The United States men's national team will be back in the Tri-State Area for the first time in a long time.
The national team just announced plans to play a friendly vs South Korea at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey on Saturday, September 6 at 5 pm ET.
The Stars and Stripes haven't been back to the home of the Red Bulls of Major League Soccer since September 1, 2017, a 2018 FIFA World Cup Qualifier which Bruce Arena's squad lost 2-0 to Costa Rica in front of an announced crowd of 26,500.
The USMNT did play two more games in the region, both friendlies at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, in 2018 and 2019, before disappearing completely from the New York City-adjacent area for numerous years.
The men's national team made a habit of playing multiple hours north of New York City – in East Hartford, Connecticut, where they'll play again on June 6 in a friendly vs Turkey. Rentschler Field hosted a USMNT-Germany friendly in October 2023, so the Turkey match this summer will mean it's under two years between men's national team visits to East Hartford.
The venues closest to New York City, however, have been off-limits since that disastrous 2018 World Cup cycle and that loss to Costa Rica in Harrison. The road loss to Trinidad and Tobago that officially knocked the USMNT out gets all the attention, but that Costa Rica result proved to be one of the biggest setbacks the USMNT suffered en route to failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, the country's first time missing the tournament since 1986.
After the loss to Costa Rica, there was hand-wringing aplenty in the online USMNT space over selecting a venue that ended up attracting a large pro-Costa Rica crowd. Our old friends from SBNation's Stars and Stripes wrote that the "US Soccer Federation picked the wrong time to place a competitive match in its largest metropolis" following the loss at Red Bull Arena, lamenting the USMNT's lack of any real home-field advantage.
Some people inside the US Soccer Federation must have agreed with this sentiment, or something similar to it, because the national team has been missing from the Tri-State for almost six full years. The meaningful domestic USMNT matches played post-2018 have been staged in places like Columbus, Ohio, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Orlando, Florida, and the like.
That changes as Mauricio Pochettino's team comes to industrial New Jersey at the tail-end of summer, but only for a friendly. The Sports Illustrated Stadium return comes months after the USMNT plays their final competitive matches – at this summer's Concacaf Gold Cup – before the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Andrew Leigh
Now, a hop on the PATH train will get you an up-close look at the progress, or lack thereof, made by the USMNT heading into the World Cup hosted here in the United States but also in Mexico and Canada, with the Final set to be played not too far from Sports Illustrated Stadium, over in East Rutherford at MetLife Stadium.
The wait will go on until at least 2027 – when New York City FC's Etihad Park opens in Willets Point, Queens – to potentially see the United States men's national team play a game inside the boundaries of New York City proper.
The last time the USMNT played inside the City of New York was September 15, 1968, when they played Israel to a 3-3 draw in front of 10,118 fans at the original Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. New Jersey now, and maybe a long-awaited return to New York City later.
