If the 2022 World Cup seems a million years away, it's because it's going to feel that way as U.S. national team fans are forced to endure the years of waiting to see their team return to the sport's biggest stage.
That World Cup is slated to take place in December 2022, making it almost a full five years from now before we can hope to see American players taking on the world's best in an event U.S. fans grew to take for granted after qualifying for seven straight tournaments.
Americans are living in a new reality, though, one where the nightmare of October's World Cup qualifying debacle in Trinidad & Tobago left them with no choice but to forge ahead and think about the future and the young players who will look to lift the program from the ashes.