SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Underdogs, favorites, Cinderellas, Goliaths.
It’s a segment of the sporting lexicon we seem unable to escape, regardless of the setting, stakes or complexities of a given game. Who’s supposed to win? Who’s supposed to lose? Who transcended expectations and who failed to meet them?
The United States men’s national team, a program who’ve still won only one single, solitary FIFA World Cup knockout-round match in their history, find themselves in the rather unusual position of being expected to win their round-of-32 match vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday. And it seems they’re not entirely sure what to make of that.
“Maybe we have the fans on our side,” said head coach Mauricio Pochettino when the topic was raised on Tuesday, “[but] we don't feel that. We feel that we have the confidence to perform well, and of course, the belief that we can win, but with full respect, and thinking that if we want to win and go to the next stage, that we need to perform at our best. And of course, Bosnia and Herzegovina is a team that is a very physical team, but have quality.”
Keen to avoid their opponent with anything resembling motivational material, both sides went out of their way to show respect in their pregame press conferences at the hulking NFL venue usually known as Levi’s Stadium. But Bosnia’s manager Sergej Barbarez, whose nation’s population is roughly equivalent to that of the Tampa/St. Petersburg metropolitan area, pointed out the obvious when it was posed to him.
“Of course they’re favorites – their place in the table, their results; they’re hosts, the names in their team,” he said, later singing the praises of Esmir Bajraktarevic, the Bosnian-American dual-national from Wisconsin who broke through with the New England Revolution and is now a starter for the Zmajevi (‘Dragons’). “We’ve never had any problem being underdog. This word doesn’t mean anything to me, you can throw it around – it doesn’t affect what happens on the pitch.
“Believe me, we will have the desire to play in this game, and we will want to continue our journey.”
On Monday it felt like this might be a tournament for the underdog, with Germany and the Netherlands suffering shock losses to Paraguay and Morocco on penalty shootouts. The USMNT took notice, deriving both a warning and a growing sense of possibility from the prospect of further surprises.
“We watch the games for sure. Always fun to watch and follow along with the tournament,” said Christian Pulisic as the US trained at the San Jose Earthquakes’ PayPal Park on Tuesday morning. “That's the beauty of the World Cup, always there's going to be upsets – I mean, all the games yesterday were fantastic, so we're expecting nothing else for tomorrow. We have to go and perform extremely well, at the highest level, and it's going to be not easy by any means.
“Does it give us hope? I mean, there's still so many good teams in the tournament that can cause problems, and we just want to be one of them.”
Chris Richards implicitly acknowledged the reality that between their host status and those impressive wins over Paraguay and Australia, the Yanks now carry more expectations, and a rising reputation.
“In the moment you're a fan, and then afterwards you realize that this is also the same tournament that we're playing in. I think it's a weird dynamic,” he said of Monday’s results. “We saw an upset yesterday, so it's making sure that we don't allow that to happen to us.
“Now we've seen two big boys fall, so it's just a matter of us getting through this game and playing a good performance, and hopefully we continue that … It's starting to open up, so it's very exciting for us.”
As befits his pleasantly new-agey ethos, Pochettino has often emphasized the concept of balance both on and off the pitch, and so it remains as his side try to make real history with a deep run into the knockouts. On Tuesday he credited his friend and countryman Jorge Valdano, a World Cup winner in 1986, for introducing him to the phrase “relaxation brings concentration,” which is perhaps a yin to the yang of his prior exhortations to his squad about full-blooded intensity and hunger.
You might say he wants his Yanks to be serenely bloodthirsty.
“For us, this is the final of the World Cup tomorrow. If we don't think in this way, I think we are going to struggle,” said the USMNT’s Argentine boss, “and I think we are seeing already, all the games after the group stage, how difficult it is – no one game was easy for no one, and it's very competitive.
“We don't have another opportunity if we fail,” he added, describing his team as “all in, knowing that that game is the final of the World Cup, and if we are capable to go through, the next one is going to be another final of the World Cup. That, I think, needs to be our mindset, and our mentality.”
