Their best scorer was handed a controversial red card. They had to play 36 minutes down a man against an extremely physical opponent. But Team USA still emerged victorious.
The Stars and Stripes beat Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0 in front of a packed home crowd in San Francisco on July 1, pushing their World Cup hopes into the next round of 16. It was Team USA’s first knockout win since 2002.
On July 6, they will drive a little farther up Interstate 5 to Seattle to face Belgium. But they will have to win that game without their top-scoring striker, Folarin Balogun.
The match kicked off with a starting 11 led by Christian Pulisic and Tim Ream facing a heavily defense-focused opponent. Packing the middle of the pitch to clog any routes to their net and creating moments of man-on-man physical disruption, the Bosnians held the Americans scoreless longer than any other team so far this tournament.
But Team USA found the back of the net before the end of the first half.
Ream intercepted a goal kick at midfield and passed it through traffic to Malik Tillman. He passed it up to Balogun, who finally found a hole through the Bosnian bloc and pushed the ball to the back of the net in the 45th minute.
But Balogun’s game came to an end just 24 minutes into the second half. Head referee Raphael Claus of Brazil and Virtual Assistant Referee Juan Soto of Venezuela deemed a misstep made by Balogun onto a Bosnian player’s foot after a mid-air collision to warrant a red card.
The red card meant not only that the striker’s game was done, but that Team USA had to play the rest of the game down one man. Ultimately, that meant playing shorthanded for 26 minutes and then another 10 minutes of stoppage time.
Bosnia and Herzegovina tried to take advantage of the foul, swapping two defenders for two fresh attackers. By the 75th minute, Bosnia had made all five allowable substitutions. But the fresh legs proved not to be enough. Despite the handicap, the Americans found the back of the net a second time.
In the 82nd minute, Tillman launched a free kick from just outside the penalty box over a wall of Bosnian players into the top left corner of the net.
The Stars and Stripes had several other chances to run up the score even more across the 90 minutes, taking eight shots, and two goals from Pulisic and Balogun were revoked due to both players being offside.
Meanwhile, USA goalkeeper Matt Freese held strong, facing 10 shots and making three saves to secure his latest clean sheet.
“The guys … had to dig in deep,” Pulisic told Fox Sports. ”It didn’t go exactly to plan with the red card, but that just shows what a good team we are. We said in the hydration break, ‘You know, this is what it takes to be a really, really strong team,’ and we’re able to do it, and yeah, pull out the result.”
Pulisic added that he did not think that Balogun deserved the red card. It is unknown in the immediate aftermath of the game which player will be chosen to start the next game in Balogun’s place.
