There’s a moment after USMNT wins that’s starting to feel almost as important as the final whistle. The game ends. The players gather near the sideline. And then the stadium speakers crackle to life with the opening chords of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
What happens next has become the defining image of this team’s World Cup campaign. Tens of thousands of fans singing along. Players swaying and screaming the lyrics. Even Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine coach who lives in Spain, belted it out Wednesday night after the US beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 2-0 to punch their ticket to the round of 16.
Weston McKennie and Sebastian Berhalter were especially into it, swinging their arms like they were leading a stadium-wide karaoke session. And the crowd ate it up.
It wasn’t planned by the team. According to a report from The Athletic, FIFA officials actually added the song to the post-game playlist on purpose, hoping to create a moment of connection between the players and the fans. It debuted after the US beat Australia 2-0 in Seattle, and it worked immediately. Social media lit up. The video looped everywhere.
McKennie told reporters afterward, “You could feel the connection with the fans.”
The song’s weird path from a Maryland drive to a World Cup anthem
Bill Danoff, who co-wrote “Country Roads” with his then-wife Taffy Nivert, told the AP he’s honored that the US team has latched onto the song. He said John Denver, who died in a 1997 plane crash, would have loved watching this unfold.
“It was such an exciting game,” Danoff said, referring to the Bosnia match. “They were down a player with a red card, but they still won. I thought, ‘Gee, I wish John was still here.'”
The John Denver estate said they were thrilled by the song’s World Cup revival. They pointed to the lyrics as the reason it works so well — simple, direct, open to anyone. “Everyone knows what ‘Take me home to the place I belong’ is about,” the estate said. “It’s not limited to West Virginia.”
Here’s the funny part: the song isn’t really about West Virginia either. Danoff has said he wrote the opening lines while driving along Clopper Road in Maryland, headed toward a family reunion in Gaithersburg. He was thinking about growing up in western New England and all those small winding roads. West Virginia just happened to sound right in the melody.
Danoff and Nivert originally wanted Johnny Cash to record it. But they played an unfinished version for their friend John Denver one night, and he talked them into letting him take it. Released in 1971, it became Denver’s biggest hit.
Not just an American thing anymore
This isn’t the song’s first rodeo in sports. West Virginia University fans have sung it after home wins for years. NFL fans in Germany adopted it during the league’s annual games in Munich, starting back in 2022. Manchester United supporters even rewrote the lyrics to honor Old Trafford.
And the USMNT isn’t alone in finding a post-match anthem this tournament. England’s players have been singing Oasis’ “Wonderwall” after every game. Harry Kane called it “one of my favorite ever moments in an England shirt” after they beat Croatia 4-2 in the opener.
For the US, the song hit a weird low point on June 25 in Los Angeles. It played after a last-minute loss to Turkey, a game that didn’t matter for advancing but still felt deflating. The stadium was quiet.
But Wednesday in Santa Clara brought it back. The US won. The crowd stayed. And when the song came on, even the hydration break versions during other matches have gotten roaring approval from fans who were booing the stoppage seconds earlier.
Denver once said about the song, “I don’t know all of the ways that song must have touched people, but I’m grateful that I have somehow been able to say something that has meaning for others.”
He probably never imagined it would mean a World Cup singalong. But here we are.
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