USMNT World Cup bracket scenarios, odds to advance, predicted path to knockoutsplayMorgan: World Cup quarterfinals would be a huge success for the USMNT (0:46)Caitlin Murray and Nicholas SomMultiple AuthorsJun 10, 2026, 07:00 AM ET
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Roughly four years and 54 games have led to this moment: the U.S. men’s national team is now back in the World Cup — and this time, they are trying to reach their tournament-best finish on home soil.
So what do the Americans need to do to make history?
If you discount the first World Cup in 1930, which had no qualifiers and only 13 teams, the USMNT’s best finish came in 2002, when the team reached the quarterfinal round. In fact, 2002 was the only time the U.S. has won a knockout game in the modern World Cup format.
So, history is ripe for the making: Now that the tournament has expanded to a whopping 48 teams, the first-ever round of 32 could offer a comfortable path for the U.S. to win its first World Cup knockout game in 24 years.
But … it could end up being more difficult than it seems. Getting out of the group stage is hardly a guarantee for the U.S., and depending on how the bracket shapes up, the round of 32 could offer a tough matchup.
That’s why ESPN will be bringing you regularly updated permutations, odds and projections that will follow the likely U.S. path through the World Cup — including what the Americans need to do to advance, and which teams they could end up facing. Stick around and bookmark this page for the recent.
The expansion of the tournament from 32 to 48 total teams, and the resulting creation of the round of 32, makes advancing from the group stage a bit easier — on paper — for the U.S. than in previous years. But at the same time, the USMNT’s potential path through the World Cup has become much more challenging to project.
The key complication: Not only are all 12 group winners and 12 second-place teams advancing to the knockout rounds, but also the eight best third-place teams. And the way the knockout rounds are set up, the groups from which the third-place teams advance will determine the exact matchups. There are 495 different combinations of third-place teams, so chaos will be the story of the final matchweek as teams battle to keep their World Cup dreams alive.
The third-place teams will be ranked by these criteria, in order:
1. Points
2. Goal difference
3. Goals scored
4. Team conduct score
5. FIFA world ranking
In other words, if two teams are tied on points, the team with the higher goal difference will be ranked higher, and so on down the list of tiebreakers.
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Finally, here’s what each finishing place in the group stage would mean for the Americans:
If the U.S. finishes first in Group D: The team will secure a spot in the round of 32, but its opponent will most likely not be known until the group stage is complete. The U.S. could face the runner-up from any of five groups: B, E, F, I or J.
If the U.S. finishes second: The team will advance to the round of 32 and face the runner-up of Group G, which contains Belgium, Egypt, Iran and New Zealand.
If the U.S. finishes third: The team’s fate will depend on whether it finished as one of the eight best third-placed teams. If the U.S. advances, it will face the winner of Group E, I or K in the round of 32 — plausible opponents include Germany, France, Portugal or Colombia. If not, the U.S. will be eliminated from the World Cup.
If the U.S. finishes fourth: The team’s World Cup journey will be over and four years of hand-wringing will commence.
Even if you aren’t into betting, the odds set by sportsbooks can be a pretty decent gauge of where the U.S. stands in the tournament. After all, oddsmakers have a financially vested interest in accurately understanding the picture of the World Cup field so they can set betting lines accordingly. Sportsbooks wouldn’t offer World Cup odds without enough expertise to be confident in their guesses.
With that, here’s where DraftKings puts the U.S. right now: The Americans have been given a +6000 line, or 60-to-1 odds of winning the World Cup. Fifteen other teams have better odds.
Meanwhile, oddsmakers favor Christian Pulisic and Folarin Balogun to be the USMNT’s top scorer of the tournament: both are at +320. Giovanni Reyna? He’s their sixth pick, with 10-to-1 odds.
But what about the first U.S. game? When the Americans face Paraguay on Friday, they will be the favorites — just barely. The odds are set at -105 for the U.S. to win, which is slightly better than a coin flip. A draw is given slightly worse odds, and the lowest odds go to Paraguay beating the U.S. at +295, which translates to an implied 25% probability.
If you don’t want to trust the gambling sharks, the data nerds might have what you’re looking for. There are several models out there trying to predict the 2026 World Cup, and we’re going to stick with projections that (A) seem to be backed by the best data, and (B) will be updated throughout the tournament in real time.
This leads us to the DTAI Sports Analytics Lab out of KU Leuven, a research university in Belgium. Its projection model is based on an Elo rating system, which ranks every team by recent results, the scoreline of those results and the strength of the opponent. This is what most World Cup predictions tend to be based on — for instance, Opta offers an Elo-based model mixed with betting odds, which puts the U.S. at a 77% chance of advancing out of the group stage.
But DTAI goes a step further, combining the Elo rating for each team with an offense and defense rating. In a nutshell, the model assesses how many goals each team should be expected to score or concede against an average opponent.
The DTAI model gives the U.S. a 78% chance of advancing to the knockout stage of the World Cup — or a 22% chance of getting “grouped.” Broken down game-by-game, this is how the model projects the group stage for the U.S.:
USMNT projected results in World CupOPPONENTDATELOSSDRAWWINParaguayJune 1445%30%25%AustraliaJune 2142%31%27%TürkiyeJune 2653%28%19%Two things of note:First, you’ll notice the U.S. has the highest odds of losing every game, but still strong odds to advance out of the group. See our permutations explanations above: the fact that third-place teams can advance makes the group stage more forgiving. And while a loss has the highest odds for the U.S. in any given game, a win or a draw — worth between one and three points — taken together have higher odds.Second, clearly, this model gives the U.S. worse chances than the sportsbooks do, and it may be the difference between humans guessing at the future vs. a machine. While the DTAI model is able to deliver an unbiased assessment of the USMNT’s quality, it can’t account for an intangible like playing a World Cup on home soil.Will the oddsmakers or the computer model be right? We’ll be tracking both every step of the way, right here. Stay tuned.
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