Key Points
- USA won World Cup Group D with two wins and six points
- Faces Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32 on July 1 at Levi's Stadium
- Pochettino rested starters in a 3-2 group-finale loss to Turkiye
- Auston Trusty and Sebastian Berhalter scored; Pulisic returned off the bench
The United States men's national team is through to the World Cup knockout rounds as a group winner. After a 2-0 win over Australia sealed top spot in Group D, the U.S. closed the group stage with a 3-2 loss to Turkiye on June 25 — a result that did not move it from first — and now meets Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32 on July 1 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
How the U.S. won the group
The Americans opened with a 4-1 win over Paraguay, and the Australia result clinched both a knockout berth and the group — the first back-to-back World Cup victories for the U.S. since 1930. With first place already secured, head coach Mauricio Pochettino fielded a heavily rotated lineup against Turkiye, which had already been eliminated from the tournament. Auston Trusty and Sebastian Berhalter scored in the 3-2 defeat, and Christian Pulisic — managed back from the calf injury that had left him in doubt for the finale — returned off the bench.
The Round of 32 draw
Bosnia and Herzegovina advanced as one of the best third-place finishers after a 3-1 win over Qatar lifted it out of Group B. The July 1 match kicks off at 5 p.m. local time at Levi's Stadium, keeping the U.S. on the West Coast and in front of a home crowd for its first elimination game of the tournament.
Winning the group did more than spare the U.S. a date with a tournament heavyweight: it kept the run on home soil and handed Pochettino a controlled, lower-variance Round of 32 draw at the exact moment Pulisic is rounding back to fitness — the kind of soft landing a host nation is supposed to engineer and rarely does.
Source: Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports
Comments