It’s New Year’s Eve, and we’ve reached the final day of 2025. It was a year of ups and downs for the United States Men’s National Team, the first full year with Mauricio Pochettino as head coach. There
was a period where the team was in the dumps, but now that the World Cup Draw has occurred and we saw the team surge in the fall months, there’s an air of optimism as we close out the year.
Back in January, we predicted what the USMNT would do in 2025. It’s now time to see how those panned out
The USMNT will only lose twice in 2025.
Welp, this is a bad start. The USMNT went 10W-6L-2D in 2025, and the stretch from March until early September (outside of an inspired Gold Cup run) was the dumps. But, they rebounded in October and November to close the year out strong, but they will hope to have fewer than 6 losses in 2026.
The USMNT will claim a 4th straight Concacaf Nations League.
All good things must come to an end. The USMNT crashed out of the Concacaf Nations League Finals, losing to Panama and Canada to finish 4th out of 4 teams. Mexico eventually claimed their first Nations League trophy.
Ricardo Pepi will score 10 goals for the USMNT.
Ricardo Pepi was hurt or returning to fitness for most of the year. He logged just one cap for the USMNT and didn’t core a goal. Patrick Agyemang led the USMNT with 5 goals this year.
The USMNT will beat England in a friendly.
This is probably a voided prediction since it was rumored at the time that the USMNT would face England in a big time June friendly. That match never materialized, with the USMNT playing Türkiye and Switzerland instead. It probably was a good thing that the USMNT didn’t play England then, as that window was arguably their worst stretch of the year.
Without some major stars, the USMNT will win the Concacaf Gold Cup on penalties over Canada.
The USMNT were very close! Without several main players, including Christian Pulisic, the team played some inspired soccer for once, advancing to the final where they came up just short against Mexico.
The USMNT will score 8 goals in a game.
Our last prediction also didn’t work out. The USMNT did score 5 in a match twice, with one coming on June 15th against Trinidad & Tobago in their Gold Cup opener. The other was probably the most unlikely: in a 5-1 thrashing of Uruguay in a November 18th friendly. It was easily the best the team looked all year, saving their best for the final match of the calendar year.
So yeah, it was not a great year for predictions. A terrible year, even. The only thing we can do is go back to peer through the looking glass and hope that the magic 8 ball brings us a much better set of predictions for a pivotal 2026.
