SANTA CLARA, Calif. — It wasn’t artistic. It wasn’t free-flowing, or creative, or the kind of soccer that makes your eyes wide and your heart race. In truth: It was ugly. And so, so beautiful.
“It wasn’t a perfect day, by any means,” defender Chris Richards said. “But it was our day.”
It was. The USMNT’s 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina on Wednesday night put Mauricio Pochettino‘s team into the round of 16 — the bare minimum, by most pretournament standards, to consider this home World Cup a success. But if it is to go farther — to captivate this country even more and reach a quarterfinal for only the second time in history — it will need to embrace the grittiness it showed here. Knockout soccer demands it.
“You do what you need to do to get a result,” Christian Pulisic said after the match.
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And that is exactly what the U.S. team has done. In the first match of this tournament against Paraguay, it played silky, sleek and scintillating soccer — a style so visually entertaining that midfielder Weston McKennie said it almost felt like the players were “playing pickup.”
This performance, against a physical and resolute Bosnia-Herzegovina team, was braver. The Bosnia-Herzegovina defenders put hands (and sometimes shoulders, arms and feet) on every American who ran past, checking fullback Sergiño Dest and Pulisic whenever they tried to surge forward. Bosnia-Herzegovina striker Edin Dzeko set a pick on Tyler Adams that sent the U.S. midfielder sprawling and holding his neck; striker Folarin Balogun — before he scored and, also, before he was controversially sent off in the 64th minute — was grabbed, held and nudged wherever he went.
Bosnia-Herzegovina’s strategy was effective, too. The U.S. completed plenty of passes and certainly controlled much of the possession, but the precision from the group stage’s best moments wasn’t there. Long balls went wayward; shorter connections were missed. Malik Tillman, who scored a gorgeous free kick eight minutes from time to give the U.S. some cushion to the scoreline, had an incredibly challenging first half in which he routinely looked out of rhythm.
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That the U.S. came through it all — that it adjusted and adapted, and got a little chippy when needed while still getting two balls into the back of the net — was what had Pochettino most pleased afterward.
“It’s not only the victory,” he said, nearly beaming. “It’s the way that we earned the victory — how we identified the situations, when to play, when to fight, when to compete, when to be intelligent in how we defend deep and narrow. When we need to go and to press. I think the maturity of the team is amazing.”
Certainly the reaction to Balogun’s sending-off reflected that. Up 1-0, that decision from the referee — a decision that Pochettino vehemently disagreed with — could have turned the game on its head.
It wasn’t hard to imagine Bosnia-Herzegovina being buoyed, snagging an equalizer and taking the game to extra time and penalties. Defending a lead while playing down a man for more than half an hour has broken many teams far more experienced than this U.S. group.
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Yet the U.S. didn’t wobble — not even close. It could have been angry at the referee, or frustrated by the situation. But at the second hydration break, which came shortly after Balogun departed, the players were pragmatic.
“We just said, ‘If we really want to be a good team, we have to dig deep in moments like this,'” Pulisic said. “We’re going to have to defend and that’s OK, and pick our moments to attack. I thought we did a good job of that.”
McKennie added there was even a sense of the team embracing a challenge.
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“It’s kind of an adrenaline rush whenever you do go down 10 men,” he said, “because you’re like, oh s—, if we can pull off this win and hold them to zero goals, it’s even bigger. So everyone’s running everywhere and tackling, and just making sure we keep our structure, and we don’t want to give up a goal. It would be easy to have an excuse if they did score, but that’s not the type of team we are.”
So what type of team is this USMNT side? The type that can win different ways. The type that can feed off a home crowd’s energy. The type that believes — even without a suspended Balogun — that it will be able to beat Belgium on Monday in Seattle in whatever way is necessary.
There will surely be tactical changes; losing your top scorer to a suspension requires it. But Pochettino has shown he can mold his players to different circumstances, and the players have demonstrated they are comfortable with whatever comes.
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Play pretty? Fine. Play nasty? No problem.
That reality is the most important element to emerge from this match. And it’s what gives the players overwhelming conviction as they fly back to Seattle.
“We go into this tournament feeling confident that we can make something happen and beat anybody,” Pulisic said. “This is exciting — but there’s still more that we want to accomplish.”
