Americans roll to a 2-0 victory over Australia without Pulisic, punching their ticket with a game to spare in the group stage.
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SEATTLE — Mauricio Pochettino, the coach of the U.S. men’s soccer team, has preached the value of the collective since taking over the program 19 months ago. The often jovial Argentine even lost his temper after an emphatic victory last fall because journalists implied he had first- and second-choice players. Asked about individual performances following a 4-1 win over Paraguay to open the World Cup, Pochettino repeatedly demurred.
“It’s not only to talk about some names,” he said. “It’s about to talk the collective.”
That mantra was put to the stiffest of tests Friday afternoon, when the U.S. met Australia in the World Cup group stage without generational star Christian Pulisic, who is nursing a left calf injury.
Yet the Americans didn’t skip a beat. Rolling to a 2-0 victory against the outclassed Australians, the U.S. punched its ticket to the knockout round with a game to spare. And it didn’t just win on the scoresheet, where an early own goal and Alex Freeman’s scrappy header proved decisive. The U.S. never looked threatened for the second straight match while dictating possession, generating chances and playing with palpable flair.
“Obviously we missed [Pulisic] out there today,” defender Chris Richards said. “But I know that it shows everybody — not just everybody inside the group but also everybody looking from the outside — that we can do it without one of our big players.”
The U.S. surely will need Pulisic against more imposing knockout round foes. But Pochettino bet that he had the depth and team-wide cohesion to swat aside the Australians without his AC Milan attacker — a once-unthinkable proposition for a team that has heaped its hopes on Pulisic ever since he debuted a decade ago at age 17.
Pochettino can now afford to ease Pulisic back — or rest him again — when the U.S. concludes the group stage against Turkey on Thursday in Inglewood, California.
As elegant as the Americans looked on the ball, the first-half goals were befitting a bruising encounter. Folarin Balogun followed up his two-goal outing against Paraguay by creating the 11th-minute opener, when he latched onto Antonee Robinson’s ball down the left flank, zipped past a defender and steered a pass into the goalmouth. Caught in no-man’s-land, Australia’s Cameron Burgess could only roof the ball into his own net. For the second straight match, the U.S. took the lead on an own goal.
“If I can force an error that gives us the lead, then for me it’s like a goal as well,” Balogun said. “So it was a special start to the game to give us the momentum, and then I think we carried it out.”
Freeman’s tally was even more of an oddity. Sergiño Dest’s stinging shot off a corner kick took a deflection skyward before Freeman muscled goalkeeper Patrick Beach from the ball and nodded it home from point-blank range. An offside call curtailed Freeman’s celebration. But while two U.S. teammates were offside, replays showed Freeman wasn’t. After a lengthy delay, German referee Felix Zwayer awarded the goal, prompting the U.S. bench to empty and swarm Freeman in belated ecstasy.
“When it was a goal, I looked back and I saw my teammates running at me,” Freeman said. “I was like, ‘Oh lord, I have to run.’”
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It ultimately made for a comfortable win after a week full of Pulisic-centric consternation. After delivering an electrifying first-half performance in the Americans’ opening win in Inglewood, Pulisic exited at intermission but downplayed the withdrawal as precautionary. The mood remained bullish as Pulisic began the week training on the side at the Americans’ Southern California base camp. “He’ll be ready everyone,” midfielder Tyler Adams said Tuesday. “Let’s relax.”
But Pulisic remained on his own during practice Thursday morning at the University of Washington. Addressing the press that afternoon, Pochettino said he’d wait to make a call on Pulisic’s status until the evening. When the U.S. released its game-day squad Friday morning, Pulisic wasn’t on it.
“We all knew what was going on, and that’s that,” captain Tim Ream said. “It wasn’t a surprise. Nobody was in shock and awe. Everybody knew their roles and knew their jobs.”
Starting in the playmaker’s place: Ricardo Pepi, a 6-foot-1 striker. It was a shrewd tactical tweak from Pochettino, who braced for physicality after the U.S. notched a chippy 2-1 win over Australia in October in Colorado. That World Cup tuneup was billed as a friendly, though Pochettino objected to the term Thursday. “A street game,” he said. “But not friendly.”
He wasn’t wrong: A pair of awkward tackles forced Pulisic to the bench in that match, and more rough play from the Australians prompted an ugly scuffle.
The Socceroos remained true to form Friday. Adams absorbed a pair of heavy challenges before Zwayer took out his yellow card in the 16th minute, when Australia’s Jordan Bos felled Weston McKennie with a hand to the face. Alessandro Circati was also booked for a sloppy foul on Malik Tillman. A clash of heads left Freeman and Paul Okon-Engstler on the turf for a few minutes. The jabs and shoves and tussles continued as both teams picked up multiple yellow cards during a messy second half.
Through it all, the Americans got feisty but ultimately kept their cool on a sunny afternoon off Elliott Bay before a sellout crowd of 66,925.
“Anybody ever heard of rage baiting?” Ream said. “We have a lot of guys who are very good at rage baiting, and we’ve learned over the course of the last 20 months with Mauricio and his staff about how to touch the line without crossing the line.”
Now, the U.S. finds itself in an unfamiliar position. As far as the men’s World Cup is concerned, the Americans have only ever crashed out or advanced by the skin of their teeth. Coasting to the knockout round with a game to play? Never happened until Friday. And the idea of doing so without its most influential player seemed particularly implausible.
But if the U.S. wants to win a knockout game for the first time since 2002 — or win multiple knockout matches for the first time, period — the moment for unprecedented has arrived. So are the Americans ready to do something historic?
“We don’t really look at it as that,” Richards said. “I can say special — and if we make history on the way, that would also be amazing.”
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