The last time the United States won a World Cup knockout match, most of this squad were in primary school. Some were not born. On Wednesday night in Santa Clara, in front of 68,827 at Levi’s Stadium, they ended the wait — and they did the hardest part of it with ten men.
USA 2, Bosnia and Herzegovina 0. Written down, it looks routine. It was anything but.
A nervy start, then Balogun
Bosnia arrived as third-place qualifiers with nothing to lose and a plan built on patience. For half an hour it worked. A deceptive goal kick routine twice sent Ermedin Demirović through early, and twice Matt Freese had to save. The favourites were being made to feel it.
Folarin Balogun thought he had settled things in the 31st minute, only for the flag to go up. He hit the crossbar in first-half stoppage time. In between, in the 45th, came the goal that counted: Tim Ream forced a turnover in midfield, Malik Tillman’s through ball took a kind deflection off a Bosnian boot, and Balogun rolled his finish under the advancing Nikola Vasilj. Third goal of the tournament. He celebrated with his now-familiar silencer, and even LeBron James approved from afar.
The red card that changed everything
Just after the hour, the night tilted. Balogun rose for an aerial ball with Tarik Muharemović and came down badly — his studs raking the defender’s calf and landing on his ankle. It looked, in real time, like an accident of gravity. VAR summoned referee Raphael Claus to the screen. Straight red.
“For me, never was it a red card,” Mauricio Pochettino said afterwards, and few neutrals argued. The consequence, though, is not up for review: Balogun, the team’s top scorer, one goal shy of Bert Patenaude’s 96-year-old American record of four in a single World Cup, is suspended for the round of 16.
Ten men, and the moment of the night
Down a man for the final half hour of a knockout tie, the obvious script was a siege. The Americans dropped into a compact 4-4-1 and refused to read it. Then, in the 82nd minute, Sergiño Dest won a free kick on the edge of the box after a foul by Stjepan Radeljić.
Tillman had scored his first World Cup goal earlier in this tournament. Now he provided its exclamation mark — a free kick floated over and through the Bosnian wall, past Vasilj, into history. He said afterwards he had been dreaming about scoring exactly that free kick. Ten-man teams are not supposed to score set pieces like that. This one did.
What it means
The numbers underneath this result are heavy. It is the USA’s first World Cup knockout victory since 2002, and only the second in the programme’s history. It ended a winless run against European opposition at World Cups stretching back to Portugal in that same 2002 tournament. And it made Pochettino the first coach to win three World Cup matches with the United States.
The reward is a rematch loaded with meaning: Belgium, in Seattle on Monday — the same Belgium that ended the American run in the 2014 round of 16 in extra time, in a game every US fan of a certain age still replays. This time the tie is on home soil, and this time the USA arrive as group winners with four victories from four.
They will have to do it without Balogun. On the evidence of Wednesday night, being short-handed is not the deterrent it used to be.