How the USMNT refused to blink against Bosnia and Herzegovina and kept World Cup dreams alive - CBS Sports

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – At the World Cup, the U.S. men's national team have become accustomed to an early lead and a game state that suits their fluid, attack-minded tendencies. Describing the goals they scored in Wednesday's 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32 as inevitable would be a bridge too far, but it was well within their skillset, so much so that Folarin Balogun 's game-opening goal in the 45th minute felt like a long time coming. They had seemingly survived their opponents' disruptive game plan just before the break, the group halfway to their first win in the World Cup knockouts in 24 years, the floodgates perhaps open in time for the second half.

Soccer, though, had other plans.

For starters, the flurry of shots they hoped to take against Bosnia and Herzegovina never came. The game resumed its slog-like nature as soon as the referee blew the whistle for the second half, their very first shot after the break only coming in the 79th minute. It was far from their biggest problem, though – star striker Balogun was shown a red card in the 64th minute for a studs-up challenge on Tarik Muharemovic, even if it was completely unintentional because he had his back to the defender. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the USMNT attempt to bunker down to protect a narrow one-goal lead with a half hour on the clock, their attempts not coming off no matter how hard they tried. That was especially true on the wings, through which the USMNT's attack usually flows; Sergino Dest and Christian Pulisic drifted too wide and were not particularly present, with Balogun off the pitch, the balance was off.

Balogun's red card offered an extreme amount of adversity for a team that last won a World Cup kncokout game before five members of the current squad were even born but it was also ultimately a galvanizing moment for a team with the determination to see the game out.

"I said, 'You got us. Now it's our turn to have your back. Hopefully it's not going to be the last time you're part of this tournament,'" Pulisic told Balogun shortly after the red card was shown.

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The red card, however unfortunate, unlocked a new dimension in a team that is starting to become known for their multifaceted nature.

"I said this about pressure the other day. Would it be weird if I downplayed this and said [the team] wasn't even fazed by it?" captain Tim Ream said while beaming with pride at the growth of a group of younger teammates he has known for the better part of a decade, if not longer. "It felt really calm and it felt really easy and simple for us in that moment because we all were just calm and knew what we had to do … Because of the way we train, because of the conversations that we have, the communication that we have, the togetherness that we have, the fight, the intensity, the aggression with and without the ball. There was not one guy that I could look at and say we may need to switch things around here. It was a steely focus and unless you're on the field and you see it in guys' eyes, it's hard to understand but it felt so comfortable, even down to 10 men. That's the way you want to feel. You don't want to have that panic set in. You want to have that calm and focus and what we have."

More surprisingly, though, the USMNT stuck to their guns and stayed true to a mode that had defined their World Cup journey but has never actually been the team's trademark — they played like big shots.

"Obviously, when you're down a man, you're going to have to sit a bit deeper at times and defend and we did a good job of that but we also picked the right moments to be an outlet, just to move the ball forward as well, get fouls, try to delay the game as much as we can and we still have our moments in attack," Pulisic said. We got a goal there so it says a lot. It says a lot about this team."