ATLANTA – The first match of an enormous year for the program didn’t go according to plan for Mauricio Pochettino’s squad.
The U.S. men’s national team fell 5-2 to Belgium on Saturday afternoon in a game that featured a mess of a jersey mashup, some key mistakes, and some faint positivity. Here’s a collection of seven thoughts on what unfolded at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The uniforms
The varsity squad facing a top-tier European opponent, a crowd of 66,867 backing the U.S. in a football stadium (more on that later), the World Cup starting to feel close – this weekend in Atlanta had all the right ingredients. That is, besides a basic one we often take for granted: the uniforms.
It was immediately obvious that the new, tremendous red-and-white striped U.S. kit was way too similar to Belgium’s light jerseys. In the stadium, it was initially difficult to tell the two teams apart, the television viewing experience was no better, and it was a problem for the players. Christian Pulisic described it as “strange” and said “everyone was a bit shocked” when they took off their anthem jackets.
The USMNT vs. Belgium game is gonna be tough to watch with both teams wearing white 😭 pic.twitter.com/65qyRNtBGl
— USMNT Only (@usmntonly) March 28, 2026
“A lot of times you get the ball, you look up, you can’t really lock in on something. You only can base it off the color of the shirt. So when it’s very similar, it’s difficult,” Pulisic said.
A decent performance, but an unforgiving result
“Overall, it’s a tough result for us, but I don’t feel like it was a 5-2 game necessarily,” Pulisic said postgame. He felt that for 60 minutes the U.S. was in the match against Belgium, and according to Mauricio Pochettino “the first half was really good” but the game ultimately still became a reality check. Pochettino also believes that “sometimes to feel the pain is good” after the positive string of results in the fall.
