtrack changed: matches on TV, shouts from ping-pong tables, the clack of pool balls, the murmur of teammates half-watching a movie.

The Players’ Lounge became their refuge.

“We had so much downtime with one another that it really just allowed us to connect,” Adams says. “That Players' Lounge, watching games of the World Cup, taking it all in, no noise, it was like our own little sanctuary.”

Berhalter had made it a priority. Togetherness wasn’t a slogan; it was scheduled.

“Gregg made it a priority that team camaraderie and the time we spent together was valued and sacred,” Adams says. “It just felt that, during the World Cup, I got even closer to some guys that I didn't even know I could get closer with.”

Competition never stopped. When it wasn’t on the pitch, it was on the felt, or the table, or the console.

“Sean Johnson and DeAndre Yedlin had their crazy style of pool that they were playing,” Zimmerman says. “It was basically snooker. They barely hit the ball and just tried to make you lose by scratching.”

Cristian Roldan wanted to be anywhere but alone.

“I remember being around the boys in the Players' Lounge and making sure I didn't spend any time in my room and didn't take any moment for granted,” he says.

For Yunus Musah, the place left such a mark that he went back a year later just to walk the same hallways.

“Everything was like a throwback,” he said in 2025. “The smell! I could smell it again… it felt like I was experiencing all of those moments from the World Cup all over again.”

To him, Qatar was simple.

“For me personally, the World Cup was the best experience ever,” he said. “I loved it so much.”

The other team in the stands

Zimmerman’s sharpest memory of that first match against Wales isn’t of Gareth Bale or the anthem or the first whistle.

It’s of the family section.

“Everyone's story is tied up with what that group of supporters has done to get us into this spot,” he says. “All of the sacrifices that those people made… to get you to where you are on the field.”

Mothers. Fathers. Siblings. Partners. Children. Friends. The people who had driven, funded, and believed their way through youth tournaments and long winters and injuries to reach this one night in Doha.

“That, for me, was a special moment,” Zimmerman says. “Just seeing that family contingent being so proud of us and then being thankful in that moment for all the sacrifices that group made for us.”

For many players, the only time the World Cup slowed down was when those faces appeared.

“It's so much work and focus and trying to come down from a game or gear yourself up for a game,” Ream says. “Those were the only moments where you felt you could actually sit back and breathe and really think, 'Okay, I'm going to take a mental picture of this and remember this.'”

Families didn’t just support; they bonded with each other. The parents and partners who had only known each other through text chains and scattered camps suddenly shared buses, meals, and nerves.

“We were all really close already,” Weah says, “but having that period of time to connect and meet everyone's family, share our lives together, that was amazing… It's one of those memories that, even when you're old and gray, you'll remember those moments.”

Life has moved on since. Some players have become fathers. Others have seen their kids grow into an age where they understand what a World Cup is.

“I've had this late surge because I've had my daughter around,” Roldan says. “It doesn't matter how I compete; I come home and she just wants to see me. She doesn't care if I win or lose.”

Now, his dream is not just to go back, but to bring her into it.

“Part of my motivation to extend my career and continue to play at a high level is that I want her to watch me play,” he says. “I want her to watch daddy play.”

Sebastian Berhalter saw Qatar from a different angle entirely. He wasn’t on the field or on the bench. He was in the stands, watching his father coach the national team at a World Cup.

“It's the one time I got to feel like an ultra,” he says with a laugh. “Seeing your dad coach against some of the best teams in the world was something I'll never forget.”

The fracture: Gio Reyna and the fallout

Not every story from Qatar is bathed in nostalgia.

For Gio Reyna, the tournament he had dreamed about became a study in frustration and consequence. He arrived with lingering injury issues. His role shrank. His reaction, and the staff’s response, spilled beyond the locker room.

What followed is now one of the most dissected episodes in modern USMNT history: Reyna’s limited minutes, questions about his effort in training, and, after the tournament, the Reyna family informing U.S. Soccer of a decades-old domestic violence incident involving Gregg Berhalter.

The fallout stretched well beyond tactics and team sheets. Investigations, statements, and a fractured relationship between a star player’s family and the federation reshaped the landscape.

Time has passed. Berhalter returned in 2023, then departed after the 2024 Copa America. Mauricio Pochettino has since taken over. Reyna remains in the player pool, his talent unchanged, his perspective altered.

“I think just individually and collectively, we were all very, very young and maybe a little bit inexperienced at the time,” Reyna says now. “In the end, it sort of just happened that we came up against a Holland team that was a little bit more experienced, a little bit better, a little bit more savvy with the game.”

He speaks about Qatar as something that taught him how big a World Cup really is.

“It's a World Cup. Obviously, it's an amazing experience. I learned so much from that,” he says. “Of course, would want to play more at this upcoming tournament, but at the same time, you learn that it's about just trying to do whatever you can to help the team. This is your whole country that's fighting something.”

With 2026 on home soil, his ambition is clear.

“This one is in our home country, too, so it would be a dream come true just to be there,” he says. “It's just about the collective. It's about the team… to do something special for our country.”

Reyna walked away from Qatar carrying something heavier than most: the knowledge that a World Cup can expose as much as it rewards.

The ones left behind

The unfinished business from 2022 doesn’t stop with Reyna.

Some players never got on the field. Others never got on the plane.

Miles Robinson was supposed to be there. He had been a cornerstone of qualifying, a near-lock for the starting XI. Then his Achilles snapped in May 2022. The diagnosis ended his World Cup before it really began.

“Man, I was outside watching that sh*t,” he told GOAL with a smile. “We were partying, watching, cheering on my guys. I really wanted to experience that real-life energy because that's who I am.”

Chris Richards never got that runway. A hamstring injury at Crystal Palace, just weeks before the squad announcement, wrecked his chances. When the U.S. kicked off in Qatar, he was in London, rehabbing while his club and country teammates lived out the thing he’d been working toward.

“I'm in London watching the boys kill it at the World Cup,” he remembers. “I was so, so happy for them, but for myself, it was lonely. Yeah, that's what it was: lonely. I didn't want anything to do with soccer.”

Mark McKenzie’s exclusion cut differently. He was fit. He had caps. He simply wasn’t selected.

“Missing out on the 22 World Cup? It ripped me apart, bro,” he says. “It was gutwrenching because I was so close. When you get that call that you're not going, that you weren't selected, it's a punch to the stomach.”

In hindsight, he sees what it revealed.

“It's an important feeling to have, I think, because it puts everything in perspective in life,” McKenzie says. “Okay, maybe I put too much onus on this, so much that I lost who I was, lost focus on the small areas of my game or my life that I need to improve.”

From prelude to main event

The landscape has shifted since Qatar. Berhalter’s second spell ended after a Copa America exit in 2024. Pochettino now holds the whistle and the power to decide which 26 names will carry the weight of a home World Cup.

For those who played in 2022, the impact of that first tournament only truly landed once they came home.

Tyler Adams felt it on the streets of New York.

“From a notoriety standpoint, people all of a sudden knew who I was walking back home in the streets of New York City,” he says. “It's a city that I never imagined I'd get recognized in, and people are recognizing you.”

He was also preparing for fatherhood, juggling the new demands on his time and attention.

“I had my first kid on the way, too,” he says, “and I was balancing my personal life and my professional life all of a sudden.”

Now the stakes rise again. In 2022, the U.S. were one of 32 guests at football’s biggest party. In 2026, they are co-hosts. The scrutiny will be sharper. The expectations louder. The margin for excuses thinner.

“It's an amazing feeling, but also a responsibility at the same time,” Weston McKennie says. “Growing up, you see the people that you were looking up to… Now, there's a lot of social media, so we have that responsibility as well.”

He knows what this generation represents to kids watching from living rooms and crowded bars across the country.

“Hopefully, people see that there is a pathway out there for them,” McKennie says. “It may not look exactly like mine or Christian's or Chris Richards or the people they look up to, but the ultimate thing is to believe in yourself and bet on yourself always.”

Chasing the feeling

Soon, 26 more players will have their number read out in a team meeting. Some will be veterans of that fever dream in Qatar. Others will be walking into a World Cup for the first time. Some will be central figures. Others will never leave the bench.

All of them will leave changed.

For the class of 2022, that winter in Doha is a permanent bond — a shared blur of late-night kickoffs, calls to prayer, hotel corridors, family hugs, and three goals that carried a nation’s hopes, if only for a moment.

“I can understand how people call it emotionally draining,” Wright says. “After it was over, it felt like soccer had changed me, in a way, and now you find yourself chasing that same feeling. It's hard to get that feeling again outside of a World Cup.”

Matt Turner feels the same pull.

“I had some amazing experiences,” he says. “That's why I need to get back there, because I really want that feeling again.”

The next World Cup is coming to their home. The question is simple, and brutal: who gets to feel that rush again, and who will be left chasing it from the outside this time?