How the USMNT refused to blink against Bosnia and kept World Cup dreams alive

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – At the World Cup, the U.S. men's national team have become accustomed to an early lead and a game state that suits their fluid, attack-minded tendencies. Describing the goals they scored in Wednesday's 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32 as inevitable would be a bridge too far, but it was well within their skillset, so much so that Folarin Balogun's game-opening goal in the 45th minute felt like a long time coming. They had seemingly survived their opponents' disruptive game plan just before the break, the group halfway to their first win in the World Cup knockouts in 24 years, the floodgates perhaps open in time for the second half.

Soccer, though, had other plans.

For starters, the flurry of shots they hoped to take against Bosnia and Herzegovina never came. The game resumed its slog-like nature as soon as the referee blew the whistle for the second half, their very first shot after the break only coming in the 79th minute. It was far from their biggest problem, though – star striker Balogun was shown a red card in the 64th minute for a studs-up challenge on Tarik Muharemovic, even if it was completely unintentional because he had his back to the defender. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the USMNT attempt to bunker down to protect a narrow one-goal lead with a half hour on the clock, their attempts not coming off no matter how hard they tried. That was especially true on the wings, through which the USMNT's attack usually flows; Sergino Dest and Christian Pulisic drifted too wide and were not particularly present, with Balogun off the pitch, the balance was off.

Balogun's red card offered an extreme amount of adversity for a team that last won a World Cup kncokout game before five members of the current squad were even born but it was also ultimately a galvanizing moment for a team with the determination to see the game out.

"I said, 'You got us. Now it's our turn to have your back. Hopefully it's not going to be the last time you're part of this tournament,'" Pulisic told Balogun shortly after the red card was shown.

The red card, however unfortunate, unlocked a new dimension in a team that is starting to become known for their multifaceted nature.

"I said this about pressure the other day. Would it be weird if I downplayed this and said [the team] wasn't even fazed by it?" captain Tim Ream said while beaming with pride at the growth of a group of younger teammates he has known for the better part of a decade, if not longer. "It felt really calm and it felt really easy and simple for us in that moment because we all were just calm and knew what we had to do … Because of the way we train, because of the conversations that we have, the communication that we have, the togetherness that we have, the fight, the intensity, the aggression with and without the ball. There was not one guy that I could look at and say we may need to switch things around here. It was a steely focus and unless you're on the field and you see it in guys' eyes, it's hard to understand but it felt so comfortable, even down to 10 men. That's the way you want to feel. You don't want to have that panic set in. You want to have that calm and focus and what we have."

More surprisingly, though, the USMNT stuck to their guns and stayed true to a mode that had defined their World Cup journey but has never actually been the team's trademark — they played like big shots.

"Obviously, when you're down a man, you're going to have to sit a bit deeper at times and defend and we did a good job of that but we also picked the right moments to be an outlet, just to move the ball forward as well, get fouls, try to delay the game as much as we can and we still have our moments in attack," Pulisic said. We got a goal there so it says a lot. It says a lot about this team."

Soccer's great tactical existential question has naturally carried over to a World Cup played after practical, rigid play took over certain subsections of the global game. The USMNT, and many other teams along with them at this World Cup, have taken a more progressive approach to problem-solving and were pragmatic in their own right. Survive and advance is usually a knockout phase mantra of choice for teams but the U.S. team demonstrated that style does not need to be ceded completely to win games — and that a two goal lead is ultimately a reasonable thing to aim for when you already have one. It was never easy for the USMNT against Bosnia and Herzegovina, who limited them to just two shots on target and 0.92 expected goals. It did not deter the USMNT, who were rewarded for their persistence with a goal from Malik Tillman nearly 20 minutes after Balogun's red card — and with only their shot of the second half.

"All the ways we could possibly take this freekick," Tillman, who took questions with a bloody sock visible for all to see after an opponent stepped on his foot and boke his shoe along the way, said about the conversations he had with Antonee Robinson before the freekick. "We talked about going under the wall, we talked about going 'keeper's side, we talked about going over the wall and I know some guys doubted me to go over the wall but I practiced this in training and I'm happy with it."

Tillman personifies the team's growth on his own in a lot of ways. The midfielder was a benchwarmer under Pochettino's predecessor Gregg Berhalter but has soared with Pochettino at the helm, the current coach gravitating quickly towards Tillman's wide-ranging skillset. He has now become a key piece in the USMNT's new look, the team much better when he's there than not.

"Obviously he's been playing so well," Ream said. "I'd argue other than Balo's goals, he's been one of our best players. Everywhere on the field, doing the dirty things but then making hard things look easy. I think it is just that. He just wanted to feel like he had a place. He's a quiet kid but he's just come up [by] leaps and bounds. I think that the Gold Cup was really huge for him. I think the adversity of the Costa Rica game, [the] penalty, was really big for him. Now you look at him and he looks like he's just playing with such an ease and a calmness. He's all over the place. It's incredible to see and I know we've had conversations with other guys. He's had that in him all this time. It was just a matter of him finding the confidence and him believing in himself and he's doing that now."

He has also, unsurprisingly, embraced the team's ethos in a period of hardship.

"It's the best way you can play football," Tillman said, almost blurting out the answer like it was something that could go unsaid. "We always try to combine as much as possible. We have great players. We have, I think, a lot of players who also like to combine and of course, it's the coach who gives us the freedom to be creative and do those kinds of things."

It was an ambitious strategy that reflected the aims of a team intent on making a statement run at a World Cup on home soil, the momentum of a hard-fought but solution-oriented victory aligning accordingly. It is also a signal that, against many odds, the USMNT are positioning themselves as a team that really can attempt to place themselves amongst the world's best, many of them stylishly ambitious in their own right.

Their round of 16 game against Belgium on Monday will offer a uniquely stiff test of their ability to live up to their own aspirations. Their next opponent has not always impressed at this World Cup but can rest on their top talents, chief among them midfielder Kevin de Bruyne, the greatest playmaker of his generation.

A win in the round of 32 still feels like some version of purgatory between the group stage and the knockouts, even if the round has overall been entertaining. This win, though, is just as valuable as the rest and marks an important step in the journey — and a particularly memorable one, too.

"It's amazing but this group has such high expectations for ourselves and I think stats and everything, it's cool and it's great and an accomplishment," midfielder Weston McKennie noted. "Won't degrade it at all but at the same time, like I said, we have high expectations for ourselves. It's what we expect of ourselves, what we expect of our team and obviously, we just want to focus on Belgium now and continue to try and make history. We want to change the sport here in America and I feel like we've been doing that and we have a chance to make it even bigger."

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