The U.S. men’s national team will play its first World Cup game in eight years on Monday. After its embarrassing loss to Trinidad & Tobago kept the U.S. out of the 2018 World Cup and led to a total overhaul of the national team program, the pressure is on for the team to deliver results in Qatar.

The U.S. won’t be satisfied with just qualifying for the tournament. The expectation will be a trip to the knockout stage, but that won’t be easy. The U.S. was drawn into Group B, which looks to be one of the most competitive of the eight groups. England is the best team in the group but Wales and Iran are not pushovers, either.

Talent isn’t a question for the team. Half of the players on the 26-man World Cup roster play for clubs in one of Europe’s top five leagues but the question is how these players will be able to mesh. The U.S. looked listless in its final World Cup tuneup matches against Japan and Saudi Arabia, failing to score in either match. Part of the issue is that manager Gregg Berhalter has been unable to find a consistent option at striker. The team’s attacking strength is on the wings, led by Christian Pulisic, Timothy Weah, Brenden Aaronson and Gio Reyna (not to mention full backs Sergiño Dest and Antonee Robinson) but finding the right guy to anchor the attack in the center of the pitch has been a challenge. That job will likely fall to 21-year-old Jesús Ferreira, who has five goals for the national team in 10 appearences this year (four of them coming in one match against Grenada in June).

When the roster was announced, Berhalter made a surprising decision to leave Zack Steffen at home, clearing the way for Matt Turner to start in goal. Turner plays for Arsenal but rarely sees action behind starter Aaron Ramsdale. Turner did start three Europa League matches for the Gunners in October, keeping a clean sheet each time, but it’ll be worth watching to see if the lack of game action impacts his play in Qatar.

We won’t have to speak in hypotheticals about the team for much longer, though. The first game is on Monday against Wales at 2 p.m. ET. (The U.S. then plays England on the day after Thanksgiving and Iran on Nov. 29, both at 2 p.m. ET.) So what can we reasonably expect from the squad? Jonathan Wilson ranks the U.S. as the 23rd-best team in the tournament, writing that, despite the team’s talent, “there is little sign of balance or consistency.” Even still, all five of our experts (even Wilson) picked the U.S. to advance out of the group as the runner-up behind England. That might be as far as the team gets, though. As the runner-up in Group B, the U.S. would face the winner of Group A. In all likelihood that would be the Netherlands (especially after Senegal lost Sadio Mané to injury), which would be a stiff challenge. But this is a tournament that only comes around every four years and, after missing out in 2018, the USMNT’s presence won’t be taken for granted. Enjoy the run. For however long it lasts.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Courtesy of Karan Teli on behalf of Playmaker Films

Today’s Daily Cover is Andrew Gastelum’s profile of England star Raheem Sterling, who isn’t the person British tabloids make him out to be.

Ross Dellenger spoke with the mother of Virginia running back Mike Hollins, who was wounded in the shooting that killed three of his teammates. … Here is Jeremy Woo’s latest NBA mock draft, with Victor Wembanyama obviously at the top. … I’m sure this story by Greg Bishop has to be the first in SI history that begins with the line, “I’m sitting on top of a camel.”

Around the sports world

In a last-minute reversal, Qatari officials have banned the sale of beer inside World Cup stadiums. … As expected, Aaron Judge was crowned American League MVP over Shohei Ohtani. … Senegal was dealt a serious blow to its World Cup hopes when star winger Sadio Mané was ruled out for the tournament with an injury. … The Eagles are beefing up their defensive line by signing Ndamukong Suh. … Here is a fascinating look at some questionable conduct by Tom Brady’s charity. … Wimbledon is softening its all-white clothing policy for female players.

The top five...

… things I saw last night:

5. Mark Stone’s baseball-style goal for the Golden Knights.

4. Derrick Henry’s touchdown pass.

3. Royce O’Neale’s tip-in game-winner after Kevin Durant’s shot went begging.

2. Ryan O’Reilly’s nasty backhand goal.

1. South Carolina freshman forward Ashlyn Watkins’s dunk against Clemson. (It was the first dunk in program history.)

SIQ

Even though he didn’t win this year’s award, Shohei Ohtani was already on the short list of players who won the MVP while playing for a team with a losing record. Which of these players did not accomplish the feat?

Alex Rodriguez
Carlos Delgado
Andre Dawson
Cal Ripken

Yesterday’s SIQ: What was the nickname the New York newspapers gave to the 1977 trade that sent Tom Seaver from the Mets to the Reds?

The New York Mess
The Cincinnati Steal
The Queens Ransom
The Midnight Massacre

Answer: The Midnight Massacre. Seaver, who had won a World Series, three Cy Young awards and a Rookie of the Year with the Mets, believed he was underpaid and told Mets chairman of the board M. Donald Grant as much. The feud with Grant—exacerbated by New York Daily News columnist Dick Young’s criticism of Seaver—escalated to the point that Seaver was shipped to the Reds in exchange for four mostly unheralded players.

One of Young’s columns in particular upset Seaver to such a degree that he flat-out asked the Mets to trade him away from New York. Young wrote that Seaver’s wife, Nancy, was upset that he wasn’t being paid as much as his friend and former teammate Nolan Ryan.

“That Young column was the straw that broke the back,” Seaver told the Daily News’ Bill Madden in 2007. “Bringing your family into it with no truth whatsoever to what he wrote. I could not abide that. I had to go.”

Young’s columns had painted Seaver as greedy (a common sentiment in the media during those early days of free agency) but Seaver said he wasn’t as concerned with money as the papers made him out to be.

“The money was always secondary to my loyalty to the Mets,” Seaver told SI’s Kent Hannon just after the trade. “The people who think I was bitter about not making more money or who think I was trying to force a trade by asking that my contract be renegotiated won’t believe me. But for the record, my loyalty to the Mets and my desire to make them competitive always came first. I don’t think I've shown myself to be a greedy person.”

It wasn’t the only time Seaver left the Mets in controversial fashion. Before the 1984 season, one year after the Reds had traded him back to New York, the Mets left Seaver off their protected list of players, allowing the White Sox to claim him as a free agency compensation pick.

From the Vault: Nov. 18, 1987

This is the sort of cover that immediately makes you want to know more about the guy featured. A man in a full cowboy get-up named Fennis Dembo? I’m sold.

Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way first: that name. Here’s how Curry Kirkpatrick relayed the story of how Dembo got his name:

The standard story of Dembo’s christening is accurate enough. His older sister Zona suggested that mama name her 10th child after the French word finis, hoping that she was indeed finished having babies. When the boy arrived with a twin sister, she became Fenise and he Fennis—and mama was indeed finis. Fans of Dembo’s, however, have come up with other versions of the naming, including Biblical and animal ones; recently a Howard University coed, who had researched a term paper, called to inform Dembo that the name Fennis has an African connection.

Dembo was the star of the Wyoming men’s basketball team in the late ’80s—a team that, believe it or not, was a legitimate national contender in Dembo’s senior season, 1987–88, Kirkpatrick wrote:

Carrying Dembo’s wild and woolly hot-dog reputation and now [new head coach Benny] Dees’s loose, homespun style as twin saddlebags, Wyoming is suddenly both a solid contender for the national championship and yet another reaffirmation of the ever-changing, crazy-quilt nature of college basketball. Who could have imagined that the national spotlight would land on a player and coach who represent a state with barely 470,000 inhabitants, 95 high schools and one lone member of the House of Representatives?

Dembo had been recruited to Wyoming from San Antonio by the previous head coach, Jim Brandenburg. Dembo’s enormous on-court personality made him a fan favorite in Laramie and public enemy No. 1 on the road. His excellent play (he averaged more than 20 points per game as a junior and senior) helped make the Cowboys the class of the WAC. They had made a surprising run to the Sweet 16 in 1987 as a 12 seed so expectations were high the following season. They began the ’87–88 season as the No. 10 team in the country and rose as high as No. 5 in the AP poll. The talk of a Final Four appearance turned out to be too ambitious, though. They lost in the first round of the tournament to Loyola Marymount.

Dembo was a second-round draft pick by the Pistons but only played sparingly in his single season in the NBA. He told ESPN’s Dana O’Neil in 2009 that his downfall was not staying in shape during the offseason.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

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