the US squad …

“Prior to Friday night’s dominant 4-1 victory over Paraguay at SoFi Stadium, the United States Men's National Team (USMNT) had never scored 4 goals in a single World Cup match in the history of the program.”

Other historical facts:

- “A 96-Year-Old Curse Broken: Folarin Balogun's spectacular first-half brace made him the first American man to score multiple goals in a single World Cup match since that the US’ 1930 game against Paraguay, when Bert Patenaude netted a hat-trick.” 

- “Outscoring 2022 in 45 Minutes: The US took a 3-0 lead into halftime (thanks to an early own goal and Balogun's double). In just those first 45 minutes, they matched the total number of goals the USMNT scored during the entire 2022 World Cup tournament in Qatar (3).”

- “The Record Capper: When Gio Reyna polished off that beautiful 26-pass sequence in the 98th minute to make it 4-1, he officially put this 2026 squad into a stratosphere of their own.”

FWIW, I asked one of my old roommates from ND (and a former ND soccer player w close ties to US soccer leadership) how the US was able to get an Arsenal academy soccer player to play for the US national team … “Credit Gregg Berhalter for recruiting Balo and selling him on the vision of US soccer. He wouldn’t have started for England.”

Im not sure he wouldnt have started for the UK (maybe?), but Balo has had a pretty strong run the last 18 months in his professional career and I think he’d get significant playing time w the UK. It’ll be interesting to see how well the US can keep it together this Cup.

not the own goal, but the play out of the backfield where the defender (not sure who it was) got the ball out on the wing to Pulisic … that was a fantastic pass in to space. It was really a very high quality play. That pass created the entire opportunity and Pulisic and Balogun did a nice job of capitalizing on that chance.

Their goal is basically on him, and it’s not like they worked some magic. He got lost.