Injury kept Arlington’s Miles Robinson out of the last World Cup. Four years later, he’s back on soccer’s biggest stage.
If you ask Miles Robinson, he’ll tell you that he was confident that he’d make it back.
But few injuries are tougher to return at full strength from than a torn Achilles, like the one Robinson suffered in the spring of 2022.
It could hardly have come at a worse time for the Arlington native — then a defender for MLS’ Atlanta United — who was not only expected to make the United States squad for that winter’s World Cup, but a strong contender to start for the Americans in Qatar.
Robinson had started every game in the previous summer’s Gold Cup, even scoring the winner in the final against Mexico. He was an MLS All-Star in 2021. Then, with one wrong step, it all changed.
“It was one of those situations where it was really tough in that moment,” Robinson said, “and then you kind of had to like ground yourself in being grateful and recognizing that you’re still in the position to potentially make the next one.”
“When that happened, we were all devastated, because we knew what this injury was costing him,” said Robinson’s older sister, Rebecca. “This was potentially a huge turning point in his career, and for it to just be taken away so quickly … It was so hard for me to see him like that, because I knew he was genuinely heartbroken.”
Few have seen Robinson’s journey from Arlington youth soccer to the US national team like his sister, an athlete in her own right who helped stoke his initial interest in the game.
“We were competitive, but not so much in a way that there was any jealousy or anything like that,” she said. “It was really just us always trying to make each other better, you know?We would often, after school, just me and him, go down to the field by our house and just practice together for hours.”
The younger Robinson’s talent was obvious and versatile. He opted to play club soccer for Boston Bolts in high school, which ruled him out of playing soccer for Arlington high school. His contributions to the Spy Ponders were limited to the basketball court, where he dominated, too.
“He was a very unique basketball player,” said Arlington High athletic director John Bowler, who coached the school’s boys’ basketball team when Robinson came through the program. “He could guard center down to the point guard, he drove the ball up the court, he was probably the fastest on the court and the strongest, he had the best basketball IQ.
“It’s amazing what he did with only playing basketball a few months a year; he was Globe All-Scholastic, league MVP his junior and senior year, I think we were 24-2 his senior year. He was just incredible.”
But the scouts were at his soccer matches for a reason. He was strong, fast, technical, agile; the prototype for a top defender.
By the time her younger brother was looking at colleges, Rebecca was starring on the track at Syracuse (she graduated as the school record-holder in the indoor 400m).
“I remember the soccer coach coming to my track practices,being like, ‘Hey, we got to get your brother to Syracuse,’” she recalled. “I was like, say less, let’s make it happen.”
That was Orange men’s soccer coach Ian McIntyre, who managed to bring Miles Robinson to upstate New York in 2015. There, he flourished, winning ACC Defensive Player of the Year as a sophomore.
“We thought — we knew — we were getting a good one,” McIntyre said. “We knew that we had a real driven, motivated player with an extremely high ceiling.”
It wasn’t long before the pros came calling. Robinson entered the 2017 MLS SuperDraft after two seasons at Syracuse, going second overall to Atlanta. He struggled for playing time for two seasons, then broke through as a starter in 2019, the same year he made his international debut in a friendly against Mexico.
Robinson’s stock rose and rose. He was named in the MLS Best XI in both 2019 and 2021 and became a regular starter for the national team.
Then came that wrong step in a game against the Chicago Fire in 2022, and with it a torn Achilles just six months before the World Cup.
“Miles has expressed this himself, but that low point was when he learned so much more about himself,” Rebecca said. “And I am just so proud of him. He’s 29 and he’s my younger brother, but he feels so much older than that to me, because he’s so wise. He is so much more in tune with himself, he meditates each morning, he’s really into journaling and just being really in touch with himself, and it’s so evident now how much he’s grown these past four years.”
The recovery was long and grueling, but he returned nine months later. That 2023 season was his last with Atlanta before he moved on to FC Cincinnati, where he was named an All-Star again in 2025.
Robinson also broke into the national team set-up again, playing every game for the US at the Olympics in 2024. As he started nearing his best form again in 2025, a chance to make the team for this summer’s tournament came into focus.
The call finally came last month, when US coach Mauricio Pochettino named his squad for the World Cup on home soil, and Robinson was on the list. His first call was a family FaceTime.
“My mom was the first one to pick up, and she just screamed,” he said with a laugh.
If anyone questioned if Robinson could make his way back from that devastating injury to earn a World Cup spot, he wasn’t among them.
“I don’t think I ever doubted it, because I think I recognize the importance of like positive thoughts, and how important it is to see where you want to go in the future,” he said. “I’ve been very positive throughout these last four years, throughout the ups and downs, trying to stay grateful.
“It was just a lot of hard work, kind of like all culminating to this moment.”
Robinson didn’t get a chance to play in Friday’s US opener against Paraguay. But whatever happens over the next couple of weeks, he’ll have made a World Cup team at a home tournament, and will have plenty of friends and family in attendance all month.
“It seems picture perfect,” Rebecca said. “I keep telling to my family that I can’t even believe this is real. It feels like out of a movie, how it’s all progressed, and it makes it that much sweeter that it’s on home soil, just to be here watching him.
Read more Patriots could use depth at edge rusher and tight end, and more leftover thoughts from training camp
“It all happened the way it was supposed to happen, it was meant to be.”
Post Comment