FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. — Over two months out from the end of a home World Cup that was built up for eight years as a singular opportunity, how anyone feels about it can be split neatly into two parts.
The way it ended, and everything that came before.
The U.S. national team had three weeks in which they were the darlings of the tournament, the host nation making the world stop and take notice. Then they had 48 hours in which they lit all that goodwill on fire before putting forth one of the worst performances in program history to crash out in the Round of 16.
“You look at that game against Belgium, and for sure, they’re beatable, you know what I mean?” Tyler Adams told The Post Wednesday at the national team’s camp outside of Atlanta. “It just didn’t click on that day. There’s things that were in our control that we allowed to get out of our control, and that’s how games change rather quickly. For me, the biggest thing, you look at some of the performances in that game and there’s never been performances like that by a U.S. team.”
