Suffice to say, the group stage that the U.S. men’s national team is about to open up is hardly a tune-up for what’s to come in November. The Concacaf Nations League, where the U.S. will play the world’s 170th-ranked team (Grenada) and 74th (El Salvador), begins for the Americans on Friday night in Texas, and it’ll seem a world away from the World Cup—even if Austin’s Q2 Stadium is where the U.S. edged Qatar in the Gold Cup semifinals last summer.
But it’s part of the prep the U.S. must take on due to the function of the international calendar, and after a win vs. Morocco and draw vs. Uruguay, time continues to tick down toward the group stage in November.
Ever since the draw for the 2022 World Cup, there have been a couple of schools of thought when it comes to the U.S.’s chances in Qatar. On one hand, it seems incredibly manageable, especially when compared to the Ghana-Portugal-Germany task of ’14. On the other, perhaps there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to the perception of the quartet.
