2024 in review: Did our bold USMNT predictions come true?

It’s New Year’s Eve, and we’ve reached the final day of 2024. It was a year that saw a ton of change for the United States Men’s National Team, with the departure of Gregg Berhalter as head coach and Mauricio Pochettino taking over.

The USMNT went 6W-6L-2D in 2024, with the biggest wins coming against Mexico and Jamaica (3 times). Their biggest loss was to Colombia in a June friendly.

As we always do every year, we look back at the year’s predictions that were set in January and see how they turned out. We tried to go bold with some of them, so let’s see which ones hit and which ones were duds.

The USMNT will reach the Copa América Final.

Nope. Not even close. The USMNT crashed out in the group stage of Copa América after losses to Panama and Uruguay, leading U.S. Soccer to fire Gregg Berhalter. Argentina went on to win its second straight Copa title.

The USMNT will win a 3rd straight Concacaf Nations League.

NAILED IT. The USMNT, with a comeback win against Jamaica and a Dos A Cero of Mexico in the final, captured its 3rd straight Concacaf Nations League title. They are the only team to ever touch the Nations League trophy.

The USMNT will score 60+ goals.

The USMNT scored 47 goals in 2023, and so aiming for 60 goals felt like a lofty goal. It was way too lofty. In 14 matches, the USMNT only managed to score 19 goals. Christian Pulisic led all scorers with 4 on the year.

Gio Reyna will make a move to Spain.

There was a lot of talk about Gio Reyna moving on from Borussia Dortmund to a new team. Even Dortmund said publicly that they were looking to part ways with the American midfielder. However, as we stand, Gio Reyna is still a member of the Black & Yellow, despite the fact he’s been hurt and otherwise not playing regularly all calendar year.

The USMNT will not beat a team in the Top 10.

The USMNT figured to have a couple of chances to face a team from the top 10 in the FIFA world rankings this year. In the end, they only faced one, which was a June friendly against Brazil that was their final tune-up for Copa América. The match ended as a 1-1 draw.

The U-23s will medal at the Olympics.

The USMNT U-23s competed in the Summer Olympics for the first time since 2008. After an opening match loss to hosts France, the U-23s racked up a 4-1 win against New Zealand and a 3-0 win against Guinea to finish second in Group A and qualify for the knockout stage. However, they were just one win away from competing for a medal, losing in the quarterfinals to Morocco.

So, we had a couple of hits and a couple of predictions that very much missed the mark. As we advance towards January 1st, we hope we can do better with the 2025 predictions.