The 2026 men’s World Cup is official underway and the United States men’s soccer team kicks off its group stage slate on Friday night when they face Paraguay. The match gets underway at 9 p.m. ET at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. The USMNT is +110 to win the match, a draw is +210, and a Paraguay upset is +290 at FanDuel.
USA-Paraguay referees: Who is officiating the 2026 World Cup group stage match
The USMNT faces Paraguay open Group D play at the 2026 World Cup. They’ll have a Dutch referee crew.
Team USA enters the match as a slight favorite to win Group D, installed at +130 while Türkiye is +175. Paraguay follows at +410 and Australia rounds out the group at +850. The USA advanced out of the group stage four years ago after finishing second to England. They last won their group in 2010, edging out England in the goals scored tiebreaker.
The USA-Paraguay match will be officiated by a crew from Netherlands, with a fourth official and reserve assistant from Japan. Danny Makkelie will serve as the referee, while Hessel Steegstra and Jan De Vries will be the assistant referees. Makkelie has served as a referee in two World Cup matches, handling a pair of group stages matches in 2022. He handed out one penalty and two yellow cards in Poland-Argentina and four yellow cards in Spain-Germany. He has officiated one USMNT match, a 2015 friendly in which the United States beat Germany 2-1.
Here’s a look at the full officiating crew for Friday’s match.
- Referee: Danny Makkelie (Netherlands)
- Assistant referee 1: Hessel Steegstra (Netherlands)
- Assistant referee 2: Jan De Vries (Netherlands)
- Fourth official: Yusuke Araki (Japan)
- Reserve assistant referee: Jun Mihara (Japan)
- Video Assistant Referee (VAR): Carlos Del Cerro Grande (Spain)
- Assistant VAR: Dennis Higler (Netherlands)
- Support VAR: Khamis Almarri (Qatar)
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