The USMNT's home World Cup was supposed to be the moment American soccer finally arrived. Instead it ended with a 4-1 beatdown against Belgium in the Round of 16, Charles De Ketelaere torching the U.S. backline for 2 goals and an assist before Romelu Lukaku piled on in stoppage time. Timothy Tillman's 31st-minute equalizer got the crowd going for about 10 minutes before Belgium answered right back and never let go.
Dave Portnoy watched it happen and did not hold back. On Barstool's morning show, he called the loss an embarrassment to the country, and he took it a step further on his own account, saying the performance "set soccer back close to 100 years." That's not a guy nitpicking a tactical decision — that's a guy saying this team actively hurt the sport's growth in America.
The USMNT embarrassed our country. That performance against Belgium set soccer back close to 100 years https://t.co/eNOKTg51fE
The on-air numbers Barstool put up tell the real story here. The USMNT hadn't reached a World Cup quarterfinal since 2002, and heading into this tournament they were sitting at a brutal 1-2-12 mark in their last 15 matches against European opponents. This wasn't a one-off bad night — it was a program-wide pattern finally getting exposed on the biggest stage it will ever get, in front of a home crowd, as co-hosts of the tournament.
That context is exactly what made Portnoy's original rant land the way it did on the show, where the hosts spent the segment trying to figure out who actually deserves the blame for the collapse.
“They embarrassed the country. They embarrassed me. They didn’t just lose, they looked like they never played the game before” -Dave Portnoy talking about USMNT https://t.co/Zdvnu1PRAM
Mauricio Pochettino, hired in 2024 as the highest-paid coach in U.S. Soccer history specifically to get this team over the hump, was blunt afterward: "we were not good enough, it wasn't our day," he said, adding the team never connected with the game from the start. He's since declined to say whether he's sticking around, and U.S. Soccer has only said they'll pick the conversation back up once everyone's had time to rest and reflect. Translation: nothing is settled, and Portnoy's take is now part of a much bigger national conversation about whether this era of American soccer was ever as far along as it was sold to be.
Fans in the Barstool comments were already circling the segment for their favorite lines before the dust even settled on the loss, which is usually a sign a take actually cut through.
Nailed it! 🤣🤣🤣🤣 https://t.co/u1kebNN1o6
With the U.S. now watching the rest of the tournament from home as co-hosts, the real fallout starts now — Pochettino's job status, roster reckoning, and whether a golden generation that included names like Christian Pulisic just wasted its best shot. Portnoy's "set back 100 years" line is hyperbole, sure, but it's the kind of hyperbole that sticks when a program blows a home World Cup this badly.