The U.S. was missing its World Cup star. It didn’t miss a beat.
Missing its playmaking star, and facing an Australian team that had frustrated it only seven months earlier, the U.S. had all the elements for a World Cup letdown Friday.
Read more Trump endorses a second candidate in the South Carolina governor’s race
Instead, the U.S. won again, made more history (again) and became among the first teams to secure its place in the tournament’s knockout stage.
No Christian Pulisic? No problem — for now.
With Pulisic sidelined by a calf injury, Folarin Balogun replaced his role as a playmaker by running up the pitch’s left side and creating havoc for Australia and chances for his teammates. The 2-0 victory marks the first time the U.S. men have won successive World Cup games since 1930.
The result left the U.S. scoreboard-watching as the team flew from Seattle back to its home base in Southern California: A win or draw by Paraguay against Turkey late Friday would ensure the U.S. would win its group, with one group-stage game against Turkey still to play next week.
“We’re delighted,” Balogun said.
For a second straight game, the U.S. won because of things it has lacked in previous World Cup runs, and even during the 20 previous months that coach Mauricio Pochettino spent as U.S. coach: confidence and tactics.
After a dominating, 4-1 U.S. win over Paraguay to open the tournament last week, Paraguayan coach Gustavo Alfaro described a pentagon-shaped formation that U.S. players had regularly created in the midfield, a shape that gave the U.S. a level of tactical “complexity” that allowed it to counter any move Paraguay made, Alfaro said.
One week later in Seattle, Pochettino’s game plan set out to create triangles. With Pulisic unavailable, Pochettino started two strikers up front in Balogun and Ricardo Pepi. Pepi, Antonee Robinson and Malik Tillman formed a triangle on one side of the field, with Balogun, Weston McKennie and Sergiño Dest aligned on the other side. The U.S. wanted to use it to move the ball quickly from one side of the field to the other, Pochettino said, “but feeling free to change, to move, to create all the dynamics … I think that approach worked really well.”
“It wasn’t a shock” to play up front with Pepi, Balogun said. “It wasn’t, you know, like a ‘plan B’ because (Pulisic) was out. It didn’t feel like that to me. It just felt like another solution to win the game.”
Balogun’s pressure with the ball led to a breakdown of Australia’s defense in the first 10 minutes, and when he fired a shot into the goal box, Australian defender Cameron Burgess didn’t kick the ball cleanly and it deflected into the net for an own goal and 1-0 lead for the U.S.
Read more Family of teen killed in Central Park carriage remembers him: ‘We never knew this was his last day’
The scoring sequence looked strikingly similar to the own-goal Paraguay committed last week when its defense was flummoxed by the pressure Pulisic created in the opening minutes. The U.S. is now the first team in World Cup history to have an opponent score an own goal in consecutive matches.
“I want to be dangerous, I want to create opportunities, and it might not always be myself that scores, but if I can force an error that gives us the lead, then for me it’s like a goal as well,” Balogun said.
Yet even before that opening goal, Pochettino already felt the U.S. had “built the victory in our attitude” by trusting his game plan. In the lead-up to Friday’s kickoff, U.S. coaches had noticed Australia’s tendency not to kick “long balls,” but to use more intermediary passes. During the opening minute, Balogun and Pepi pressed Australia to play long kicks and operate out of its comfort zone.
Meanwhile, with Pulisic watching from the dugout in Seattle’s Lumen Field, a new face stepped in to add scoring. Alex Freeman scored in the 43rd minute off a header — the first headed goal for the U.S. since 2014.
Freeman, 21, is the third-youngest U.S. player to score in the World Cup. The son of former NFL wideout Antonio Freeman, Alex Freeman hadn’t represented the U.S. until 2025 and was playing in MLS as recently as January. To go from there, to being mobbed after his goal was upheld by video review Friday, was “hard for me to kind of take it all in,” he said.
By the match’s end, fans in Seattle were chanting Pochettino’s name, which he received with a smile and a fist pump.
There was no update on whether Pulisic will be available to play in the team’s group-stage finale against Turkey on Thursday at SoFi Stadium.
“I saw that a team that really believe in what it is doing,” Pochettino said. “We need to be flexible, because the opponents are completely different. That capacity to adapt to the different demands of the opponent and the game, and also our demand, like our coaching staff planning different approach on the games, I think only I can say good fantastic things about my players, about the squad, about my players. There they were fantastic.”
Read more Trump unveils new Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar
