HOUSTON — Republican Party of Texas Vice Chair D’rinda Randall became the party’s new leader Friday after defeating her former running mate, incumbent Chair Abraham George, shaking up the top of the state’s majority party ahead of the fall midterm elections.
Randall, who first became involved in GOP politics nearly two decades ago, campaigned on her accomplishments as the party’s second-in-command during the last two years, touting financial wins like the return of certain convention corporate sponsors and her support for grassroots members, pointing to volunteer training she led.
George conceded in a social media post shortly before Friday’s general session at the convention began, after delegates overwhelmingly backed Randall in an initial round of votes among each Senate district caucus.
“While this race has come to an end, our mission continues,” he said. “Now is the time to come together, unite behind our Republican nominees, support the entire Republican ticket in November, advance our legislative priorities in the next session, and continue standing firmly for the conservative principles outlined in our platform.”
George’s tenure came to an end after a memorable two-year run that saw the party claim long-sought legislative victories in Austin, including private school vouchers and a variety of socially conservative new laws. That productivity, driven by a hard-right turn in the Texas House, reduced the infighting that has plagued the Texas GOP in recent years. Attorney General Ken Paxton led a long list of elected officials and activists lining up behind George, while Randall touted a much narrower stable of backers.
Yet as the convention kicked off in earnest Thursday, the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston remained sparsely populated, with many of the over 7,000 registered delegates appearing to skip the event despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s incentive program for county parties to fill their allotted delegate seats. The convention also fell just before FIFA World Cup games kicked off in Houston, driving up the cost of lodging in a city that was hundreds of miles from many would-be delegates’ home towns.
Amid the grassroots apathy, George also faced criticism earlier this week from a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, the party’s governing board, who claimed the party was taking a $651,000 loss to run the convention. In a response, George said the deficit was closer to $100,000 and would end up in the black “when you factor in the registrations that will be paid over the next couple of days.” But that did not appear to allay concerns about the state of the party’s finances heading into the fall midterms.
Randall’s victory arrives at a crucial juncture for the party, as it tries to write its next chapter and unite voters behind Paxton, the Senate nominee who defeated incumbent John Cornyn after a bruising primary that has left behind scars within the GOP.
Trey Trainor, a longtime GOP operative who was tapped to lead the convention’s platform committee, which drafts the party’s planks, said George’s ousting stemmed from financial woes and a struggle to engage members.
“Look, I think everybody’s incredibly nervous about what happened during the primaries,” Trainor said. “They see that the Democrat Party is incredibly engaged. I think the low turnout that you see here shows some apathy of Republican voters, and they really look to the party leadership to create that enthusiasm and drive people to the polls.”
The removal of George, the Texas GOP’s first Indian American chair, also arrived at a time when the party is experiencing a wave of anti-Indian sentiment, particularly in George’s backyard of North Texas. Much of the same faction that has targeted Muslims for what they see as the proliferation of Sharia law is also raising alarm about the state’s fast-growing Indian community, urging a halt to legal immigration to combat alleged H-1B visa exploitation and labor competition.
George regularly draws racist replies to his social media posts, even when pushing for conservative priorities such as abolishing the H-1B visa program; yet, delegates at the convention did not indicate that topic surfaced in deliberations about the chair election.
The mix of headwinds facing George created the opening for Randall and her running mate, David Covey, a hard-right activist who previously served on the state party’s governing board and unsuccessfully ran against former House Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont in 2024. Covey also previously ran for party chair in 2021, finishing as the runner-up to George’s predecessor, Matt Rinaldi.
Some of Randall’s supporters also charged that the incumbent chair has been too welcoming to establishment Republicans, after he warmed up to Phelan’s successor, House Speaker Dustin Burrows, following initial reservations over his election aided by Democrats. That line of criticism laid bare the challenge faced by party chairs, who must balance the delegates’ appetite for a grassroots fighter while also raising money from the party’s establishment ranks.
Burrows was set to address the convention — the first sitting speaker ever to do so — Friday afternoon.
In a statement, Burrows congratulated Randall and Covey and said he looked forward to “working together to strengthen our party and advance the conservative principles Texans value.”

When the Republican Party of Texas held its convention in Houston four years ago, Gov. Greg Abbott did not deliver a speech. Instead, he held his own gathering nearby.
In 2024, he appeared remotely by video instead of speaking before thousands of the most hard-line Texas Republican activists.
But after years of keeping the gathering at arms length, Mr. Abbott is set to offer his full embrace on Friday, delivering a keynote speech for the first time since 2018 and, in the process, positioning the party’s hard right at the center of Texas politics.
Mr. Abbott’s speech, set for 1:30 p.m. local time, follows decisive primary election victories by a slate of hard line candidates, some of whom the governor opposed. They include some who have pledged to rid the state of Muslims, further restrict voting access and end any remaining semblance of bipartisan comity in the state’s politics.
At the top of the ticket is Ken Paxton, the state attorney general who defeated the state’s sitting Republican senator, John Cornyn, using an unapologetic, anti-incumbent MAGA message.
Despite years of not appearing in person at the full convention, Mr. Abbott is no moderate. During his decade as governor, he’s helped set the conservative policy agenda, most recently as the lead supporter of the state’s new $1 billion school voucher program.
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The Athletic has live coverage of the latest 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup news.
The boy honed his legend on dirt fields. Sandlots were all those little Americans had back then, patches of a dream, open spaces that looked like decoration between the factories. He was the dusty son of Italian immigrants before the game took him places, a kid from Harrison, N.J., who would one day crack jokes on a steamship bound for Montevideo.
Soccer was his passion. Before he turned pro, he served in the Navy during World War I. Then he served the United States again, this time on playful terms. He was a jokester. He was among the best players of his generation. In the summer of 1930, he went to Uruguay for the inaugural World Cup with a fitting designation: the first captain of America.
His name was Tom Florie. He led a team of textile mill workers and first-generation Americans and naturalized citizens, all of them sporting blue collars and following the direction of a Scottish-born coach. They made it to the semifinals of the nascent tournament, still the best World Cup showing in American soccer history.
Ninety-six years later, what that very American assortment accomplished on a muddy field in Montevideo sits undisturbed. It is largely unexamined, another indictment that further clarifies the nation’s current dysmorphic state. On Friday, the men’s World Cup returns to the United States for the first time since 1994, arriving in a country that seeks to impress the world despite being in its most ferocious dispute in modern history about who belongs here.
Welcome to America, the problematic host. It wouldn’t be a World Cup without one. Russia in 2018. Qatar in 2022. Now the U.S. is on a slide under humanity’s microscope, the oddest member of this continuum. The America that sees itself as a paragon now must stomach being seen as an antagonist. We are raised to feel differently, to feel exceptional, righteous. Free.
As we welcome the world’s game, as we celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, this is the stage America built for itself. Now it’s time to perform.
But the host cannot agree on what it represents. One America sees a grand, hospitable version of itself. Another America sees diverse crowds filling its stadiums and feels threatened by their flags and languages and hyphenated identities, by the very diversity that is supposed to make American soil fertile for this tournament. All the while, the rest of the world watches the country’s crisis with bewilderment and dread, aware of the dangers of America in its current disposition, still powerful but turning inward — turning hostile — distorting and weaponizing its mythology.
It’s the nightmare infesting the dream that the 1930 team embodied. What a motley, glorious Team USA. They were the Italian-American captain, the immigrants playing in industrial leagues, the working-class amateurs from New England and St. Louis and Detroit, the Scottish coach. They were all on board, and for 18 days, on a ship called the SS Munargo. They traveled with Mexico. There were no disruptive debates about who belonged. They played. Florie told his best jokes. And those Americans set a standard that subsequent teams have yet to reach.
The promise of America was stitched into their jerseys. That promise is almost a quarter of a millennium old now. As the World Cup begins, is it still a binding commitment?
Is this still Tom Florie’s country?
They’re making fun of us overseas. The jokes coat the fear. On Wednesday, the French sports daily L’Équipe published an alarming front page. It was a foreboding image of President Donald Trump, dangling a puppet of FIFA president Gianni Infantino in his right hand and holding the World Cup trophy in his left. The illustration also featured banned Somali referee Omar Artan lifting a yellow card and a U.S. law enforcement officer with the flag wrapped around his face and neck.
“Welcome to the USA,” the headline read.
It was sharp. It cut deep. This is the perception, and a significant faction of the country proudly proclaims it a reality. What a strange time to be alive. The French sports press is now a moral conscience.
Aggressive and rigid government policies have made the run-up to the World Cup cumbersome, at best. Among the avalanche of issues: ICE enforcement, travel bans and visa denials. The climate has left hotels in host cities with significantly fewer international bookings than projected, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Detainment is the biggest worry.
The denied entry of Artan has dominated headlines for the past few days, but there have been several reports of headaches with border officials. It seems our invitation to the world came with some punitive fine print.
Of course, this was not part of the plan. For more than a decade, the U.S. sought the chance to host the men’s tournament again. It lobbied FIFA with some of its most influential voices. In 2010, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Morgan Freeman were all part of the pitch for the 2022 edition. Shockingly, Qatar won the vote, leading to a fresh round of controversy and corruption probes. A revised United 2026 bid with Canada and Mexico clinched it. Thinking back to that long process, the most persuasive words came from Clinton in 2010 when he articulated the nation’s strength.
“Maybe America’s best claim to this World Cup is that we have the only nation … that can guarantee, no matter who makes the final, we can fill a stadium with home-nation rooters.”
Victoria Jackson, a sports historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University, likes to revise the former president’s words and say, “There are no away teams in America.”
She says it with reverence. In this country of immigrants, every qualifying team has a community waiting to receive it. When America hosted the 1994 World Cup, it defied skeptics predicting national indifference. A record 3.6 million fans attended the 52 matches, an average of nearly 69,000 per game. At the Rose Bowl, the final drew 94,194. Questions of whether Americans would embrace soccer deferred to evidence that passion for the sport already resided within us, in our multiculturalism.
That’s the feeling America chased for so long, continuing to lobby, refusing to let cynicism about FIFA’s decision-making take control.
It’s here again, finally. And it’s complicated.
“It’s bittersweet,” Jackson said. “This could have been amazing.”
The U.S. opener of the 2026 World Cup commences Friday where the 1994 version ended: in Southern California.
In the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, vendors along 1st Street stack jerseys and hang the flags of competing nations. Screens for a watch party are being set up at Mariachi Plaza. SoFi Stadium gleams over in Inglewood, looking like $5.5 billion. Renamed Los Angeles Stadium for the summer, it is adorned with tournament branding, prepared to greet the planet.
Just a year ago this week, the area braced for something different. After ICE raids sparked protests across Los Angeles, Trump deployed 700 Marines and thousands of National Guard troops in a distressing show of power. They stood in Boyle Heights. They posted up downtown, South L.A., Westwood. On streets famous for children playing pickup soccer, on streets where generations of immigrants have turned the game into a universal language, the government sent an army. It federalized fear.
Twelve months later, the world turns its eyes here to watch the U.S.-Paraguay match and to search for clues about whether the country can tame its big, bad wolf for the next 39 days.
Los Angeles outlasted the rage. The people here endured.
But as problematic hosts go, America is disorienting because it genuinely prospered from a belief it now destroys. And it does so in full view of a world that it alienates. The World Cup lens shows an unflattering image.
“I think it’s definitely revealing the strangeness of our domestic politics,” Jackson said. “Sports diplomacy is something that really matters. You’d think the U.S. would be doing all sorts of things around this narrative. Hosting an international sporting event amplifies your connection to the rest of the world, or it exposes how you’re pulling inward. It’s surprising, or telling, what we are doing.
“It’s like we want to make money off the party we’re hosting, but we’re not willing to leverage it to talk about how the world can be more interconnected, which is sad.”
Next week, for the Mexico-South Korea game, Boyle Heights will close 1st Street. A giant LED screen will go up near Mariachi Plaza. The soldiers are gone. The restaurants will be open. A neighborhood that absorbed raids and trauma will gather in the street to watch its game, live its story, hold its ground.
“Soccer brings unity,” said Miriam Rodriguez, the president of the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce. “We want to let our community know that, even in hard times, we’re still here.”
In Boyle Heights, 1st Street is America.
Another patch of a dream.

Four years in the making. The U.S. Men’s National Team is finally ready to play its first game of the 2026 World Cup with a match on Friday against Paraguay in Los Angeles. For the 26 Americans on the squad, just making it to soccer’s most prestigious tournament and the world’s biggest sporting event is a culmination (or continuation) of a lifetime of soccer highs and lows.
Here’s what to know about each of the players on the team.
⭐⭐⭐ = main star
⭐⭐ = starter or featured substitute
⭐ = contributor off the bench
Forwards
Name: Christian Pulisic ⭐⭐⭐
Age: 27
Hometown: Hershey, Pa.
Club team: AC Milan (Serie A)
The hot spotlight of American soccer has followed Christian Pulisic for years now, and, to his credit, he’s largely lived up to the hype. He’s a key starter on one of Europe’s top clubs. He’s the top active goalscorer for the USMNT, with 33 goals in 86 career appearances with the senior team. And though a goal-scoring drought had haunted him in the first half of this year, he broke through with a goal against Senegal late last month and is heading into this World Cup free and aggressive as ever.
Name: Folarin Balogun ⭐⭐
Age: 24
Hometown: London, England
Club team: AS Monaco (Ligue 1)
Born in Brooklyn to Nigerian parents and raised in London, Balogun was eligible for all three national teams. He made the switch to represent the U.S. in 2023, when the Americans were in dire need of a striker. Since then, Balogun has been heralded as the long-term solution up front. He scored at least two goals in each of his first three games with the national team and added his first of 2026 against Senegal. And he’s headed into the World Cup in top form: At Monaco this season, he bagged 19 goals in 43 total appearances.
Name: Ricardo Pepi ⭐⭐
Age: 23
Hometown: El Paso, Texas
Club team: PSV Eindhoven (Eredivisie)
One of two Mexican-American dual-national players on the USMNT, Pepi was devastated when he was left off the 2022 World Cup squad. But the El Paso native played the best soccer of his career with PSV this season, with 19 goals in 34 appearances — and in the May match against Senegal, he showed a dangerous chemistry with Pulisic in helping to set up the first two goals of the game. “He’s grown a lot. He probably deserved to be on that last roster,” Pulisic said in May. “His time is now. He absolutely deserves to be here.”
Name: Timothy Weah ⭐
Age: 26
Hometown: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Club team: Olympique de Marseille (Ligue 1)
Soccer runs in Tim Weah’s family; he is the son of George Weah, the star footballer-turned politician who won the prestigious Ballon d’Or award in 1995, then got involved in politics in his home country of Liberia after his retirement from soccer. The younger Weah was mostly raised in New York, his mother’s home. Weah has had some high highs and low lows with the USMNT — from scoring a World Cup goal vs. Wales in 2022 to tanking the USMNT’s chances in the ’24 Copa America with a red card — and in this World Cup, he may not be a starter but is expected to play an active role, most likely off the bench on the right side.
Name: Alejandro Zendejas ⭐
Age: 28
Hometown: El Paso, Texas
Club team: Club América (Liga MX)
Zendejas is the second Mexican-American player on this squad. He was born in Ciudad Juarez and raised in El Paso. He was a regular in USMNT youth camps when he was young but moved to Mexico for a club career with Chivas de Guadalajara followed by Club America, two of Liga MX’s biggest clubs. He had his choice of national teams but committed to the U.S. in 2023. His role on the World Cup team is a bit of a wild card; he’s a talented attacker but likely won’t start a match.
Name: Haji Wright
Age: 28
Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif.
Club team: Coventry City (Premier League* just promoted)
Haji Wright scored one of the only three USMNT goals in the 2022 World Cup when he came off the bench against the Netherlands in the Round of 16. This past season, he was instrumental in getting Coventry City promoted to the top tier of English football. Able to play on the wings or as a striker, Wright could be a useful substitute for the U.S., but the USMNT has more quality at the position than it did in 2022, and he may struggle to see the field behind Balogun and Pepi.
Name: Brenden Aaronson
Age: 25
Hometown: Medford, N.J.
Club team: Leeds United (Premier League)
The “Medford Messi” hero of suburban New Jersey youth soccer is having a big summer: He’s on the U.S. World Cup roster and got married barely two weeks ago (dipping out of training camp for a single night before rejoining the team in time for its two tune-up friendlies). He had a career year in the 2024-25 season with Leeds before taking a modest step back this year; it’s likely he’ll be in a spark plug bench role at the World Cup.
Midfielders
Name: Tyler Adams ⭐⭐⭐
Age: 27
Hometown: Wappingers Falls, N.Y.
Club team: AFC Bournemouth (Premier League)
Alongside Pulisic and fellow midfielder Weston McKennie, Adams is a main character of this generation of the USMNT. Raised by a single mom in upstate New York, Adams had to rely on sheer determination to overcome plenty of obstacles — like his small stature and lack of goalscoring touch — on his path to professional soccer. At 23, the midfielder was named the captain of the 2022 World Cup team, and his toughness sets the tone for the whole team. “I see guys get kicked, I want to kick anyone,” he said after last weekend’s (less than) friendly match against Germany.
Name: Weston McKennie ⭐⭐⭐
Age: 27
Hometown: Little Elm, Texas
Club team: Juventus (Serie A)
McKennie might be the beating heart of this team. An all-American: Born on an Army base in Washington, raised in Texas, and spent some formative years at an air base in Germany where he caught the soccer bug before moving back to the U.S. He dyed a streak of hair red, white and blue for the ’22 World Cup, and he’s a lock to start — the only question is, where? Coach Mauricio Pochettino has played him in a variety of outfield positions over the past year and a half. He scored the opening goal in a March friendly against Belgium
Name: Malik Tillman ⭐⭐
Age: 24
Hometown: Furth, Germany
Club team: Bayer Leverkusen (Bundesliga)
Off the field, the soft-spoken Tillman (whose dad is American and mom is German) may be the quietest member of this team. But on the pitch, it’s a different story altogether. Tillman is an attacking midfielder whose game has matured and improved so much that former U.S. Soccer sporting director Earnie Stewart recently called him “one of the most amazing players I’ve ever seen.” As he grows more comfortable, his reserved nature disappears, Stewart added: “He’s a character that once he feels part of a group, he can show amazing special things. And he can actually control things as no one other that I know.”
Name: Sebastian Berhalter ⭐⭐
Age: 25
Hometown: Columbus, Ohio
Club team: Vancouver Whitecaps (MLS)
The compact, confident Berhalter has a big last name in U.S. Soccer: His dad, Gregg, featured prominently as a player in the U.S. quarterfinal run at the 2002 World Cup, then became USMNT coach in 2018. He never called up his son to the senior national team — the younger Berhalter’s debut came in 2025, after new coach Pochettino had taken over. “I know if I got a call from my dad, I would have to earn it double as any other player,” he said recently. “He would never call me in just to call me in. I had to earn it.” He’s known for his quality set-piece deliveries, like corner kicks, so look for him on the field in those moments.
Name: Gio Reyna ⭐⭐
Age: 23
Hometown: Bedford, N.Y.
Club team: Borussia Mönchengladbach (Bundesliga)
To say Reyna is mercurial is putting it mildly: As a 17-year-old, he broke Pulisic’s record as the youngest American to play in the Bundesliga and quickly made a name for himself as a gifted attacking creator — but then he dramatically fell off in form after a series of injuries. Reyna was also a breakout figure for the USMNT in 2022, but not for his performance in the World Cup; Instead, the long story involves complaints over his lack of playing time and criticism by then-coach Gregg Berhalter, whose long relationship with Reyna’s parents (former teammates and college friends) became fodder for a leaked story that prompted a swirl of drama and Berhalter’s eventual firing after the World Cup. Still only 23, Reyna has tried to move past all that, but his inconsistency on the field makes it hard to know what to expect from him this summer.
Name: Cristian Roldan
Age: 31
Hometown: Pico Rivera, Calif.
Club team: Seattle Sounders (MLS)
Roldan is another modern American story, born in California to a Guatemalan dad and Salvadoran mother who immigrated after their home countries were gripped by violence in the 1980s. Roldan grew up with two brothers in an eastside Los Angeles suburb, kicking the ball into a goal their dad had made of PVC pipe. Now, Roldan and his brother Alex are teammates on the Seattle Sounders. Roldan is a mature, calming locker-room presence and will likely play only a small role on the field, if he plays at all.
Defenders
Name: Chris Richards ⭐⭐⭐
Age: 26
Hometown: Birmingham, Ala.
Club team: Crystal Palace (Premier League)
As an athletic kid growing up in Alabama, Chris Richards could easily have ended up with a career in a different sport altogether — at 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds, he shares a frame with plenty of point guards and wide receivers. But the young Richards caught the soccer bug early on and pushed through culture shock as a teenager on a professional contract in Germany to blossom into a talented defender. He’s the best defender on the USMNT, but he hurt his ankle in a game with his club Crystal Palace in May and hasn’t played since. The U.S. defense has looked porous without him, but on Wednesday he said he was “ready.” (He may also have the best game-day fits)
Name: Antonee “Jedi” Robinson ⭐⭐⭐
Age: 28
Hometown: Liverpool, England
Club team: Fulham FC (Premier League)
Robinson grew up in England and developed as a player through the youth system at Everton. But the English national team never called him up — so when the U.S. offered him an opportunity, because his dad had grown up in the U.S. (and played soccer at Duke), Robinson seized the opportunity. Since then, the left-back has developed into one of the USMNT’s most talented players. But a major injury set him back for more than a year, and he only just returned to the field for the U.S. in March. “There was no certainty on my end that I was going to be fit and available and make it, because it just seemed like there was no light at the end of the tunnel,” he said earlier this year. A few weeks ago, he bleached his hair for the World Cup, then scored an absolute rocket of a goal in the friendly against Germany. Auspicious!
Name: Tim Ream ⭐⭐
Age: 38
Hometown: St. Louis, Mo.
Club team: Charlotte FC (MLS)
Ream is the oldest player on this squad, and his steady leadership has earned him the team captain armband. At 38 years old, he’s no longer the fastest guy on the pitch, but those decades of experience — one of them spent in England at the Premier League club Fulham — mean he rarely finds himself out of position, and his passes are still well-placed. He wasn’t chosen for the World Cup squad in 2014 and then the U.S. failed to qualify in 2018. But he played every minute of the U.S. run in 2022. “Tim is an amazing American story of perseverance,” ’22 USMNT coach Berhalter said last week. Expect to see Ream start at least some of these games, if not all of them.
Name: Sergiño Dest ⭐⭐
Age: 25
Hometown: Almere, Netherlands
Club team: PSV Eindhoven (Eredivisie)
Dest grew up in the Netherlands, but his father immigrated to the U.S. from Suriname, then a Dutch colony, when he was a child. Eventually, the elder Dest played college soccer in New York, served in the Vietnam War and became a U.S. citizen, retiring from the Army just a few years before having a son, Sergiño. The youngest Dest came up through the Ajax academy system in the Netherlands, and the U.S. began recruiting him a decade ago. He started all four games at the 2022 World Cup and is likely to be a starter once again.
Name: Alex Freeman ⭐⭐
Age: 21
Hometown: Plantation, Fla.
Club team: Villarreal CF (La Liga)
The Baltimore-born son of the Green Bay Packers wide receiver Antonio Freeman, Alex has quickly established himself as one of the USMNT’s more versatile players. His ability to attack and defend as a wingback shone while playing for MLS side Orlando City SC, for whom he scored six goals while playing as a defender last year. That performance earned him a move to the Spanish club Villarreal and call-ups to the USMNT earlier this year. His athleticism and rapidly growing understanding of the game have allowed him to quickly earn a starting spot on the back line, most likely on the right side next to Richards.
Name: Mark McKenzie ⭐
Age: 27
Hometown: New York, N.Y.
Club team: Toulouse FC (Ligue 1)
McKenzie has been around the USMNT for years now but he’s finally found his footing with Pochettino at the helm, making 15 of his 29 career appearances since Pochettino took over. There’s been a battle for playing time at center back since Richards has been out with his ankle injury, and McKenzie may be Pochettino’s favored backup option. Expect to see him as a substitute, especially as Pochettino manages Richards’ playing time coming out of his injury.
Name: Miles Robinson ⭐
Age: 29
Hometown: Arlington, Mass.
Club team: FC Cincinnati (MLS)
Robinson is savoring this World Cup. He’d scored the game-winning goal in extra time against Mexico in the CONCACAF Gold Cup in 2021. He was a lock to make the 2022 squad as a top defender prospect, but he ruptured his Achilles tendon and had to watch the tournament on television at home. Robinson was drafted #2 into the MLS by Atlanta United in 2017. He starred collegiately at Syracuse and found a passion for soccer watching his older sister play the game. Robinson, who has 40 appearances with the senior national team, is sure to make an impact in this World Cup, even if he comes off the bench.
Name: Auston Trusty
Age: 27
Hometown: Media, Penn.
Club team: Celtic FC (Scottish Premiership)
Trusty has gotten this far betting on himself, he says — his tryout for the Philadelphia Union Academy, his choice to forgo college for a professional career, his decision to make the jump to Europe after earning an extension with the Colorado Rapids. That’s all paid off for Trusty. He attributes that belief in himself to being the youngest of six kids, the rest of whom all eventually played collegiate soccer. “If I wanted to have a relationship with them, if I wanted to help myself in the games I played with them, I had to be confident,” he said. Trusty has shown some promise in his limited minutes in 2026, but it’s unclear how big a role he’ll play this summer.
Name: Joe Scally
Age: 23
Hometown: Lake Grove, N.Y.
Club team: Borussia Mönchengladbach (Bundesliga)
Despite only being 23, Scally’s a veteran of the USMNT setup. He made his debut for the national team in 2022 and went to that year’s World Cup in Qatar. He’s an attack-minded fullback who’s been a mainstay for Gladbach since moving there in 2021, and he’ll look to be an outlet for build-up play. Scally never appeared in a game in the ’22 Cup, and this year could be the same.
Name: Max Arfsten
Age: 25
Hometown: Fresno, Calif.
Club team: Columbus Crew (MLS)
The 6-foot-1 winger made his USMNT debut in January 2025, playing in 16 of 18 matches that year. He was drafted by the Columbus Crew in 2023 after playing collegiately at UC Davis and Cal State Fullerton. At UC Davis, he attended as a walk-on, earning a scholarship and being named to the Big West All-Freshman team. The Fresno native returns home to train, saying, “his Fresno upbringing fuels his motor and competitiveness on the pitch.” Equally comfortable playing with his right and left foot, he’s been featured in many USMNT matches in the lead-up to the 2026 World Cup and is expected to see playing time.
Goaltenders
Name: Matt Freese ⭐⭐
Age: 27
Hometown: Wayne, Pa.
Club team: New York City FC (MLS)
There are big shoes for any USMNT goaltender to fill. The position has long been a strength for the U.S., from Kasey Keller to Brad Friedel to Tim Howard. Now, it’s a question mark — a choice that’s come down to two guys, Matt Freese and Matt Turner, both MLS starters who haven’t been able to find a regular job in Europe. Last year, Freese, who played college ball at Harvard before finding a spot with the Philadelphia Union, surpassed Turner as the most frequent starter in goal for the national team. In last year’s Gold Cup, he recorded two clean sheets and three penalty saves over six games. But that doesn’t mean his spot is a lock.
Name: Matt Turner ⭐
Age: 31
Hometown: Park Ridge, N.J.
Club team: New England Revolution (MLS)
Turner’s story is another scrappy prove-yourself saga. He came to goaltending relatively late in life, donning the gloves for the first time as a teenager to stay in shape for other sports. No colleges offered him a scholarship at first, so he walked on at Fairfield University in Connecticut, where he eventually earned conference honors. But even that couldn’t find him a foothold in the pros, and it took some serious luck to eventually find regular playing time with the New England Revolution. His skills continued to grow, and eventually he earned a call-up to the USMNT and became the regular starter in 2021 through the 2022 World Cup, where he recorded a pair of clean sheets. “There’s a healthy mutual respect between us,” Turner said in May about Freese. “We both want to play, we both have played, we both will respect whatever the final decision is from the coaches. And then from there, our roles will change to be supportive of each other.”
Name: Chris Brady
Age: 22
Hometown: Naperville, Ill.
Club team: Chicago Fire FC (MLS)
Brady, the Chicagoland native who plays now for his hometown club, has arguably been the best MLS goalkeeper over the past couple years, but he’s still a firm No. 3 behind Freese and Turner when it comes to the national team. Brady earned his first senior team call-up last year, then made his debut in May in the second half against Senegal. “Whenever you get included in a camp or any type of squad, you got to be ready to play,” he said. “If you’re not playing, your goal then is to push the other guys who are.”

The government said more than two dozen people lost their homes and 12 police officers were injured in what Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn on Thursday called “racist thuggery.”
Here are some things to know about the attack and its aftermath:
A video captured the stabbing
Hadi Alodid used a kitchen knife to blind Stephen Ogilvie in the left eye and carved deep wounds on his head, face and back, police said. Graphic footage of the stabbing, and the response of passersby who subdued the attacker, spread quickly on social media.
As Alodid was being treated for a hand wound, he threatened to kill a radiologist.
“I’ve killed someone, I don’t know if they are dead,” Alodid told medical staff, according to a detective who spoke in court.
Police have not revealed a motive for the attack but said it’s not believed to be terrorism.
Alodid did not enter a plea during a court appearance Wednesday and was ordered held until his next hearing.
Arrest leads to protests and violence
Officials aghast at the crime urged protesters to maintain order and civility, but groups dressed in black hoods and masks threw bricks, rocks and stones at police, set fire to trash bins, and burned vehicles and homes.
“When the attack happened on Monday night, we knew this would be coming,” Twasul Mohammed, a Sudanese refugee who helped families forced from their homes Tuesday, told the BBC. “Everyone is terrified, we are keeping our kids at home.”
Violence flared again Wednesday, though on a smaller scale. Police blasted water cannons at protesters outside Belfast who hurled bricks, hunks of stone at them that they had torn from garden walls and patios. Two officers in Carrickfergus were injured by fire bombs, police said.
Politicians from both parts of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government condemned the violence.
Riots have followed other stabbings in the UK
The violence was reminiscent of riots that swept England and parts of Northern Ireland two years ago after a teen killed three girls and seriously wounded 10 other people in a stabbing rampage at a dance class near Liverpool.
The Belfast violence broke out a week after protesters clashed with police in the southern England city of Southampton over the sentencing of a man for the fatal stabbing of a university student.
All three crimes featured Black or Asian suspects and victims who were white.
READ MORE: Third child dies after UK stabbing attack at Taylor Swift-themed dance class
The families of the victims all called for peace in the wake of the attacks and said they didn’t want violence waged on behalf of their loved ones.
Other factors were also at play in whipping up anger.
In the case of the girls killed in Southport in 2024, the suspect was wrongly identified on social media as a Muslim asylum seeker. Even after police said he was a British citizen born in Wales (later revealed to be raised by Christian parents from Rwanda), protests were mostly aimed at migrants and Muslims.
Outrage over the Southampton stabbing focused on the fact that police who arrived at what had been reported as a racist assault mistook the victim, Henry Nowak, for the perpetrator. They initially dismissed Nowak’s pleas that he had been stabbed and couldn’t breathe and handcuffed him as he was dying.
Vickrum Digwa, who was carrying a ceremonial knife worn by Sikhs but used a longer dagger to stab Nowak, lied to police when he said Nowak attacked him, Judge William Mousley said in sentencing him to life in prison.
Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigration Reform UK party, said Nowak’s killing was an example of so-called two-tier policing — a popular far-right talking point that suggests ethnic minorities are better treated than white people.
Government officials and police have denied such a bias exists and many experts say policing in Britain favors white people. A report three years ago found the Metropolitan Police, the largest force in the U.K., was riven with institutional racism.
Politicians and far right seize on crimes to drive their agenda
Reaction to the stabbings reflects a broader rise in anti-immigrant sentiment in parts of the U.K. and Europe, fueled by political debate over asylum seekers, small-boat crossings and pressure on public services and heightened by often extreme online debate.
Protesters have been called to action on social media by U.K. far-right activists, including Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, and rallied by influential international figures including tech mogul Elon Musk.
Musk tweeted more than 100 times about British politics with a strong focus on Nowak’s killing around the time of Digwa’s trial and offered to bankroll a private prosecution of the local police force.
READ MORE: Ireland’s prime minister condemns anti-immigrant rioters after Dublin rampage
U.S. Vice President JD Vance, in a post on X, blamed Nowak’s killing on “the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer snapped back at Musk and Vance, criticizing people “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.”
Mark Rowley, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, said online misinformation and disinformation is “right at the center of the challenges for us with public disorder.”
Some blame the open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland
Some political figures pointed to the largely open border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, where the suspect arrived in Dublin from Paris before heading north.
The border is a sensitive political issue. Allowing the free flow of people is a major pillar of the peace process that largely ended decades of violence known as “The Troubles.” The conflict involving Irish Republican and British Loyalist militants and U.K. security forces left almost 3,600 people dead before a 1998 peace accord.
Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.