Tony Meola, goalie on the plucky 1994 U.S. team that advanced to the knockout stage on home soil before losing to eventual champion Brazil, 1-0, on July 4 in front of 84,000 fans at Stanford Stadium, became a familiar name. Brad Friedel was dubbed “The Human Wall” in 2002, while helping the U.S. reach the quarterfinals in South Korea.
Freese, 27, swears he’s blocking out naysaying. “I don’t hear it,” he told reporters this week at the team’s training base in Irvine, Calif. “With that in mind, it's fair to say the U.S. has had a great goalkeeping core historically. I was a fan of that goalkeeping core for much of my life, still am. So it's an honor to be on this team and be part of that group to hopefully continue that great legacy.”
Freese focused his research on the soccer field: While at Harvard, he did a paper on penalty-kick analytics. He left school after two years to sign with the Philadelphia Union, his hometown Major League Soccer team, in 2018. He struggled to adjust to professional life in his first 18 months as a pro. But working with Harvard professors to finish his degree remotely actually helped revive him on the field.
He was primarily a backup during his four seasons in Philadelphia, from 2019 through 2022. In January 2023, the Union traded him to New York City FC: he won the starting job at the end of that season. He didn’t receive his first national-team call-up until January 2025. Given the slow start to his pro career, a spot at the World Cup, never mind the starting nod, was far from preordained. “You work for the opportunity, but you never know if it's going to come,” says Freese. “I learned probably nine years ago that the ones that work hard without the promise of reward are the ones that usually succeed.”
His breakout moment came last summer, when Freese saved three of six penalty shots against Costa Rica in the Gold Cup quarters, leading the U.S. to a shoot-out victory. While that performance alone won’t ease anyone’s anxiety, Freese seems unfazed about the prospect of staring down the best players in the world in, say, a penalty-shot situation. Let’s hope that paper earned an A. “Pressure makes diamonds,” he says. “We're a group of 26 guys that want to show that we're a bunch of diamonds.”
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