AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
It's officially go time for the U.S. men's national soccer team. With the FIFA World Cup less than two weeks away, the team is finally together to train and prepare, starting with a friendly game this afternoon against Senegal. But as NPR's Becky Sullivan reports, they are also trying to leave some time to just take it all in.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: For the 26 players on this year's U.S. World Cup team, the whirlwind started nine days ago with a ping on their phones. They'd been added to a group chat, and their coach, Mauricio Pochettino, had sent a video message.
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MAURICIO POCHETTINO: Guys, if you are watching that video, it's because you are in. I am so excited to communicate that you are going to be in the roster for the World Cup 2026.
SULLIVAN: The first thing midfielder Sebastian Berhalter did after he saw that was to call his family.
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SEBASTIAN BERHALTER: Yeah. It was barely a conversation. My mom started crying right away, and then my sister started crying, and then I started crying.
SULLIVAN: The next thing the players knew, they were in New York, their names announced one by one on a stage, on a nationally televised broadcast. Then they all flew to Georgia to the new U.S. Soccer National Training Center south of Atlanta to finally start practicing together as a team.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: One, two...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: OK, boys. Here we go.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: ...Three, four, five, six.
SULLIVAN: Now it's all starting to sink in. The moment they've been waiting for their whole lives has arrived - a chance to play for the World Cup on home soil. The players all have their own way of dealing with the growing pressure. For goaltender Matt Freese, it involves a tea kettle.
MATT FREESE: I make a very specific point and do the same thing, bring my tea kettle, so I make the same tea.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: OK.
FREESE: I brought my own alarm clock from home. If it works for you in small moments, then the game itself doesn't change. And so, you know, helps me at least deal with those big moments and that pressure.
SULLIVAN: Before the World Cup kicks off, the team has two tune-up games - a pair of international friendlies, the one today against Senegal. The other is next Saturday against Germany. They're both really good teams, which is a bit of a gamble. The U.S. could very well lose both games. Midfielder Tyler Adams recalls headed into the last World Cup, the team took a different approach.
TYLER ADAMS: We played a friendly against the Qatari team, and we won, like, 8-0, and we were all flying. Do you know what I mean? Like, it felt like an amazing thing. Didn't matter the competition. It just - the feelings were really good. Obviously, this is a bit of a different stretch.
SULLIVAN: Today's game and the one against Germany aren't real competitive games, to be clear. Nobody's going to play too hard. No one wants to get injured. Still, Adams says he can't help but feel like building some momentum before the World Cup could help their chances when it does count.
ADAMS: It's a good feeling to win. Do you know what I mean? Like, winning is contagious, and I've always said that. Like, once you go out and you're able to compete and win, no matter how you win, you feel confident.
SULLIVAN: For goalkeeper Matt Turner, his biggest lesson from their run in 2022 was a little more philosophical.
MATT TURNER: Last World Cup, I didn't do as great of a job of, like, soaking it all in.
SULLIVAN: The training, the friendlies, the World Cup itself, it all went by really, really fast, he says.
TURNER: I'm just trying to, like, relish in all those moments, and I urge all the players that this is their first time to do that because soccer's a weird game. You just never know, like, what's going to come.
SULLIVAN: Many great players never get a chance to play in the World Cup at all, he points out. So for each of these 26 players, it's a minor miracle that the stars aligned, that they were in the right shape, the right health, the right place at the right time, to be here now on the doorstep of the biggest games of their lives.
TURNER: I'll probably cry when the National Anthem goes. It's just such a huge honor - overwhelming honor to be granted that responsibility to be on this team.
SULLIVAN: That moment, of course, is still 12 days away, he says. So first up is to enjoy the right here, right now, to take it one training, one game, even one media interview at a time, and to savor it all.
Becky Sullivan, NPR News, Fayetteville, Georgia.
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