Balogun Out, Belgium Next: Tab Ramos on What Holds the USMNT Together

It’s knockout football, and the USMNT heads into its round-of-16 clash with Belgium without its most dangerous attacking weapon – and with a Hall of Famer calling it a “huge loss” while still believing the structure holds.

Tab Ramos, who started for the United States at three World Cups including the 1994 edition on home soil, sat down with Soccer America to dissect where this USMNT stands ahead of Monday’s match. Ramos has been calling World Cup 2026 games for HBS TV out of Philadelphia and Toronto, which gives him a ground-level view that goes beyond the broadcast booth.

His read on the group stage run was blunt: “It has gone well beyond my expectations. This is what we have been waiting for.” For anyone who wasn’t around in 1994, he suggested, the scale of public engagement is genuinely hard to contextualize. Whether that momentum carries through a hostile knockout-round opponent is the next question.

The Balogun Problem – and Why Pepi Isn’t a Disaster

Folarin Balogun‘s suspension for the Belgium match is the dominant pre-game storyline, and Ramos didn’t minimize it. “Balogun is one of the top six or seven center forwards at this World Cup. He doesn’t even need the team to create opportunities for him to score. And, when he gets chances, he rarely misses. It is a huge loss,” Ramos said.

That’s not a small thing to absorb in a knockout game. A striker who generates his own chances independently of team shape is exactly the kind of player Belgium’s defensive structure will not have game-planned for – because they’ll be facing a different one.

Still, Ramos framed the replacement logic cleanly. “As a coach you would usually want to make the least amount of changes to a team that is doing well. Balogun is out, Ricardo Pepi is in. Nothing else changes,” he said. The tactical skeleton stays intact; the personnel swap is surgical rather than structural.

There’s also an upside case specific to Pepi. “The last time Pepi played with Christian Pulisic wide, Pulisic had his best game,” Ramos noted. That combination-based rationale isn’t nostalgia – it’s a real consideration when Pulisic is the engine of the attack regardless of who lines up at nine.

The Ferrari – and What Powers It

The midfield triangle of Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie, and Yunus Musah has been the analytical focal point of Pochettino’s World Cup run, and the “Ferrari” label Ramos applies to it captures both the upside and the anxiety. Fast, dynamic, capable of controlling games – and occasionally prone to the kind of mechanical failure that expensive machinery invites at the worst moment.

The concern isn’t unfounded. Pre-tournament analysis flagged that McKennie and Musah both tend to vacate central space when joining attacks, leaving Adams exposed in front of the back line. Against elite counterattacking sides, that gap has been punishable. Belgium still carries Kevin De Bruyne and Youri Tielemans in midfield, players who don’t need much space to make the U.S. pay for any loose ball in the center circle.

Ramos’s own framing on the midfield has been consistent across his broadcast work: if Adams, McKennie, and Musah are trusted to control games rather than just win individual duels, this team has the ceiling to go deep. The caveat – that the U.S. hasn’t yet proven it can manage a full 90 minutes of positional chess against the very best – hangs over Monday’s match.

Why Dest and Robinson Are the Real Structural Key

One element that doesn’t get enough credit in midfield-centric analysis is what Sergino Dest and Antonee Robinson do to make the triangle function. Ramos was direct: “Having overlapping wingbacks with good feet are crucial to any possession team. In addition, Dest’s unpredictability on the attack creates chaos for opponents.”

The context for why this matters now and didn’t matter as much earlier is telling. Because of injury timing, Dest and Robinson hadn’t actually lined up together under Pochettino until the final two pre-World Cup friendlies. The coordination that looks seamless in the group stage is genuinely recent. Ramos coached Dest with the U-20s through a World Cup quarterfinal run, so his assessment of the wingback’s ceiling carries some biographical weight.

In a possession system, wingbacks aren’t just width providers – they’re the mechanism by which a midfield triangle avoids being outnumbered. Robinson’s reliability on the left and Dest’s chaos-generating tendencies on the right give the Adams-McKennie-Musah unit room to press higher without abandoning structure.

The 5-2 Scoreline and What It Actually Means

Belgium beat the United States 5-2 in a friendly last March. Ramos’s response to that data point was measured rather than dismissive. “Although it will be two different teams on the field, it is still another motivating factor for the team. They will be ready,” he said.

The “different teams” framing is accurate – that result came before Dest and Robinson had played a single minute together under Pochettino, before the group-stage run crystallized this squad’s identity, and in a context where World Cup squads frequently rotate and friendlies carry limited tactical predictive value. Using it as a straightforward form guide is lazy. Using it as a motivational data point, the way Ramos does, is honest.

The U.S. has not faced anything at this World Cup that tests whether the Ferrari’s brakes actually work. Belgium, with its technical midfield and the institutional memory of a golden generation even if that peak has passed, is the first real examination. Monday answers a lot of questions that the group stage was never going to.

Further reading: Tab Ramos on USA’s ‘Ferrari’ Midfield – Soccer America