USA Soccer Beat Paraguay 4-1 In The Best World Cup Performance In American History
The United States men's national soccer team came out onto the SoFi Stadium pitch on Friday night for their first home World Cup game since 1994 and played the best 90 minutes of soccer in the program's history, beating Paraguay 4-1, scoring four goals in a World Cup match for the first time ever, taking a 3-0 lead into halftime that was the largest halftime advantage any American team has ever had in the tournament, and sending a sold-out crowd of tens of thousands of fans wearing stars and stripes into scenes that NBC News described as the stadium shaking like a Southern California earthquake.
The nation had been waiting 32 years for this. It got a statement.
"All in all, just an incredible start," Christian Pulisic said after the match. "But there's a lot more we still have to do."
Folarin Balogun scored twice. Giovanni Reyna finished off a fourth in stoppage time with a perfectly struck outside-of-the-boot effort from the edge of the area.
Even the own goal that opened the scoring, Damián Bobadilla sliding the ball into his own net in the seventh minute, felt like the momentum of the night grabbing Paraguay's defense and pulling it in the wrong direction.
From the first minute, this was a crowd and a team that were ready.
How The Game Unfolded
Paraguay came in ranked below the Americans in FIFA's world rankings and without forward Julio Enciso, whose attacking threat had been one of their primary weapons during qualifying.
Coach Mauricio Pochettino set the American team up to press high and attack with pace, the shape he has been building toward since taking the job in 2024, and Paraguay had no immediate answer for it.
The seventh-minute own goal broke the ice and settled whatever nerves the occasion had created. The stadium surged.
The crowd that had arrived in an electric pre-game state, flags, chants, stars and stripes painted on faces from Inglewood to the upper decks, found its voice and did not lose it for 90 minutes.
In the 31st minute, Pulisic did what Pulisic does in the moments that matter, he took control of the ball in a dangerous position and found Balogun in space with a precise, weighted pass that required only a clinical finish. Balogun provided it.
The lead was 2-0. Then, in the dying seconds of first-half stoppage time, Balogun did something that shifted the broadcast conversation from "the US is controlling this game" to "the US might score four."
He received the ball near the edge of the area, turned away from two Paraguayan defenders in a sequence that required both touch and courage, and drove the ball into the upper corner. Three-nil. Halftime.
The US had scored three goals combined in four World Cup games at Qatar in 2022. They scored three in 45 minutes on Friday.
The second half brought a Paraguay goal that made it 3-1, a moment that briefly raised the question of whether the US defense would hold, and then the answer arrived in injury time when Alex Freeman found Giovanni Reyna on the right side of the area.
Reyna, who has been one of the most talented and most injury-plagued players of his generation, took one touch and hit the ball with the outside of his right boot.
It sailed past the goalkeeper and into the far post. Four-one. The final score. The biggest win in United States World Cup history.
Pulisic And The Night That Belonged To Los Angeles
Christian Pulisic, the captain and the face of American soccer, did not score.
He was substituted off at halftime, a precautionary decision by Pochettino to manage minutes in a tournament where three group stage games in 13 days require roster management. He did not need to score.
The assist for Balogun's first goal and his general command of the first half's attacking rhythm told the story of what he was doing out there.
Balogun, who plays his club soccer in Europe and has been one of the more quietly productive American attacking players of the past two seasons, had the defining individual performance of the night.
His brace, the controlled finish for the second goal and the individual effort for the third, gave the US something it has historically lacked in World Cup performances, a striker who can both create and finish under the lights.
Reyna's goal in stoppage time was the dessert, the exclamation point that sent the SoFi crowd home with four goals to replay in their minds rather than three.
Freeman's assist showed that the depth Pochettino has built into the squad can contribute from the first game onward.
Why This Crowd And This Moment Matter
The AP article that KPRC ran Friday night was about the crowd as much as the match, about what it looks like when tens of thousands of Americans in stars and stripes fill a stadium for their own team at their own World Cup.
The US hosted the World Cup in 1994 and drew record crowds at the Rose Bowl, Stanford Stadium and Giants Stadium before eventually being eliminated by Brazil in the quarterfinals.
Soccer in America was a different thing then, a tournament that came and went without the infrastructure of a professional league to sustain what the tournament started.
Three decades later, the infrastructure exists. MLS has teams in 30 cities. Soccer is the most played youth sport in the country.
American players are in Champions League squads across Europe. Pulisic starts for a team that has been in multiple Champions League finals.
The fan culture that has built around the national team, the supporters' groups, the scarves, the organized chants, the traveling away support that has become one of the most respected in world football, was on full display Friday night at a stadium that is used to hosting Super Bowls and was not too large for soccer.
SoFi held every decibel. The US won 4-1.
Next game: June 19 in Seattle against Australia.