CHICAGO — For most of the three-plus years leading into the 2026 World Cup, U.S. men’s national team games felt inconsequential. Friendlies and the regional Nations League got repetitive. Rosters were often incomplete. Occasionally, a big-time opponent would roll in, and fans would perk up, but the USMNT would invariably lose. The buildup to this massive summer became a monotonous slog.Until now.Now, just in time for the biggest moment in program history, everything seems to be falling into place.In fact, the only thing standing between the USMNT and a perfect pre-World Cup storm is a familiar foe: Germany.The Germans are here in Chicago for a Saturday send-off match that’s been the source of hype among U.S. fans for months. Soldier Field is sold out. Supporters groups have been planning their biggest gatherings in a while. The monotony of the past few years is gone.And so, it seems, are many of the other reasons that apathy set in throughout 2023, 2024 and 2025.The key players are mostly here and healthy.They just beat African powerhouse Senegal in a warm-up friendly.They were buoyed by the buzz in Charlotte, by the hype building around them and this World Cup.By all accounts, within the group, vibes are good.Now, for the last piece of the puzzle. To deliver on the hype and expectations, the USMNT will almost certainly have to do something it has not done in more than a decade: beat a European powerhouse. It has not beaten one in FIFA’s top 10 since 2015. None of the 26 players on this World Cup roster have proof that it can be done.That, of course, does not mean it can’t be done. The players believe it can be. But they also believed in 2022 before a round-of-16 game against the Netherlands. They also believed in 2023 before a friendly against Germany. They also believed in March, when they got two shots at Belgium and Portugal. The results of those four games were: multi-goal loss, multi-goal loss, multi-goal loss and multi-goal loss.When asked in March if it was difficult to maintain belief without evidence, USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino insisted that it wasn’t. The “hope,” he said, was that “the first time is going to be in the World Cup.”Or, it could be Saturday.The final warm-up friendly, which kicks off a little after 1:30 p.m. CT on Saturday in overcast Chicago, “is a great opportunity for us to test ourselves,” Pochettino said in Spanish here on Friday. It is not, by any means, a must-win game. But a win, or even a competitive draw, would be important — because it would fuel self-belief into overdrive.