USA out of the World Cup

Ever since 1986, the USA soccer/football team has always been represented in the World Cup Finals. But not next year, when the World Cup finals will be held in Russia between June and July. The USA team was eliminated yesterday after a surprising loss to Trinidad and Tobago, a country with a population of 1,353,895. The teams that have so far qualified for the finals are: Russia, Brazil, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Belgium, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Germany, England, Spain, Nigeria, Costa Rica, Poland, Egypt, Iceland, Serbia, Portugal, France, Argentina, Uruguay, Panama, Columbia. The final will host 32 teams, so there is room for 9 more teams, most of them from Europe and Africa.
The fact that the USA did not qualify this year is even more stunning when you think that soccer/football has shown a tremendous resurgence of interest in the USA, including a professional Major League Soccer league, as they have for American Football, Baseball, Basketball and Ice Hockey. But the biggest surprise is the fact the small country of Iceland has qualified for the finals for first time ever. In case you were wondering, the population of Iceland is 332,529, even smaller than Malta, which is 445,426. And the population of the USA is 323,127,513. Yes, that means that a country with three hundred thousand people made it to the finals, while a country with three hundred million people didn’t!