EXCLUSIVE: A Folarin Balogun brace helped the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team kick off their 2026 World Cup in style with a 4-1 win over Paraguay. This was followed by a 2-0 win over Australia and despite losing 3-2 to Turkey in their final group game, the team topped their qualifying group, followed by a 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina put them into the Round of 32.
Balogun was sent off in the first knockout round, leading to President Trump getting involved to help persuade FIFA to overturn his suspension ahead of their clash with Belgium. It didn’t help and the U.S. were beaten 4-1 to end their World Cup dream.
Trump’s involvement made the story bigger, but what U.S. fans didn’t see was the reaction within the camp as it happened.
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It turns out they will, at some point.
That’s because the producers and directors of U.S. Against The World: Four Years with the Men’s National Soccer Team continued to embed with the team during the tournament and plan to make a follow-up series or feature film.
“We were on the inside, so we have a very good idea of what was really going on,” Rand Getlin, who co-directed the series with Luke Korver, told Deadline. “There was a narrative that exists in the ether about how this all went down, and then there’s how it really went down. Our job is to peel back the layers when we put out whatever the output is and tell the truth about what happened.”
Getlin, who co-founded Park Stories, the production company behind the series that aired on HBO Max, with Janina Pelayo, now wants to turn the project into a “forever franchise” and is working on plans to make more series or feature docs about the team.
“We are super flexible… is it a film or is it a series?,” he added. “We created this thing in 2022 that we released in 2026 and nobody had ever seen that footage of the 2022 World Cup until the eve of the 2026 World Cup. There’s a world in which that’s what we do again.
“You could do a feature film on this ride and that could be unbelievably powerful or it could be unbelievably powerful as part of a broader series at a later date. You could imagine us doing something in advance of the Copa América to get the country fired up about that. There’s just so many different ways to create something that moves people. There’s just a tremendous amount of story to tell in this space, and our goal has always been to do it forever,” he added.
U.S. Against The World: Four Years with the Men’s National Soccer Team, which premiered on May 12 on HBO Max, saw Park Stories film the likes of Christian Pulisic, Tyler Adams, Tim Weah and Weston McKennie over four years beginning at the World Cup in Qatar. It carried on through training camps and international matches, capturing the disappointing group‑stage exit at the 2024 Copa América that triggered head coach Gregg Berhalter’s departure and eventual replacement by Mauricio Pochettino as well as its final roster reveal for this year’s tournament.
Over the next four years, ahead of the 2030 World Cup, which will jointly be hosted by Morocco, Portugal, and Spain, there’s two CONCACAF Nations League tournaments, there’s a CONCACAF Gold Cup and there’s a Copa América in 2028 as well as qualifying for the 2030 World Cup, so there will be plenty of games and stories to cover.
HBO has the option to continue on this ride. Getlin said there’s been a “close collaboration” with the network and streamer. “We’ll obviously take on board their perspective and try to get to a place where we both feel really good about what we’re putting out into the world,” he added. “We’ll continue those conversations with them, and it could be one of those things where we do a lot more with HBO, and it could be one of those things where we continue telling the story with another partner.”
Getlin said that, in future, he also wants to use the franchise as a way to work with other filmmakers. “From a business perspective, you want to keep this going, but what’s going to be very important for us is – we did this in a very lean way – and going forward, we’d look to [work with] an incredible network of unbelievably talented filmmakers who are inspired by what we’ve been able to create,” he added.
There are always questions as to whether soccer in the U.S. can ever get to the top level. Getlin is optimistic but knows that it’s still not at the level that it is in many other countries. “Look at Argentina when they won the last World Cup. It was insanity. There were people on top of light posts and… you see the joints cracking on the stadium. It’s woven into their soul,” he said. “We don’t have that here in the U.S. yet, but I would say the last four weeks is the closest we’ve ever gotten. The minute we do get over the hump as a footballing nation, and we do win something as massive as the World Cup, and I believe it’s only a matter of time, that will be the moment at which we can say we’ve arrived.”
