New HBO docuseries filmed Team USA for four years leading up to 2026 World Cup

For the last few years, headlines have swirled around the U.S. men’s national soccer team with mounting pressure over the squad’s inconsistency on the field and questions about player dedication leading up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Between the losses, the changes and the phone-shaped hole in the drywall, a film crew has captured it all. The result is a five-part docuseries, “U.S. Against the World: Four Years With the Men’s National Team,” to be released Tuesday on HBO Max.

Director Rand Getlin and his partner, Janina Pelayo, hope their docuseries will allow audiences to invest in the journey of a team fighting to be taken seriously on a global scale as the world descends on the U.S. for the World Cup this summer.

“The players, of course, are never going to tell you exactly how heavy it is, but they tell us, and that’s what we’re hoping to share with viewers,” Getlin told NBC News. “It’s a deeper look at the cost of pursuing this end — which for them is: ‘We just want to make the country proud. We have to put on good performances to do that, and I’m willing to sacrifice damn near anything to achieve that outcome.’”

Weston McKennie, right, celebrates scoring a goal with his U.S. teammate Mark McKenzie during a match against Belgium in Atlanta on March 28.Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, except in the U.S., whose men’s team has appeared in only 12 of the 23 World Cups held since 1930.

The HBO docuseries follows the group in the four years following its elimination from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The team reached the round of 16 that year, and it was seen as a sign of progress. Now, with the World Cup coming to American soil, this team viewed it as a chance to take another big step forward.

“We made a pact to each other that we want to change soccer in America forever,” star Christian Pulisic says in the series. “And there’s no better opportunity than to play a World Cup on home soil.”

The series introduces the team’s “golden generation,” a group of young players who some considered the most talented in the program’s history. There is an immediate tone shift, however, after the team fails to make it out of the group stage in the 2024 Copa América tournament.

The head coach, Gregg Berhalter, is replaced with Argentine Mauricio Pochettino, and sports commentators are no longer praising the “golden generation.” Pochettino brings an “intensity,” as defender Tim Ream describes it, to training and a continual questioning of a player’s place on the team.

Adding to the team’s negative public image, Pulisic was lambasted in the media after he chose to sit out of the 2025 CONCACAF Gold Cup to rest as some of the team’s most reliable players were out with injury. He admitted to HBO cameras that he was so upset over the backlash, the questioning of his commitment, that he threw his phone so hard it made a hole in his wall.

Getlin describes the admission as a vulnerable one for Pulisic, who has painstakingly cultivated his public image.

“And it’s really more a testament to [the players] than anything that they want to open up,” Getlin said. “They want the world to understand how deeply they care, how much they have sacrificed.”

There are other vulnerable moments throughout, such as the goalkeeper whose wife suffered a miscarriage just before his first call-up to the national team in 2021 or the 38-year-old defender whose children didn’t think they would still be missing time with him for another training camp.

Getlin hopes that by seeing the players open up about their lives off the field, the country will have the “opportunity to fall in love with their stories” as they battle on the field this summer.

“It’s not four years of parachuting in and out,” Getlin said. “No, we’re there. We’re the through line. We’re at home with families. We’re at camps. We’re there for quiet moments. We’re there for uncomfortable moments. And so you see the sacrifice, and ... to be able to contextualize it is almost impossible.”

The story isn’t just for personal glory of the players on the pitch, according to forward Tim Weah, son of Liberian soccer star George Weah. Weah, 26, of New York, is happy to be a person who can inspire future generations of athletes.

“When I envision reaching ... the end of the line and being great, I don’t envision only myself or my teammates’ present,” Weah says. “I envision the future of U.S. soccer. We’re fighting not only for ourselves, but for the young kids that are coming after.”