World Cup Day 10: The Best We've Ever Been Part 2

The USMNT's victory over Paraguay in the opening game of the World Cup felt like historic moment in annals of the program. Stomping a South American nation (despite what the negative nellies out there are bleating, any South American qualifier for the World Cup is, by definition, pretty, pretty good) could hardly have been dreamed of before this tournament. The comprehensiveness with which Mauricio Pochettino's unleashed group beat Paraguay into the ground showed a quality and a ruthlessness that had certainly never been part of an American World Cup campaign.

But that was just one game and World Cups hinge not on one performance, but on a string of them. Sure, the 4-1 triumph was historic and everyone in LA and watching on television had a great time, but if the US fell flat in game two, or conspired to fall short of its base goal of getting out of the group and into the knockout phase, beating Paraguay would be nothing more than a footnote. Any joy we had over winning a World Cup group stage opener would have evaporated in the heat of tournament failure.

That's what I was thinking as the US kicked off against Australia in Seattle on Friday. The buildup to the game was a strange brew of manufactured disrespect on the part of the Aussies and breathless speculation about the status of Christian Pulisic on the American side. Still riding high from the Paraguay game and finally feeling comfortable throwing all of my faith behind Pochettino, it all felt very silly and immaterial to the ultimate result.

Thankfully, this team rose to the fight-or-die occasion. Disrespected or not, Australia was always going to play that game; a game predicated on making the Americans hurt via physical play and resolute defending. The challenge for the USMNT was obvious. The chances of a wrinkle on the part of Australia unimportant. The technically superior side sets the pace of play in any match and in this match the whole world understood it would be the Americans who would need to make things happen.

And they did. I'm not here to recap the match, that's why highlights exist (I recommend watching the 30 minute package put together by Telemundo; the Spanish broadcaster of the tournament does a great job of including all of the elements you want in a highlight package, including a scene set, pageantry, lineups, and enough game action beyond the biggest moments to give you a real sense of the story of the game), I'm here to tell you that this the best USMNT of all-time and it's not close. Fighting the Aussies and coming out on top revealed this group to be not just a well-coach, well-drilled, effective team that knows how to create chances and score goals to win games, but to have an edge that few (if any) versions of the men's team have ever had.

I can't remember those two things existing in combination at any point in the last 35 years. We've always been a somewhat capable team that needed luck and great goalkeeping to make us more than a Concacaf team making up the numbers.

Thanks to Paraguay's early goal/historic defensive effort and Turkish profligacy in yesterday's other Group D match, the USMNT have won the group. We did that in 2010 (in a group with England, Slovenia, and Algeria), but this feels different. We scrapped and clawed our way to five points in 2010 and even getting out of the group came down to Landon Donovan's last-gasp tally against Algeria. This time we not only qualified with a match to spare, we did it by winning both matches. I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is a watered down World Cup and group phase is a different beast with eight third-place teams advancing, but any attempt to downplay the American achievement in the most balanced group of the tournament is ridiculous.

That's especially true since too many voices declared without hesitation that the Americans would get grouped when the March friendlies went poorly. There's an element of the American soccer fan base—those that support the team and those that don't—who can't help but be doomers. Maybe Pochettino and this teams if finally showing those people the errors of their ways.

As the poet Jack Edwards once said, mine eyes have the glory.

A few other thoughts from Day 9, USMNT-related and otherwise:

• I'm really enjoying watching Pochettino navigate this tournament. He's not only showing that he's a brilliant coach who possesses the most important skill for any coach—understanding how to put the available talent in a position to succeed—he seems to truly enjoying himself.
• Poch starting Ricardo Pepi alongside Folarin Balogun was a curve ball no one saw coming, but if the result is any judge, it worked perfectly. In particular I was struck by how effective Pepi's pressing from the front was in making the Aussies uncomfortable and preventing the kind of time to hit long balls forward they enjoyed against Turkiye.
• The second US goal couldn't have happened to a nicer player. My interactions with Alex Freeman for the radio always leave me thinking about how humble and approachable he is. The son of an NFL champion is a damn good soccer player and is emblematic of that truth we always forget during the buildup to a World Cup; whatever we think we know about who will be the most important contributors years before the tournament arrives, there will inevitably be players we never saw coming who forced their way into the picture. Freeman is that player for this World Cup.
• The atmosphere in Seattle looked incredible on television. The US visit to the Emerald City is bringing attention to the fact that Seattle should be a regular home for the national team on the strength of its soccer culture. I can't wait to get a chance to return myself.
• Paraguay's win over Turkiye was one of the most compelling games I've watched so far—and I've watched every game of the tournament so far. The early goal set up the South Americans to play with a lead, but Miguel Almiron's idiotic choice to chirp a Turkish player while covering his mouth (a straight red per a new rule FIFA instituted for this tournament after the controversy caused by Benfica's Gianluca Prestianni in this year's Champions League) ratcheted up the drama. The story of the tournament for Turkiye, who now has to play a meaningless game against the United States to save even a small amount of face in the tournament, was the insane amount of shots they took over two games without a goal to show for them.
• All I wanted for Haiti was one goal against Brazil. Alas, it wasn't to be. I still don't know if Brazil is good; that question is up there with "Is there a God?" for question that most vex the mortal man.

PROGRAMMING NOTES

I'm on the radio again today from 4-7 PM ET with Eric Wynalda to talk about the USMNT and other World Cup topics. Get yourself a free trial of SiriusXM and join us. Walker Zimmerman will be part of the show in the last hour to give his perspective on the USMNT run.

See you tomorrow.