Kick It: Checking in on our guys

Welcome back to Kick It!, the AJC’s newsletter for all things World Cup. Spring is in the air, international conflicts are at a fever pitch and the World Cup matches in Atlanta are less than three months away. Get excited! Get scared! Maybe it’s time we check in on Team USA. That and more after the whistle.

[Breeeeep]

SO, HOWS THE USMNT LOOKING?

A nice family photo.

The US Men’s National Team, they’re our guys. Are they any good? Maybe. Let’s check the stats:

• The US is ranked #16 on FIFA’s Men’s World Ranking. That puts us behind France (1), Spain (2) and Argentina (3) as well as Portugal, Morocco, Senegal, Mexico and others. BUT. We are ahead of 195 other ranked countries. Take that, Lichtenstein.
• We now know all 48 qualifying World Cup teams. Team USA is in Group D with Paraguay, Australia and Turkey.

Team USA’s recent performances:

The USMNT got outplayed in their two first international friendlies of 2026. For the record, they were against higher ranked teams.

• 3/28: LOSS vs. Belgium (2-5) Game recap here
• 3/31: LOSS vs. Portugal (0-2) Game recap here

The good news is, the matches attracted 66,000 fans (for the Belgium game) and 72,000 fans (for the Portugal game) to Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

⚽ Next match: USA v. Senegal on 5/31 in Charlotte, NC.

What to say to sound smart when people talk about Team USA’s chances:

• “We really gotta lock down our defense.”
• “We gotta stay aggressive, really feel like we’re fighting for something, ya know?”
• “A shame about Agyemang.” (U.S. forward Patrick Agyemang will miss the World Cup due to an Achilles injury.)

Not signed up yet? Yellow card. Subscribe for a good time. Kick It! publishes every two weeks or so, with more frequent sends as we get closer to match dates.

WHO (NOT) TO ROOT FOR: BELGIUM

Here we've got the Belgian Magritte kits and the American "Where's Waldo" kits.

Belgians and Belgian-adjacents, please take this as a friendly kind of “Who Not to Root For.”

They are better than us, to be honest

• Belgium is ranked #9 in the world, which is higher than us, which automatically means we don’t like them.
• The Red Devils (their nickname; very good sports villain material) handed the U.S. the aforementioned 2-5 friendly loss, a defeat that resulted in this interesting Opta stat:
• “The U.S. had not lost by three in a home game in which it scored the opening goal since an 8-1 defeat to England in 1959.” Belgium, you’ll pay for this.

Their jerseys are very cool, but confusing

• The Belgian national team does have a very cool new away kit (uniform) styled after famous surrealist artist René Magritte. The collar even reads “This is not a jersey,” a play on Magritte’s famous work “The Treachery of Images,” which questions how language shapes reality. High culture, but America doesn’t really rock with surrealism.
• In an appropriate twist, onlookers during the U.S.-Belgium match said, with everyone skittering around so fast on the pitch, Belgium’s pink-and-blue jerseys were hard to distinguish from the U.S.’ red-and-white stripes.

COUNTERPOINT: BELGIUM-ATLANTA TIES

Hold you friends close and your enemies closer, they say. If we’re going to beef with Belgium, we need to recognize what we share.

• Did you know the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium is from Atlanta?
• Or that Brussels and Atlanta are sister cities?
• Or that Ann Cox Chambers, a pillar of Atlanta’s art scene and former owner of Cox Enterprises (the AJC’s parent company) once held the same seat? RIP Ann, you would have loved the Magritte jerseys.

Ambassador Bill White detailed all of the unexpected connections between the two countries in an AJC op-ed last year.

HALFTIME QUIZ

What is Team USA’s unofficial nickname on the international soccer scene?

a. The Yanks

b. The Red Stripes

c. The Eagles

d. The War Machines

Answer in match notes!

DO YOU HAVE YOUR TICKETS YET?

Buying tickets for anything these days is a total nightmare, and World Cup tickets have been no different. When FIFA opened a round of ticket sales at the beginning of April, technical glitches shut people out and now the least expensive ones to many of the 104 tournament games are in the thousands of dollars.

The highest priced ticket to the final? $10,990

🎫 More details from the ticket chaos

I asked our A.M. ATL family (that’s our weekday morning newsletter, you should read it) how they scored tickets, and they did not disappoint.

⚽ Supporter groups pay off

I got very lucky and was granted access to supporter tickets to the US’s first game in LA. I got access to them as a member of the American Outlaws supporter group. I got two tickets for $66 each….! No way I am selling any of my tickets btw, this is once in a lifetime! — Scott

⚽ Make your own luck

I tried first lottery and didn’t get anything. The second one I signed up for two tickets for every single match in Atlanta. I ended up getting two tickets for Morocco v Haiti. Frankly it was pure luck. — Laura

⚽ It pays to shop around

I scoured the internet based on price and explored a few options. Bank of America had a special offer for members, and I even got a World Cup credit card, but I ultimately found better priced tickets on StubHub. — Suzanne

WORLD CUP ANTHEM REVIEW

This year’s World Cup anthem is a little bit of everything. It’s based on a remix of Van Halen’s “Jump,” and features the stylings of Colombian singer J. Balvin, drummer Travis Barker, pop/R&B singer Amber Mark and guitarist Steve Vai.

The above quote is from Balvin’s part, where he raps in Spanish: “Football is our language. Here, we’re all my people.”

Of course, he means futbol. Or soccer. We’ll deal with that in a future newsletter.

🎼 How the anthem came together

👀 Watch the music video here

MATCH NOTES

That’s game! Everyone won. Here’s what we learned.

• Quiz answer: The unofficial nickname of the USMNT is “The Yanks,” which is especially painful for those in the South.
• The U.S. has some work to do before their next international friendly against Senegal.
• We don’t like Belgium, but as Atlantans we also definitely like Belgium. It’s complicated.
• Tickets are a mess, so you gotta get creative.
• We’ll be back in your inbox soon with more cup-dates. Thanks for playing!

Thanks for reading to the very bottom of Kick It. Questions, comments, ideas? Shoot us an email.