To make it this far, the US men’s national team were pushed to the limit in knockout-round triumphs over Costa Rica and Guatemala.
Now they’ll face a challenge multiple orders of magnitude more difficult in Sunday evening’s 2025 Concacaf Gold Cup final: A fired-up, in-form Mexico eager to defend their title against their border rivals on hospitable turf at NRG Stadium in Houston (7 pm ET | FOX, Univision, TUDN).
It’s a showdown the Yanks say they’ve been hoping for.
“We owe ’em a little something from October (when the US lost 3-0 to El Tri in a friendly in Guadalajara),” defender Chris Richards told Yahoo! Sports’ Henry Bushnell after Wednesday’s narrow victory over Guatemala in St. Louis, as Mexico dueled and eventually edged Honduras 1-0 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California in the tournament’s other semifinal.
“We'll do it by winning a trophy.”
First taste
Mexico are not only reigning Gold Cup champions, but also possess the 2024-25 Concacaf Nations League title, after the US won the first three editions of that competition. El Tri didn’t even have to beat the Yanks to accomplish that: Thanks to an upset loss to Panama, the US didn’t reach the final.
For a variety of reasons, and for better or worse, plenty of the program’s established stars aren’t part of Mauricio Pochettino’s current group. Sunday’s final will be the first direct experience of the storied rivalry for many among this relatively inexperienced roster. Yet it’s safe to assume all have watched these clashes for many years, and dreamed of taking part.
Perhaps none more so than Diego Luna, the hero of Wednesday’s win and a Mexican-American talent who was eligible to play for both countries before committing his international allegiance to the land of his birth.
“I’m very proud to be Mexican-American, my family’s heritage and stuff like that, my parents,” the Real Salt Lake player explained during a Thursday appearance on the Pat McAfee Show. “But I was born in the United States, I’ve played here all my life, and they’ve given me everything I’ve had, and I’ve been able to perform for them. They’ve given me the opportunity to do what I do and have supported me.
“There’s no better feeling than to give back to the country that has supported me and allowed me to be where I am today. And then going into Sunday, it’s going to be an awesome game. There's definitely going to be some emotions – it’s going to be cool to play against Mexico. My family’s going to be there. But it doesn’t change that I’m going all-in for the USA, and I’m going to give it my all to bring us the championship.”
Underdog Yanks
These North American giants have faced off in this situation seven times over the decades, Mexico winning five of them, and the odds-makers have marked them as the favorites on this occasion, too. Veteran manager Javier Aguirre arguably has more first-choice talent at his disposal than Mauricio Pochettino, particularly in a sturdy spine featuring European-based mainstays Raul Jiménez, Edson Álvarez and César Montes, and his side have posted four consecutive clean sheets after leaking two goals against Caribbean Cinderellas the Dominican Republic in their opening Gold Cup match.
The Yanks might counter that they have the quality and tenacity of Luna, standout playmaker Malik Tillman and an increasingly tight-knit collective spirit that’s crystallized over an eventful month together.
“I think about Malik in previous years, and he’s – I don't even recognize him,” veteran center back Tim Ream said in remarks from Wednesday’s postgame mixed zone distributed by U.S. Soccer, calling the attacking duo “such a joy to play with and watch” as they each totaled a team-leading five goal contributions in the first five games of this tournament. “He’s all over the place in such a good way, with and without the ball, physically strong, working for the team.
“Diego's not fazed by anything. He wants to get on the ball and make things happen,” Ream continued. “He just has that something about him, that chip on his shoulder that’s like, ‘you know what? This is me, unapologetically me. Get me the ball, I'm going to make things happen, and let's drag the rest of us into the fight and get after it.'”
Hostile crowd
The US don’t have to qualify for next summer’s FIFA World Cup as tournament co-hosts alongside Canada and Mexico. Yet those who haven’t walked the gauntlet of Concacaf qualification in past cycles got a small taste of the region’s difficult road trips in St. Louis, thanks to thousands of Guatemalan supporters who trekked to Energizer Park from across the country to provide vociferous support for their team, drawing extensive praise from Pochettino.
“Yeah, it was an away game. They brought a lot of fans. The whole city was blue and white,” Richards told FOX’s Jenny Taft after his team survived a bracing challenge from the Central American underdogs.
With all respect to South Texas’ substantial ranks of USMNT faithful, the atmosphere at an NFL-scaled venue in Houston – one of El Tri’s most-visited US cities thanks to the region’s huge Mexican-American population – figures to be several times more hostile to the Yanks than Wednesday’s.
For a squad desperate to show ‘Poch’ they’ve got the fighting spirit he demands, that’s one more challenge to embrace.
“With Poch coming in here, bringing in that new energy and that grit and that hard work and that mentality of doing that, but also having the technical and the tactical side of the game, I think it's bringing us to another level," Luna said.
“We're going to showcase it on Sunday against a very difficult Mexico team,” added the RSL star. “We're going to have a lot of flair with a dog mentality going in.”
