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'Go out there and fight': How USA's World Cup 2026 hopes began on the concrete of Kearny, NJ originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
"We were all a bunch of b-----ds, you know?"
Former USMNT World Cup goalkeeper Tony Meola grew up playing soccer on the street courts of Kearny, New Jersey. There, he and fellow natives of the town in Hudson County, John Harkes and Tab Ramos, were thrashed around on the concrete.
It was on those courts that three members of the United States' core group for the program-altering 1990 and 1994 World Cup tournaments were formed. They learned the grit, toughness, and heart required to take repeated punches and continue to fight, scrap, and claw their way to the end.
Now, looming over those very same courts that were instrumental in molding the early days of the modern U.S. national team, a World Cup final will be held.
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MetLife Stadium, set to host FIFA's global championship match to conclude the 2026 World Cup, resides just a 15-minute drive north of Kearny, just across the swamp. As the world's biggest sporting event descends on northern New Jersey this summer, it represents a full-circle moment for those three American icons. Their story has been told before, namely in the 2020 documentary Soccertown USA, but now, the journey feels — in some way — fulfilled. For Meola, this was always meant to be.
"For us, the game always felt like it started in that area, because we didn't know any better," the former Kansas City Wizards keeper tells The Sporting News. "We grew up there, we were playing there every day. To think one day [a World Cup final] would be essentially in our backyard almost seemed normal, because that was the only soccer place we knew growing up in Kearny. Looking back on it now, as fate would have it, it's not normal that it ended up that way, but we didn't know any better back then."
This New Jersey trio are no strangers to famous faces in soccer in their backyard. They grew up watching the New York Cosmos play at the old Giants Stadium, where Pele starred from 1975 to 1977. At that time, Meola was eight years old, Harkes was nine, and Ramos had just moved to the United States from his native Uruguay at age 11.
Yet there's still an aura about the World Cup final, which feels grander than anything from which they grew up around the corner.
"It's incredible, really, to think about, because even going into 1994 we couldn't believe there would be World Cup games in a stadium so close to our town," Ramos tells The Sporting News. "And here we are nearly 30 years later, a World Cup final is there. The whole world is going to be watching the stadium that's a couple miles away from where I grew up. You would never think something like that. It's hard to imagine."
The courts of Kearny shaped those three soccer stars, who in turn went on to shape the history of the U.S. men's national team. Ramos, Meola, and Harkes were starters on the team that qualified for the 1990 World Cup on the heels of Paul Caligiuri's famous "Shot Heard Round the World" against Trinidad & Tobago, securing the team's first World Cup appearance in 40 years.
While the U.S. would be eliminated in the group stage of that tournament in Italy, the team embarked on a journey that would change the course of soccer in the United States forever. After being shelled 5-1 by Czechoslovakia in their opening match — a wake-up call about the level of global soccer outside of North America — they battened down the hatches and played to a gritty 1-0 defeat against the hosts.
"I can tell you the exact week when the U.S. men's national team as we know it was born," Ramos says. "The current team was born, really, in between that 5-1 disastrous loss that we took to Czechoslovakia and the 1-0 loss to Italy. Because after the 5-1 loss, it was easy to see amongst the team. There were fights after that game during practice before the second game. There were fist fights in practice: it was an absolute hack-fest, everybody hitting everybody.
"At that point is when we realized that we're not just going to be the team that rolls over and dies."
Four years later, the lessons from 1990 were invaluable as the United States hosted the 1994 World Cup, with Meola, Harkes, and Ramos playing a big role in a monumental upset of Colombia, securing a spot in the knockout round. There, they were downed by eventual champions Brazil but performed admirably in a defeat in which Ramos was taken out of the game by Leonardo, who drew a red card for a vicious elbow to the head that knocked out the U.S. playmaker. While they were a man up the rest of the game, the U.S. had lost its best creative influence, and they fell to a 1-0 loss.
Those two tournaments ignited the spark that began to grow the sport in the United States. Major League Soccer was born in the aftermath of the 1994 World Cup, and a supporter base began to slowly expand across the nation.
Now, 30 years later, the World Cup final will aptly return to a breeding ground of talent back in the early days of the federation's modern era.
"Everything has to come together," Harkes tells The Sporting News of how to spark a deep run at a World Cup. "You need a little bit of luck, but you definitely need belief in yourselves and grittiness. That all has to come together. Does this team have it? I don't know. We captured it and put it in a bottle in '94. Because the heat was on us, and because we became a host country so quickly after we qualified in '90, it was like 'wow,' we still didn't know who we were. We didn't have an identity.
"We need big players to stand up in big moments and be recognized and take on the responsibility. If we don't have players who want to do that, we're going to be in big trouble."
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Having lived through the rough-and-tumble genesis of the modern U.S. national team, Meola, Harkes, and Ramos look at this USMNT roster now and all, individually, feel the same thing is missing — well, maybe not missing, but certainly needs proving this summer.
"A winner-stays-on mentality," Harkes says of what they learned growing up on the Kearny pavement that would be of use to the 2026 squad.
As young players, Meola, Harkes, and Ramos were forged in the fire of the street courts, where kids from all over town would congregate every evening to play pick-up soccer. Teams of three competed, and the winner stayed on for the next game while the loser gave way to the next challenger. Everyone knew that with so many kids waiting their turn, if you lost, you might not get back on the courts again for quite a while.
"That's what kept me competitive," says Ramos. "It kept me in the game, it gave me that fight. Whenever you get knocked down and beaten up by the big bully, you come back for more. That's that resilience.
"Recognize the opportunity you have. Bring some humility to who you are in this game. You should be humble. Nobody's bigger than the game. Go out there and fight."
It's an important lesson for the 2026 contingent, Ramos says, even while acknowledging that comparing players across two eras 30 years apart is almost impossible.
"Every generation of players is different. We live in a different environment now than we did back then, obviously. Having said that, I think there's one common denominator that I think, you know, important players normally have and that's the mentality not to want to lose. I think if there's something that maybe we need more of from this team, from this generation, is that show of desire to not ever want to lose.
"I think that's the piece most fans are waiting for."
As for Meola, he wants to see almost a child-like naivety from the 2026 team, one that only kids have before they are tainted with the stain of reality. The ones you see from a group of little rascals. A bunch of b------s.
"The game's changed, personalities have changed, the way you treat players has changed. But a little element of that [remains]. That part of the game, I don't think you can ever lose and think you're going to be successful."
"There's no question that our team is talented enough to, any given day, beat any other national team," Ramos says. "Whether it's France or Spain or anyone else. We've done it before, and there's no reason why this team couldn't do it.
"Sometimes you can win games without being better. You don't need to be better than the other team to win it. You just need to be organized and take your chances better than the other team. Those are the games you can't make any mistakes because you make any mistakes and you're out. But I do feel like our team is close enough so that if we're playing our best, and the other teams aren't, we can pretty much beat anyone."
The 1994 team felt like that, too. It's how they beat Colombia, with a little bit of fortune and a lot of tenacity. What the 1990 and 1994 teams didn't have, that the 2026 team does — in large part thanks to the successes of past generations — is experience.
"You got guys that have won the Champions League," says Meola, who now does television commentary for CBS' coverage of UEFA's top competition. "You got guys that have been Player of the Year at their teams in a top-five [European] league. You got guys who have scored goals in the Champions League. You've got a group of players who have done pretty much everything except win the World Cup. I think they [have] just got to lean on their experiences. That's the beauty of this group coming together at the time they are right now."
"I think anything's possible [for this team], to be honest with you," Harkes says. "I think some of the comments about the players, some of the noise that's out there, the players don't care. They don't care about what people are saying. They just know that when the time comes they have to step up and prove it, and to me that's going to be a massive challenge for this group."
That's all that's left: for this team to prove it. For Christian Pulisic, for Tyler Adams, for Weston McKennie, and the rest of the 2026 core, they have to prove that the last decade of build-up has been for real.
On July 19, the three U.S. legends of the early 1990s will get to watch the biggest game soccer has to offer played right in their backyard. They will get to be a kid again, standing on the courts looking out at the nearby NFL stadium imaging what it would be like to step on that field.
They can only hope this year's team can also put themselves in those shoes, hope that they can tap into that youthful innocence when you believed anything was possible if you just get back up again. Take the punch and swing back. Fear losing, because you know it meant the end of your time on the court. The end of the night. The end of the summer. The end of the opportunity of a lifetime.
Be a bunch of b-----ds. Because in New Jersey, whether it's pickup on the streets or the World Cup final, winner stays on and loser goes home.
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