When the initial draw came out, obviously the United States and England getting paired together again brought about tremendous excitement and expectation. America loves nothing more than to remind England who invented the word soccer (the Brits) and exactly where New England thinks tea belongs (in the harbor).
That being said, this is a fantastic group for storylines and potential and horrific group for actual soccer. On their best days, all four of these teams are quite good and yet none of these teams have shown recently that they are playing at their best.
England and Wales got relegated out of the top flight their UEFA Nations League groups with the English defense in shambles particularly, the USA struggled mightily in their last friendlies in September and also has questions in their lineup, Wales is going in to their opener against the USA without starting midfielder Joe Allen, and Iran might be down their best striker in Sardar Azmoun for a team that doesn’t score a lot of goals to begin with.