This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.Travis Thomas is a mental performance coach who was the leadership and team dynamics coach for the United States Men’s National Team during the 2022 World Cup.One of the moments when it became evident to everyone that the World Cup is just a different beast was our game against Iran in 2022 in Qatar.We had one game left in our group, which happened to be against Iran. We needed to win that game to advance. Iran only needed a tie to advance, and we would have been sent home.Unbeknownst to the players, U.S. Soccer had posted an altered flag on the federation’s social media accounts to stand in solidarity with people protesting the Iranian government. Iran state media was so upset they asked for the U.S. to be kicked out of the World Cup. The federation deleted the posts.The episode stoked the flames so much that even the team’s physical safety and well-being felt a little uncertain for the first time. I remember being on the bus to training with a member of our security detail and asking, “How do you feel?”His response was honest: “Well, we really weren’t prepared for something like this.”Gregg Berhalter, our head coach, and Tyler Adams, our captain, went to a news conference a couple of days before the match. The questions that Gregg and Tyler were asked had nothing to do with soccer. They were geopolitical questions about our country and Iran.When Gregg returned to the coaching staff, he was concerned that the players might not be ready for the intensity that awaited them, and that this was now bigger than a game. We felt a temptation, as a coaching staff, to do things differently to get the guys ready.But as we talked through it and let our emotions settle a bit, we decided that the best thing we could do for our players and our team was not to make it more than a game.We didn’t tell them that it was just like a friendly or another regular game. We all knew that it wasn’t, so we didn’t need to pretend that this was just another game. But if we were to play our best, we had to make sure we were focused on just the game in front of us, not on external distractions.We ended up winning with a very intense 1-0 result to advance to the next round. But the thing I was most proud of was that after the game, when so many of the Iranian players were devastated and in tears, a bunch of U.S. players went to console them. I was on the field looking at it and, in my opinion, it was the best of what America stands for.