NEW YORK — With the Brooklyn Bridge stretched out behind him and a few hundred red, white and blue clad fans gathered in front to see the team around which they have built hope officially announced, U.S. men’s national team coach Mauricio Pochettino officially unveiled his World Cup squad on Tuesday afternoon.The 2026 World Cup, for the last eight years, has been billed as the “rocket fuel” for soccer in America and the stage for a golden USMNT generation. But for all that time, it has been a moment set way off in the distance. Not anymore. It’s no longer something blurry way down the road.That far-flung event has now undoubtedly arrived.“I’ve kind of felt it on the horizon,” U.S. star Christian Pulisic said. “Once I got here and was with the team and felt these fans and the support around and the buzz around the World Cup is when I really started to feel it.”Pochettino’s 26-man roster was announced one by one to the cheers of the crowd. Players walked out on the stage to billowing smoke. They stood on bleachers in suits and white shirts, each player holding his World Cup kit. This is the team with a generational opportunity to play a home World Cup.We talk now about what the 1994 World Cup did for soccer in the U.S. It helped to launch a professional league. It built up the infrastructure for the sport. The players on those fields in 1994, given nothing and tasked with building something, shaped the next generation.This 2026 World Cup is supposed to serve the same purpose.Not just to inspire, but to encourage belief around a sport that has already seen its popularity driven upwards by the global game. But the task put on the team this summer is less about what the 1994 group did and more about trying to capture even a fraction of what the ’99ers — the U.S. women’s national team that captured the attention and heart of a nation by winning the 1999 Women’s World Cup — accomplished.