Team profile: USA

Team USA captain Clint Dempsey may be the most successful non-goalkeeper U.S. export in the nation’s history, and is the most recognizable face of the team and its most potent goal-scoring threat. But the unsung hero of the team is midfielder Michael Bradley, a player just as adept in the tackle, holding possession and pressing forward. While Dempsey will get the lion’s share of the attention, success will have to be anchored by the dominant midfield presence of Bradley. Finally, Jozy Altidore — a player who has been waiting in the wings for the Americans as the next great offensive star, but who has struggled mightily in the English Premier League, will need to show he’s up to the task to aid a vital goal-scoring effort.

On paper it’s hard to argue against its strongest World Cup finish, coming in third in the inaugural 1930 tournament, while based on emotion it’s tempting to pick Landon Donovan’s extra-time winner against Algeria in 2010 to propel the Americans to the knockout stages against Ghana. But in terms of the biggest impact, winning the bid to host the 1994 cup (where they miraculously advanced to face an immense Brazilian team in the group stages) made soccer viable as a top sport in America. As a part of hosting the cup, the U.S. agreed to launch Major League Soccer; though that league began in fits, it’s now considered a wildly successful operation, and soccer continues to be the country’s fastest-growing sport. Without the 1994 cup, it’s virtually impossible to see how it would have become one of the most watched sports in a country hitherto under the exclusive dominion of the big three — football, baseball and basketball.

Despite being coached by German soccer luminary Jürgen Klinsmann, a player for the winning 1990 West German team and formerly a coach for Bayern Munich and the German national team, the current squad is simply not talented enough to make it past one of the hardest two groups in this year’s tournament. Questions at the back, and an inability to find goal scorers up front, will hamper a team that will hang tough but ultimately be no match for the superior Germans, the Cristiano Ronaldo–fueled Portuguese and an always strong Ghanaian team that has sent the Americans packing in the last two tournaments.

The Americans have one of the strongest midfields in the tournament, and if their defense maintains its high line, while its forwards press the flow of the game toward the other end of the field, Team USA is capable of making even superior opponents make mistakes on their own side of the ball. Since 2012, it has defeated Germany, Italy and Mexico at the Estadio Azteca, the first time in its history. And while its group is tough, only Germany is unquestionably out of its league. The Portuguese team will live and die by Ronaldo (who has yet to deliver a World Cup performance worthy of his supreme talent), and the Ghanaians are quite shaky at the back. The Stars and Stripes finish second in the group and face likely Group H winner Belgium.

In one of the biggest upsets in U.S. history, a Team USA made up of a ragtag group of part-time players beat a heavily favored England 1–0 in the 1950 World Cup. The only goal of that game came from Joe Gaetjens, a Haitian who qualified to play by having declared his interest in attaining U.S. citizenship. Gaetjens moved to France after the World Cup, but eventually settled in his native Haiti, where some members of his family had been active in the political opposition to the notorious dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. On July 8, 1964, Gaetjens was seized by agents of Duvalier’s feared secret police, the Tonton Macoute, and is believed to have been among the more than 30,000 Haitians killed by a regime backed by the country he had represented at the World Cup. His body was never found. Gaetjens was posthumously inducted into the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame.