When Maximilian Arfsten walked onto the UC Davis soccer program in 2019 — no scholarship, no blue-chip recruiting profile — few would have placed him at a World Cup six years later. Three disrupted college seasons, a season in San Jose, and an MLS Cup ring later, he's on the U.S. Men's National Team roster at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Arfsten, 25, is one of 26 players Mauricio Pochettino named to the USMNT squad that has opened this World Cup with wins over Paraguay (4-1) and Australia (2-0). His path to the roster runs directly through Northern California — a walk-on at UC Davis, a professional debut with the San Jose Earthquakes, and a SuperDraft pick by Columbus Crew — a 90-mile Bay Area corridor that produced one of the more unlikely World Cup stories on the American side.

Arfsten grew up in Fresno, posting 50 goals and 20 assists his senior year at San Joaquin Memorial High School. But no scholarship offers came, and in 2019 he walked on with the UC Davis Aggies. His freshman year, he earned Big West All-Freshman Team honors and helped UC Davis win the conference title.

The disruptions came quickly. His sophomore year was wiped out by COVID-19. Before his junior season, he broke his foot and spent five months out. He still managed to earn Big West Offensive Player of the Year and All-Big West First Team honors in 2021 — 39 appearances and nine goals across three uneven years with the Aggies.

Then Arfsten left college early for the Bay Area's professional scene. He signed with the San Jose Earthquakes II ahead of their inaugural MLS Next Pro season in 2022, scoring nine goals in 24 appearances. The stint was brief but consequential: it put him in front of scouts with real data on a player who had never played for a soccer powerhouse. In December 2022, the Columbus Crew selected him 14th overall in the MLS SuperDraft.

He scored in his Columbus debut in March 2023 and was part of the club's MLS Cup-winning squad that fall. By 2024, he was entrenched as the starting left wing-back and started all five matches as Columbus won the Leagues Cup. He signed a contract extension through 2027, with a club option for 2028, in October of that year.

The national team call came in January 2025. Pochettino included him in a Florida camp, and Arfsten made his international debut on January 18 against Venezuela. By summer, he was a starter in the CONCACAF Gold Cup, scoring the U.S.'s goal in the semifinal against Panama. The Americans finished runners-up to Mexico.

On May 26, 2026, Pochettino put him on the 26-man World Cup roster.

"I'm still good friends with so many people I went to school there with," Arfsten told NBC Bay Area's Raj Mathai in an interview aired June 18. "They think it's crazy that I was at UC Davis and now I'm on this stage. People who knew me then, following my journey now — it's very rewarding for me."

His former UC Davis coach Dwayne Shaffer joined the NBC Bay Area segment to reflect on Arfsten's development. The player's self-assessment is spare: he describes himself as someone who "like[s] to dribble a lot and be shifty as much as I can, just to create chances," and points to his aggressiveness in attack as what sets him apart.

NBC Bay Area's segment described Arfsten as a midfielder; his Wikipedia entry and MLS profile list him more precisely as a winger and, in Columbus's 3-5-2 system, a left wing-back — a position that asks him to cover the full flank in attack and defense.

Notably, UC Davis's student paper, The Aggie, had not published coverage of Arfsten's World Cup selection as of Friday. The campus where he played his disrupted college years has largely missed one of its most prominent athletic alumni having a World Cup moment — in a tournament being played, in part, 70 miles down I-80 at Levi's Stadium.

Should the USMNT win their group, the Round of 32 comes to Santa Clara on July 1. Arfsten could be playing the next phase of his career on the same Bay Area soil where it began.