Taha Habib Arfsten: From World Cup Glory to Championship Grind

The World Cup ended on a Tuesday night in Seattle. Belgium won, the USMNT lost, and by the next morning the group that had lived in each other’s pockets for nearly two months had scattered.

Some went home. Some went to beaches. Some disappeared into the quiet of the offseason.

Taha Habib Arfsten went to California. He needed the ocean.

“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.”

From anthem nights to balcony cards

For Arfsten, the World Cup lives in two very different sets of memories.

There are the obvious ones: goals, wins, celebrations, the roar that follows a tackle or a sprint down the wing. And there is one image that refuses to fade.

“The national anthem,” he says, smiling. “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.”

Then there are the moments no one saw. No cameras. No highlights. Just a group of young players learning each other and, in some ways, themselves.

“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.”

The ocean outside that Orange County hotel is a long way from Teesside. The balcony card games are about to be replaced by cold nights in the Championship, by trips to places where the wind cuts through you and the football never really stops.

That’s exactly what Arfsten wanted.

A plan that never ran in a straight line

Back in January, speaking to GOAL, Arfsten laid out his 2026 checklist. Two lines. Two dreams.

• Make the World Cup.
• Get to Europe.

One is already done. The other is about to become real with a move to Middlesbrough.

On paper, it looks clean. College standout, MLS breakthrough, World Cup, European transfer. The kind of neat, upward arrow that fills club graphics and agent decks.

Arfsten knows it hasn’t looked like that from the inside.

“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 wasn’t.

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 pathway that often leads straight into the first team. It didn’t for him. Instead of becoming a Quake, the Fresno-born winger/wingback landed in Columbus via the MLS Draft.

Before his USMNT debut in the January 2025 camp, he had zero national team experience. No youth caps. No long-term hype train following him from age 15. Nothing about his rise screamed inevitability.

Now he’s heading to Boro.

New league, familiar faces

Middlesbrough offers a fresh start, but not a completely foreign one. Two USMNT teammates, Sebastian Berhalter and Aidan Morris, are already there, ready-made touchpoints in a new country, a new league, a new pressure cooker.

There won’t be much time to breathe.

The Championship season starts on August 15. Before that, there’s an EFL Cup opener against Wrexham on August 7. Arfsten will land in England and walk straight into match prep, straight into a dressing room focused on points and progression, not introductions.

Before he crossed the Atlantic, though, there was one last stop: a final week as a Columbus Crew player, dressed in MLS All-Star colors.

He played 44 minutes in the All-Star Game, part of a 4-3 win over Liga MX’s best. It was loose, entertaining football, but the real value for Arfsten came off the pitch.

He reunited with Tim Ream and Matt Freese, the two other USMNT players in the All-Star squad, teammates again for the first time since that World Cup exit to Belgium.

“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 lived this story before, felt the same chaos, the same churn, the same abrupt shift from World Cup to club grind.

“It's been a whirlwind for all of us,” Ream 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.”

Advice from someone who’s walked the path

Ream once stood where Arfsten stands now: a late-rising defender out of the college game, who made his name in MLS before heading to England to test himself in a league that can chew you up.

After the All-Star Game, he was asked what he would tell Arfsten and Freese as they step into that world.

“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.”

That line about ups and downs will follow Arfsten to Teesside.

The Championship remains one of the most unforgiving leagues in the world: 46 games, constant travel, promotion races and survival battles stacked on top of each other. For a player still carving out his USMNT role at the start of a new World Cup cycle, it is both an opportunity and a risk.

Minutes matter. Form matters. Visibility matters. The fight to stay in the national team picture will only intensify as the cycle turns over and the squad reshapes, with or without a new coach.

Arfsten is jumping into that fight willingly.

Making noise in a crowded field

At 23, he has already hit the two targets he set for himself: World Cup, Europe. The bar now moves again.

“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 nights are over. The balcony card games are, for now, a memory.

Next comes Middlesbrough, the grind of the Championship, and a young American trying to turn a non-linear journey into a career that’s impossible to ignore.