On today’s episode of the “Daily Variety” podcast, Rand Getlin, director and executive producer of the HBO documentary “US vs. the World: Four Years with the Men’s National Soccer Team,” talks about the road to the World Cup and the growing popularity of men’s and women’s soccer in America.
Getlin spent more than four years documenting the journey leading up to the World Cup tournament, which will be held from June 11 to July 19 in cities across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Getlin was a longtime NFL reporter for NFL Network and other news organizations. After the U.S. men’s national team failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, a chance encounter with team member Tyler Adams in 2019 led Getlin to start a production company with his wife, producer Janina Pelayo, who would later produce the five-part documentary series “The USA Against the World.” In 2022, Getlin and his partners “turned the camera on” a vérité-style documentary that tells the story of sacrifice, dedication, and brotherhood as team members come together to win America’s first Men’s World Cup championship. Meanwhile, the U.S. women’s national team has won four World Cups in the tournament in 1991, 1999, 2015 and 2019.
For Getlin, the decision to quit his job and start a production venture was life-changing.
“We wanted to pursue something that was worth pursuing. All of us in the industry understand how difficult it is to get work to the screen. So for us, it was essential that we found something that was worth pouring ourselves into and that we could feel really proud of our creative output and storytelling accomplishments,” Getlin says.
“This is a coming-of-age story. It’s an emotional start to the 2026 World Cup. A team that has never won before. In some parts of the soccer world, people look down on them. Yet, there is a group of young Americans who are doing everything they can to make this country proud, and the villages around them, their mothers, their sisters, their wives, their youth. “This is a part of America. And the point is, they all come from different backgrounds, different religions, different ethnicities, different regions, and they all speak different languages, but when they come together, they don’t talk about what divides them and they do everything they can to be proud of this country.”
Listen to Daily Variety on iHeartPodcasts, Apple Podcasts, Variety’s YouTube Podcast channel, Amazon Music, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.
