Noah Arfsten: From World Cup Glory to Championship Challenge

The World Cup is over. The anthem has stopped. The cards have been packed away. Now, for Noah Arfsten, it’s Middlesbrough away on a Tuesday night.

Not long after the USMNT’s loss to Belgium in Seattle, the 26 players who had lived on top of each other for nearly two months scattered. Some went home. Some went on vacation. Everyone disappeared into their own version of normal.

Arfsten’s version was California.

“I spent like a week at home with my family,” he says. “I went to the beach for a little bit. I just took a little mental break. Then, I came back to Columbus, started training, and I just played in a couple games.

“It kind of just ends, and you have to move on, but it was such a massive moment that it's kind of hard to move on.”

He’s talking about the World Cup, of course. Six weeks of intensity, noise, scrutiny. Six weeks that changed his life.

From anthem chills to balcony cards

The images that stick first are the obvious ones. The ones everyone saw.

“The national anthem,” Arfsten says, and the smile comes quickly. “Whenever people ask me, I always say that just because they let everybody go out there, so I was out there every game. You're singing the national anthem at the World Cup, and the world's watching. In that moment, it seems like everyone is watching."

That’s the highlight reel stuff. The kind that lives forever on social media and in family group chats.

But what’s been looping in his mind lately are the quieter scenes, the ones without cameras.

“The stuff you remember most is the relationships you make,” he says. “For me, me and a group of like five other teammates, we'd play cards every single night on the balcony at the hotel in Orange County. We'd just look at the ocean, play cards. That was like such a fun time because you just talk about stuff. You learn a lot about people."

Those nights are gone now. The ocean view replaced soon by the River Tees, the Orange County sun by North East rain. In many ways, the real education starts here.

A journey that refused to go in a straight line

Middlesbrough is a long way from Fresno, from UC-Davis, from those balcony card games. It’s also a destination Arfsten has been chasing for years.

Back in January, speaking to GOAL, he laid out two targets for 2026. Make the World Cup. Get to Europe. One box ticked in the summer. The other about to be checked now.

On paper, it reads like a clean, upward arc. World Cup breakthrough, MLS All-Star, European move. Neat, tidy, inevitable.

Arfsten doesn’t recognize that version.

“My whole journey, it feels like ups and downs and going through a lot of hurdles just to get to Columbus,” he said in January. “To be where I am now, I feel like I'm just learning as I go. All of this is new to me. I feel like the one thing I want people to understand is that this isn't linear."

He’s right. It hasn’t been.

He broke through at UC-Davis, only to see his sophomore season wiped out by COVID-19. After his junior year, he signed with San Jose Earthquakes II, a step that usually points toward the first team. Instead, his path bent again. The Fresno-born winger/wingback landed in Columbus through the MLS Draft, not through the front door in San Jose.

Before his USMNT debut in the January 2025 camp, he had zero national team experience. No long youth résumé, no U-17 or U-20 stardom. He wasn’t the kid everyone circled in the academy system.

Nothing about this has been pre-ordained.

Boro, Berhalter, Morris – and no time to breathe

Now comes another sharp turn: a move to Middlesbrough, into the chaos of the Championship. The league is unforgiving, the schedule relentless, the margin for error tiny. Promotion to the Premier League is the prize, and it shapes everything.

There will be familiar faces in the dressing room. USMNT teammates Sebastian Berhalter and Aidan Morris are already at the club, ready-made connections in a foreign league.

Comfort, though, will be in short supply. The Championship season kicks off on August 15. Before that, there’s an EFL Cup opener against Wrexham on August 7. No settling-in period, no gentle pre-season rhythm. Arfsten will step off a plane and straight into a squad gearing up for competitive matches.

Before he crossed the Atlantic, he allowed himself one last week in MLS colors, one last lap of honor as a Columbus Crew player: the MLS All-Star Game.

He played 44 minutes, helped the MLS All-Stars edge Liga MX 4-3, and soaked in the occasion. But the real value of the week wasn’t the game.

A World Cup bond, revisited in one All-Star week

In the All-Star squad, Arfsten found two more pieces of his World Cup summer: Tim Ream and Matt Freese. The three had been part of that USMNT group that lived, trained, and suffered together before Belgium sent them home.

This was the first time they’d been teammates again since Seattle.

“It's super cool to see them,” Arfsten says. “Obviously, this summer, that's like your family for over a month, almost two months, and you're with them every single day, training with them, battling with them. You go through all those emotions together, so it's definitely a special bond and it's always fun to see them."

Ream, who has seen just about everything the game can throw at a late-rising American defender in England, felt the same rush amid the chaos.

“It's been a whirlwind for all of us,” he said. “And I think we're all trying to get back to normal, but it was amazing to see those guys and catch up and talk about the World Cup and how amazing it was."

After the game, Ream was asked what he would tell the younger pair as they chase their own European chapters. Once, he stood exactly where Arfsten stands now: college product, MLS breakthrough, then a leap into English football.

His answer was simple, and it cut to the core of what awaits Arfsten.

“Just be yourself,” Ream said. “You don't have to change. You don't have to change anything. You've gotten to this level and gotten to the World Cup by being yourself and doing what got you there. I think that's the key of going through a career. We all know there are ups and downs, that it's no different than anything. It's the same as going through life, but if you can be the same person, no matter if you're doing well or struggling, then you're going to be okay."

It’s not tactical advice. It’s survival advice.

New league, new cycle, same fight

Arfsten will need that resilience. The move abroad is hard. The Championship is one of the most demanding leagues in the world, not just physically but mentally, with its endless fixtures and high stakes.

At the same time, the USMNT is turning the page. A new World Cup cycle has begun. Roles will shift, lineups will churn, a new coach may or may not arrive, but the competition will intensify either way. Staying in that conversation will be every bit as tough as breaking into it.

For Arfsten, the timing is brutal and perfect all at once. He is leaving the comfort of Columbus and MLS just as his international profile rises, stepping into a league where every performance will be measured against the standard of “Is he still a national team guy?”

He knows what he has to do.

"I think scoring goals, getting assists, making noise wherever I'm at, it's just making it hard to not select me," he says. "At the end of the day, that's what it's about. I feel like we can talk about who plays where, who does what, but like I feel like if I'm just always making noise wherever I'm at and just making it hard to not select me, that's my job as a player, and that's what I'm going to try and do."

The anthem in front of the world is gone now. The balcony, the cards, the ocean – all in the rearview. Next comes the grind: cold nights, tight pitches, and a promotion race that doesn’t care about World Cup memories.

If Arfsten can keep making noise there, the rest will take care of itself.