Turkey completes USA’s World Cup group, ramps up overall difficulty

ATLANTA — When the U.S. men’s national team learned its 2026 World Cup group back in December, American optimism surged. Australia, Paraguay and a European playoff winner represented “a dream draw,” pundits said, perhaps even a “layup for the U.S.” But there was peril in one scenario, the scenario in which Turkey won that playoff to complete Group D. And on Tuesday, it became reality.

The Turks topped Kosovo, 1-0, to qualify for the World Cup, their first since a third-place finish back in 2002.

They will slot into Group D as the USMNT’s third opponent, in a potentially pivotal June 25 match at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles.

They will bring talent and passionate fans to the tournament, and perhaps most importantly, they will leave this four-team grouping without a pushover.

That was the danger. That’s why Group D was more difficult than it initially appeared to Americans.

It’s a winnable group. Now, after Turkey’s win, it’s also a losable group.

In this first 48-team World Cup, nearly every other group has a genuine underdog; a team that, on paper, could be discarded easily. Group A has South Africa, B has Qatar, C has Haiti. Group E has Curaçao, G has New Zealand, H has Cape Verde. Jordan and Uzbekistan round out Argentina’s and Portugal’s groups, respectively. Two of Jamaica, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq and Bolivia will join the distinguished guest list later this evening.

Group D, on the other hand, now has balance.

If you were to average the FIFA rankings and Elo ratings of the four teams, they’d be ranked 20th (Turkey), 27th (U.S.), 28th (Australia) and 30th (Paraguay) globally.

By that concocted metric, Group D is the only of the 12 groups with all four teams in the top 30. And it’s the most wide open.

Turkey, the group’s newest member, might have the most top-end talent of the four. Kenan Yildiz (Juventus), Arda Güler (Real Madrid) and Hakan Çalhanoglu (Inter Milan) are the big names, but not the only threats.

Orkun Kökçü, a Besiktas playmaker on loan from Benfica, created the decisive goal Tuesday in Pristina. Kerem Aktürkoğlu, a versatile forward who moved to Fenerbahçe from Benfica last summer, scored it.

And at the other end of the pitch, a defense featuring Zeki Çelik (Roma), Ozan Kabak (Hoffenheim) and Ferdi Kadıoğlu (Brighton) kept Romania and Kosovo scoreless for 180 minutes to bring their nation back to the World Cup.

The U.S. — whose coaches said they would be watching Turkey-Kosovo in the hours before their Tuesday friendly against Portugal in Atlanta — is actually the lowest-ranked team of the four, per the Elo ratings.

Nevertheless, playing at home, the Americans might still be favored to win the group. Seeded in Pot 1 as a co-host, they avoided FIFA’s entire top 10. Per those rankings, for the first time in modern program history, they will be the highest-ranked team in a men’s World Cup group. Their ceiling is high.

But with Turkey now lurking in the group finale, the floor is also low. A loss to Paraguay in the opener, followed by a draw with Australia, for instance, is an entirely realistic scenario. It would leave the U.S. needing to beat a Turkish team that recently drew Spain — and also beat a weakened USMNT last June.

At that match in East Hartford, Conn., there seemed to be more Turkish fans than U.S. fans. At the World Cup, the breakdown could be different, but there are hundreds of thousands of Turkish Americans living in the United States, per the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Some of them will surely get to SoFi Stadium for the game. The USMNT, therefore, could be playing for World Cup survival in a split, semi-hostile environment.

Of course, the U.S. could also be safe by then. With eight of 12 third-place teams advancing to the round of 32, the bar to clear is much lower.

“I think we feel, like everyone else in the group, that it’s a group that you can get out of,” Australia coach Tony Popovic told Australian media back in December, and his words still ring true. “I’m sure every nation looks at the teams and says, ‘OK, we’ve a chance.’”

But they also have a chance to finish bottom of the group and crash out. At least one of the four teams will fail.

And Turkey’s qualification ups the chances that this team could be the USMNT.