The USMNT Cannot Afford to Sleepwalk Through Friday Night Against Paraguay

The United States opens its World Cup tomorrow night at the SoFi Stadium against Paraguay, with kickoff set for 9 PM ET on FOX. It is the first men’s World Cup match played on American soil since 1994, and the California sun will still be hanging over Inglewood when the anthems start at 6 PM local time. It also arrives carrying a question this team has been dodging for two years. Everyone can see the talent. Nobody has seen a full 90 minutes of it with the stakes turned all the way up.

The recent form explains the nerves. Mauricio Pochettino’s side lost 5-2 to Belgium, and 2-0 to Portugal back in March, then split its send-off friendlies this month, beating Senegal 3-2 in Charlotte before dropping a 2-1 decision to Germany in Chicago. The roster certainly looks right on paper. The performances keep swinging between encouraging and alarming, sometimes within the same half.

Christian Pulisic is the clearest picture of both. He went five months without a goal for club and country before finally breaking through against Senegal, scoring once and setting up another in the same match. He is 27 now, squarely in his prime, and playing the home World Cup that American soccer has been waiting for three decades. After the loss to Germany, Pulisc waved off both friendlies and said, “We have to go out, and we have to perform when it matters.” Friday night is when it matters.

The man behind him carries the other big question. Pochettino has never publicly named Matt Freese his starting goalkeeper, but every signal out of camp points to the NYCFC man getting the net. Freese grabbed hold of the job over the past year and simply refused to give it back, and his reward is a first World Cup start in front of 70,000 people with the whole country watching.

Paraguay will not make any of it comfortable. This is their first World Cup since 2010, when they reached the quarterfinals, and Gustavo Alfaro has built them the way good Paraguay teams are always built, organized, and physical, and perfectly happy to let you hold the ball in the places that cannot hurt them. Injuries to Julio Enciso and Fabian Balbuena take some bite out of their counterattack, but Miguel Almiron is still around to punish a lazy giveaway, and he knows American stadiums well from his Atlanta United years. These two met in November, and the US won 2-1 in Chester, Pennsylvania, in a friendly that got testier than friendlies usually do.

The group is what gives tomorrow night its weight. Australia waits in Seattle on June 19, and Turkey closes the group stage against the Americans back at SoFi on June 25. Turkey beat this same US team 2-1 just last summer, and they are exactly the opponent you don’t want to face while needing a result. Three points against Paraguay tomorrow puts the US in firm control of Group D. Dropped points turn the next two weeks into a slow squeeze.

This group has more talent than the USA 94 team that reached the knockout round. And at some point, we have to play like it, and a sold-out SoFi on the opening Friday of a home World Cup is about as good a place to start as the sport can offer.