World Cup 2026: Seattle steps onto biggest stage with USA vs. Australia

by · The Seattle Times

While his players were still going through warmups on Thursday morning, Mauricio Pochettino moved aside a metal barricade surrounding the soccer field at the University of Washington and climbed to the top of the small hill behind the goal at the west end.

There, like a proud parent watching their kids on a random weekend day, the head coach of the U.S. men’s national team pulled out his phone and started taking video. For whatever the reason — the manicured field, the picturesque setting with Lake Washington and Mount Rainier both peaking out in the distance, or making sure there weren’t any spies around — Pochettino wanted to capture this moment.

“I wanted to see how everything (looks) without me,” Pochettino joked.

And then a moment later he added, “Amazing, beautiful facilities.”

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While it was important for Pochettino to capture that moment, Friday will be a day for capturing moments never seen in Seattle when the United States and Australia meet in the group stage of the FIFA Men’s World Cup. The winner will clinch a spot in the Round of 32, and it would take an epic collapse to not finish top of the group.

Events such as Friday don’t come around here often. Perhaps never before. On an international scale, it might be the most significant sporting event to ever take place in Seattle.  

NFC championship games are great. The Major League Baseball playoffs are electric, as evidenced by last October. The NBA Finals were fun in 1996. Same with the WNBA Finals this century. The Final Fours back in the 1980s and ’90s were fantastic. The three MLB All-Star Games are all memorable for their own reasons. The soccer cup finals — MLS, Concacaf and Leagues Cup — have all helped write Seattle’s storied history in the sport. The Goodwill Games in 1990 were internationally significant for what they were at the time.

But for sheer scale, try knocking Friday from the top spot.

“This is probably the biggest game Seattle will probably have in terms of soccer, and so I’m excited for the city to come out and show their energy,” U.S. and Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan said on Thursday. “But this is a sports town and they treat every big moment like that.”

The idea of a soccer match being the biggest single sporting event in a city is counterintuitive to American culture and sporting norms. It’s supposed to be the NFL first, followed by everything else.

But it’s the international component of the World Cup pushing this to the top — and it could be topped again in just a couple of weeks when a Round of 16 match is played in Seattle, potentially with the U.S. involved in that game as well.

While there’s only been one previous World Cup played in the U.S. in 1994, Seattle will be just the fourth different metropolitan area where the Stars and Stripes have played a World Cup match in North America.

In 1994, the opening match for the U.S. was in Pontiac, Mich., followed by two matches at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., and finally a knockout stage loss to Brazil in Palo Alto, Calif.

Throw in last Friday’s 4-1 win over Paraguay in Inglewood, Calif., and the U.S. has played three matches in the Los Angeles area, one in Detroit and one in the Bay Area.

And now, Seattle.

“I’m excited to see what it’s like,” said U.S. midfielder Weston McKennie, who was born in Tacoma before moving at a young age. “I’ve never been here with the national team before. Hopefully it’s similar to SoFi (Stadium), or better.”

Just like Pochettino before practice, plenty of fans — close to 67,000 of them — will capture similar moments with their phones and cameras on Friday. Some will take snaps and videos outside of Seattle Stadium as fans of the Socceroos merge with the American Outlaws and mingle about the stadium district chanting and singing and probably drinking far too early.

Inside the stadium, they’ll capture the players as they walk out while “Sirius” by The Alan Parsons Project — the old Chicago Bulls intro music — plays over the stadium speakers. They’ll see two countries that captured unexpected attention with what they did in their opening matches of the tournament — the U.S. thumping Paraguay and Australia unexpectedly toppling favored Turkey.  

They should capture the moment, because on an international scale it hasn’t been bigger here.  

“This is a city that’s ready to host these types of events,” Roldan said. “From the march to the match to how loud the stadium will be — hopefully the boom, boom, clap — I think the city of Seattle is going to create the advantage for the United States men’s national team.”

Roldan is the resident evangelist when it comes to this moment for the U.S. squad. McKennie said it’s been Roldan or, in the past, Jordan Morris or Clint Dempsey he’s heard sing the praises of what Seattle is as a soccer market.

Someone else who has a small taste for what Seattle could be like is Pochettino. In the summer of 2014, as a freshly appointed new manager at Tottenham, the first match of his tenure during the club’s summer tour happened to be an exhibition in Seattle against the Sounders.

Harry Kane was on the field that day for Tottenham. So too were Dempsey and DeAndre Yedlin for the Sounders.

“I saw the ambience … and I hear they are very passionate people here,” Pochettino said. “I’m looking forward for tomorrow to share altogether a great night, I hope with a good result and good performance.”

Australia would like for nothing better than to build off victory over Turkey and ruin the American party, and perhaps dance around the city celebrating with inflatable kangaroos. The sides played in a friendly that was far from friendly last October, a match the U.S. won 2-1 and snapped a 12-game unbeaten streak by Australia.

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But it was a physical, borderline chippy matchup that saw U.S. forward Christian Pulisic leave with an injury and seemed to come close to crossing the line between exhibition and competitive match with something significant at stake.

Pulisic is a question to play on Friday because of a calf injury, but there’s no questioning the significance of the matchup this time.

“I expect it to be a tough game. I don’t think it will be a nasty game, but a tough one,” U.S. defender Sergiño Dest said. “I think they’re physical, but we are physical as well. So it will be tough for them and tough for us.”