'02 Dream Team

Head coach Bruce Arena (left) and captain William Carter (right), two central figures of the United States men's national soccer team that won the 2002 FIFA World Cup

The "02 Dream Team" is a nickname famously used to refer to the 2002 United States men's national soccer team that, under the management of Bruce Arena and led by captain William Carter, famously won the 2002 FIFA World Cup where they defeated three-time champions Brazil 5-0 in what was later nicknamed "The June 30th Miracle" owing to the unpredictable nature of the United States' victory which sharply contrasted with expectations of an otherwise assured victory for footballing giants Brazil whose lineup consisted of the likes of Cafu, Ronaldo Nazario, Ronaldinho, and Roberto Carlos, among others. Meanwhile, on the American side, the lineup consisted of the likes of William Carter, Landon Donovan, Claudio Reyna, and Gregg Berhalter.

Nicknamed the "Dream Team" given its proximity to the successful 1992 United States men's Olympic basketball team just a decade prior, which consisted of the notable likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, and Larry Bird, the national team's victory at the 2002 FIFA World Cup would come to mark the only time to date where the United States has ever won the FIFA World Cup with subsequent attempts at winning the tournament again proving largely unsuccessful.

Formation

Prior to the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the United States, which had reached the semi-finals in the inaugural 1930 FIFA World Cup, had largely seen itself unable to qualify for most of the subsequent World Cup editions including a thirty-two-year-long absence from 1954 to 1986. Moreover, in the 1994 FIFA World Cup hosted in the United States itself, the Americans were otherwise eliminated in the round of 16 via a 0-1 defeat to eventual champions Brazil. Then, in the following 1998 edition in France, the United States failed to progress beyond the group stages, instead finding itself eliminated after a woeful fourth-place finish through defeats to Germany, Iran, and FR Yugoslavia in which Brian McBride scored the only goal for the United States in the match against Iran that ultimately ended in a 1-2 defeat for the Americans.

Meanwhile, by the time the 2002 FIFA World Cup rolled around, the United States itself had implemented several notable changes, including a change in management with the firing of Steve Sampson and his subsequent replacement with Bruce Arena. However, perhaps the most significant change would come to be the inclusion of a young and talented William Carter who, in addition to having scored the winning goal in the finals of the 1999 FIFA World Youth Championship, was also rising rapidly in fame through his somewhat successful career with the Bundesliga club Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Consequently, the inclusion of such a talented and skilled soccer player into the national team soon aroused much hope of a better performance from the national team whose international performance, particularly in previous World Cup editions, has come to be largely described as "underwhelming" or "downright subpar".

2002 FIFA World Cup

On 5 June 2002, the United States began its World Cup campaign with a group stage match against Portugal, which they comfortably won 5-2. Following this, the Americans proceeded to pick up another victory, albeit a rather narrow one against South Korea whom they defeated 2-1 via a tiebreaking goal at the 80th minute by star forward William Carter who had previously scored a brace in the match against Portugal. Nonetheless, they were later dealt a heavy 1-3 defeat against Poland in the third and final group stage match, although this did not ultimately prevent them from subsequently qualifying for the knockout stages.

On 17 June 2002, having qualified for the knockout stages, the United States first began by firmly defeating neighbours Mexico 3-0 in the round of 16 to advance to the quarter-finals where early on, following a 39th-minute goal from German midfielder Michael Ballack that look set to eliminate them from the tournament for good, the Americans later responded via a dramatic hat-trick at the 77th minute by forward William Carter that effectively saw them reach the semi-finals for the first time in seventy-two years where they went on to defeat Ireland 4-3 in a dramatic affair to advance to the finals for the first time ever where Carter himself scored twice to help overcome the fierce resistance from the Irish players.

However, given the fact that their opponent in the finals would be three-time World Cup champions Brazil, who had then finished as runner-up in the previous 1998 edition, initial hopes for an outright victory were understandably low throughout, with then-President Al Gore remarking, "While it's already good enough that we've made it this far in the tournament, judging by who our opponents are, I'd say that a loss is something all Americans are already expecting right now". In the end, against all odds, and despite fierce resistance and competition from a star-studded Brazil side, the United States, via goals from Landon Donovan and John O'Brien, as well as a memorable hat-trick from William Carter, would ultimately win the tournament outright by a stunning margin of 5-0, marking the first and only time the United States has ever won a World Cup tournament. In the face of Brazil's free-flowing and aggressive playing style spearheaded by their well-known superstars, the United States otherwise employed a rigid and defensive playing style in which the American players, aware of the differences in quality between themselves and their Brazilian counterparts, largely sat deep in their own half and crowded it as much as possible, thereby significantly limiting the Brazilian players' opportunities, before subsequently launching rare but swift counter-attacks exploiting Brazil's high defensive line that consequently left considerable space behind their defenders for their opposition's strikers to run into in a matter of seconds.

Aftermath

The sheer unexpected nature of the national team's victory, coupled with the magnitude of their victory, namely a 5-0 win over footballing giants, Brazil, quickly proved to be a source of nationwide celebrations across the United States, with President Gore himself even later announcing a period of federal holiday spanning from the following day of 1 July 2002 to 4 July 2002, a date which itself is already a federal holiday as the date for Independence Day celebrations. In the meantime, head coach Bruce Arena, along with the entire United States squad, were then each given a Presidential Medal of Freedom award by President Al Gore.

Following the national team's historic World Cup victory that year, notable members such as Landon Donovan, Gregg Berhalter, and Claudio Reyna were said to have largely faded into relative obscurity in the years that followed with the sole exception being William Carter whose World Cup triumph with the United States and subsequent move to Manchester United saw him emerge as one of football's greatest talents and well-known superstars, with Carter himself often being considered the "poster boy" or the "face" of American soccer owing to the many further successes that he later came to reap in the subsequent stages of his career. Later, following his retirement from professional football, current AC Milan winger Christian Pulisic, who also presently captains the United States, has often come to be seen by most media outlets as Carter's successor, a designation previously applied to Freddy Adu who made his debut for the United States in 2006, four years after the tournament, but ended up having a somewhat underwhelming professional career marked largely by transfers to fifteen different clubs.

In the years since, the historic triumph of the "Dream Team" at the World Cup has subsequently been the subject of much media interest and attention, with ESPN, in an article published shortly after the United States's victory over Brazil, calling the national team lineup "perhaps the most unexpected yet the single most successful one in American soccer history", while Bruce Arena himself later called it "the strongest American national soccer team in history". Fittingly, comparisons to the "Dream Team" of basketball were also common, with several media outlets generally likening William Carter to his perceived basketball counterpart Michael Jordan, both of whom are considered to be the most successful athletes in their respective sports. Meanwhile, in an article published by ESPN shortly after the United States' elimination from the 2022 FIFA World Cup, exactly twenty years since their historic World Cup triumph, the national team's one-of-a-kind success was described as a "once in a lifetime fantasy", given the fact that successive attempts, including the most recent ones, have largely proved unsuccessful in attempting to replicate the historic feat, with the national team being unable to ever progress beyond the round of 16, as was the case in 2010 and 2014 where they were eliminated by Ghana and the Netherlands respectively.

Meanwhile, among the several well-known stars of the national team other than William Carter, both Landon Donovan and Cobi Jones went on to play for the Major League Soccer side LA Galaxy, while Claudio Reyna, who later spent several seasons with Manchester City, rivals of William Carter's Manchester United, was succeeded in football by his son Giovanni Reyna who currently plays for Borussia Dortmund. Meanwhile, Gregg Berhalter, who played as a defender for the national team, subsequently became head coach of the United States himself. To that end, Berhalter's first World Cup tournament as United States head coach, the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, was exactly two decades after the country's historic triumph. However, following a loss to eventual champions England and draws with Wales and Iran, the United States ended up finishing third in their group, thereby eliminating them from the tournament.