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The United States men’s national soccer team had a lackluster performance in the Concacaf Nations League—and the woes extended beyond the pitch.
The team took fourth place in the annual tournament after falling 1–0 to Panama on Thursday and 2–1 to Canada in the third-place game Sunday. Both U.S. games at 70,000-seat SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., were remarkably empty, a poor sign for the men’s 2026 World Cup host nation and the venue that will host two of its group-stage matches.
The official recaps of the games on the USMNT website list attendance for both Thursday’s and Sunday’s matches as “TBD.” Mexico-Canada on Thursday brought in 50,295 fans, and Sunday’s final between Mexico and Panama recorded 68,212 fans, according to ESPN.
A spokesperson for U.S. Soccer said that reporting the official figures was Concacaf’s responsibility. Concacaf did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“If we would be today in this situation in one year time, for sure, I will tell you, ‘Houston, we have a problem, no?’ SOS,” USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino said after the match.
Concacaf sells ticket packages as a doubleheader to both of the day’s matches, so it appears many Mexican national team fans snapped up doubleheader tickets and then simply skipped the earlier U.S. games. Tickets weren’t cheap—the get-in price on the secondary market was reportedly around $100. Plus, both Thursday and Sunday were busy days for U.S. sports fans during the opening weekend of March Madness, and the relatively new Nations League isn’t Concacaf’s most important tournament.
But those factors don’t quite make up for the nearly empty stadium at kickoff and large bare patches in the stands throughout both U.S. games. Just 15 months out from the opening match of the first men’s World Cup on U.S. soil since 1994, the home team’s fans—outside of The American Outlaws, one of the team’s unofficial supporter groups—barely showed.
It didn’t help that the USMNT also wasn’t playing its best soccer.
“We’ve gotta come back from this,” captain Christian Pulisic said after the match. “We’re not at our best at the moment. … Obviously, the feeling is not good right now. We need to turn it around and we can hopefully build some momentum this summer, because we really do need it.”
But despite recording the team’s first competitive loss to Canada on its own soil since 1957, manager Pochettino is still focused on the ultimate tournament next year, and told fans “don’t be pessimistic.”
“I think we have time,” Pochettino said. “I prefer that that happened today, and not in one year.”
The USMNT, who is 5–3 since Pochettino became manager in August, will play again this summer in friendlies and the Concacaf Gold Cup, November, and March. The team opens the World Cup on June 12, 2026, at SoFi Stadium.
Correction: Concacaf, not U.S. Soccer, is responsible for reporting attendance figures.
