ESPN’s Taylor Twellman’s Advice for the USMNT Leading Up to the 2030 World Cup

The good news for the United States men's national team is that the next four years will actually mean something. That is also the bad news.

Rich asked ESPN's Taylor Twellman what the first order of business is now, and Twellman went straight to the calendar. The run into 2030 comes with World Cup qualifying attached, and that changes what anyone can learn about this group.

"The years leading into the 2030 World Cup, Rich, is going to be so much better and more fruitful because there's going to be World Cup qualifying," Twellman said. "They're going to be tested. They're going to have a chip on their shoulder. We're going to learn a lot more about the team over the next three and a half years than we did from 2022 to this World Cup."

His indictment of the last cycle was blunt. Outside of a Copa America he called an absolute disaster, the men gave the public nothing to evaluate.

Then came the part he has clearly been repeating until somebody listens.

"They've got to get deeper. You've heard me now say this four or five times," he said. "They've got to have 32, 40 players that you can count on playing at a higher level."

He pointed to Cavan Sullivan moving from the Philadelphia Union to Manchester City at 16 as the profile the program needs, then asked the only question that matters about a prospect like that. What does he look like four years in a row?

The veterans get a different assignment.

"You just got to hope Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams, Chris Richards, they got a hair up their ass to rectify what happened," Twellman said. "That chip on their shoulder, it's got to be the driving force that that doesn't happen again, and that their generation isn't remembered for that game."

Rich then floated a question that sounds absurd until you check the results. Was Spain's biggest handful in the entire tournament Cape Verde?

"It's not that it was possible. It absolutely was," Twellman said.

Cape Verde also drew with Argentina, which means one team pushed both finalists. Twellman conceded Spain was not great, and that Lamine Yamal, coming off the bench, was not great throughout.

Then he threw up his hands at his own analysis.

"They gave up one goal. Rich, what do you want me to do?" Twellman said. "So, the best team. They gave up one goal."

Why was this World Cup so good?

"Mexico, Canada did a great job, but there was a lot of negativity around the United States of America being able to host this. And this was really fun, Rich. It was fun," Twellman said. "Nobody was talking politics. People were coming together. We were opening our land and our arms to Norway fans, Scottish fans, Dutch fans. Everybody came here and had a blast for five weeks."

He was explicit that 48 teams was not the reason. The United States knows how to throw a party. What made it the best World Cup he has seen was that the talent showed up every night.

"If the stars didn't deliver in the World Cup that they did, I'm not sure you and I are having the same kind of conversation," he said. "Every time we turned on a game, the stars delivered. Every single one of them. That's a rarity."

The numbers backed him up: 309 goals, 80 of them after the 80th minute. Rich chalked it up to hydration. Twellman noted extra time ran 75 minutes, so technically the math had some help.