As global soccer's landscape shifts, was USMNT-Mexico the best we'll ever see at FC Cincinnati's TQL Stadium?

TQL Stadium is about six months old, and it might have already peaked and hosted the best-ever night its history.

Due to the shifting landscape of international soccer, we might never again see a soccer spectacle at the stadium as big as Friday's U.S. men's national team game against vaunted rival Mexico in FIFA World Cup qualifying.

At the outset of the July 28 press conference at TQL Stadium announcing the USMNT's quadrennial home match against Mexico in World Cup qualifying, FC Cincinnati Chief Executive Officer and Controlling Owner Carl Lindner III proudly declared: "We've done it."

And they had done it. The biggest match and the most intense rivalry in North American soccer, and therefore one of the prominent international fixtures in the world, would be staged at TQL Stadium. Building a venue worthy of the game and bringing it to Cincinnati was no small achievement.

Four months later, the match was executed to perfection. Friday's game was nothing short the spectacle you expect of USMNT-Mexico, complete with chippy on-field drama and a famous "Dos a Cero" victory that immediately took its place in USMNT lore.

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A World Cup qualifier against Mexico is as big as it gets for USMNT and its fans. There's another happening in March 2022, too, at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. Bigger venue, pro-Mexican crowd, of course, and every bit as much passion and flair.

But after that game, the biggest match we know in North American soccer might cease to exist as we've come to understand and love it in its present context.

There won't be a qualifying cycle for the next World Cup for these decades-old foes. The event is to be jointly hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada, and allows the three host countries to qualify automatically.

The 2026 World Cup is also the tournament that will see the field grow to 48 national teams from 32.

In enlarging the World Cup field, it's more likely regional heavyweights will have an easier path to qualifying. There will be less risk of missing the tournament altogether, which befell the U.S. for the 2018 World Cup in Russia and nearly happened to Mexico four years earlier in Brazil.

And then there's still the possibility (albeit a fiercely debated one) of switching the FIFA World Cup from being staged once every four years to a biennial event. That could also upend that qualification process as we know it.

The USMNT-Mexico rivalry will remain, of course. The border countries will meet again in games both meaningful and friendly.

FC Cincinnati President Jeff Berding told The Enquirer on Wednesday he expected the rivalry to continue unabated, with future meaningful match-ups likely to occur in the Concacaf Gold Cup, which crowns this FIFA region's champion national team every two years.

The newly introduced Concacaf Nations League will exist, too. That competition, which saw the Americans meaningfully triumph in the championship match over Mexico in June, attempts to make a kind of league season out of international matches for the region.

But Friday's match still might have been the end of an era, and the best night TQL Stadium will ever know.