The Hosts Have to Make the Game

The United States are the team that wants the ball, and Pochettino has built them to do something with it. In possession the back four tilts into a back three, Antonee Robinson flying up the left from Fulham's flank while Sergiño Dest pushes high and narrow on the right, Tyler Adams alone at the base, and the whole thing reshaping into a 3-2-5 with five men across the front. Christian Pulisic starts wide and drifts inside to become the chance; Folarin Balogun runs the channels rather than holding the ball, stretching the last line so others can arrive; Weston McKennie times his runs late into the box. On its best night this spring it put three past Senegal inside a week.

The trouble is the one Paraguay are built to cause, and the United States have just had a painful rehearsal of it. Six days ago Germany doubled Pulisic, pushed him and Dest down the touchlines, and let Balogun starve — twenty touches in seventy-two minutes for the striker — and the United States ran hard and arrived nowhere, beaten 2-1. A compact defence always concedes the first pass and covers the second; the teams that break it have someone who can produce an idea when the obvious one is gone. For the United States that man is still unnamed. Malik Tillman, now a starter at Bayer Leverkusen rather than a prospect, created more than anyone in the warm-ups and is the likeliest to begin in that role; McKennie can be it on his late runs; Gio Reyna, barely used at Mönchengladbach this season, is the gamble Pochettino keeps on the bench for precisely this kind of night. None of them has yet made the job his own.

If the second idea does arrive, the reward is real. The striker problem that tormented the United States for a decade has turned into a surplus — Balogun off a thirteen-goal Ligue 1 season at Monaco, Ricardo Pepi and Haji Wright waiting behind him — and a team that gets clean service into the box finally has finishers to use it. The older danger is the one the Germany night revived: the first pattern fails, the alternatives do not come, and a home crowd that arrived to celebrate begins to count the goalless minutes. Against a side that wants nothing more than a quiet, tight game, the opening twenty minutes will tell the United States a great deal about which night this is.

Paraguay, by contrast, came to make the game small, and the bones of that plan are unchanged. Cubas, a relentless ball-winner at Vancouver, screens in front of a back four that squeezes everything toward the middle; the wingers tuck in to make a narrow bank of four; and rather than press high, Paraguay invite the opponent into the middle third before springing the trap, winning the duel and the second ball and breaking from there. It is the disciplined, physical kind of evening the United States have not yet shown they can solve, and Alfaro has spent two years making a virtue of it — solidity, in his phrase, without being merely defensive.

What an Enciso absence changes is not the defending but the reward for it. He was the one player who could take a turned-over ball in a tight space and make a goal out of a night of suffering; without him the creation scatters — onto Miguel Almirón, back in MLS at Atlanta and still covering enormous ground the instant the ball breaks; onto Diego Gómez, the Brighton midfielder and the most valuable man in the squad, arriving late from deep; onto Kaku's deliveries from the corner and the free-kick; onto whatever Ramón Sosa conjures one-against-one. Where Paraguay will look to hurt the United States is plain: in the grass behind Antonee Robinson and Dest when both have pushed on, and in the air from set-pieces — the very way Germany beat the Americans, Havertz climbing in behind Tim Ream from a Kimmich delivery.

Their evening, then, is an exercise in patience and timing: hold the block, keep the game level and irritating, and take one of the few moments they manufacture before the United States find their rhythm. It is a narrow way to win, but one Paraguay have walked before, and a side this organised does not need many chances. The risk that travels with it is the one that shadows every team built on duels — that the intensity tips into bookings, and a back line already braced for long spells under pressure is asked to hold a man short.

The match most likely turns on two things at once: whether the United States can find a second source of invention before the night tightens, and whether they can survive the dead ball and the transition that Paraguay live on. The second has grown more pressing this week. Chris Richards, the centre-back with the highest ceiling in the squad, has not trained fully since an ankle injury and may not be risked; Pochettino said plainly in the build-up that he was not yet ready, with the call left until close to kickoff. If he cannot go, the United States defend Paraguay's set-pieces with Tim Ream and a barely-tested Mark McKenzie at the heart of the box, against Gustavo Gómez and Alderete, two of the better aerial threats in the group. The Germany goal is the warning — a near-post run and a centre-back half a step late — and one conceded corner could decide a game this tight.

Behind all of it sits Tyler Adams, and a decision Pochettino made months ago. He picked a single specialist holding midfielder and left the natural alternatives at home, so Adams — the Bournemouth man who screens the back line and triggers the press — has no like-for-like cover. A careless booking, an hour of heavy legs, a knock, and the whole American spine bends. Against a team that wants to drag the night into duels and second balls, the player who wins them in front of the defence matters as much as the one meant to unlock it at the other end.

If Paraguay score first — most plausibly from a corner or a counter — the United States face the evening they would least choose. A side already content to defend deep is handed a lead and every reason to sink further into its block, and the hosts are left to do the very thing the warm-ups left unproven: break down a massed defence at pace, now with a restless SoFi reading each misplaced pass and the old arguments — the Luna omission, Reyna's minutes, Pochettino's caution — waiting to come back. Chasing the game means committing the full-backs, and committing the full-backs is the invitation Almirón and Sosa want.

If the United States score first, the weight shifts onto Paraguay, and it presses hard. Now they have to leave the block and come out, which is the last thing a side shorn of Enciso wants to do; the space behind opens for Robinson and Dest, Balogun's runs find more room, and Alfaro is pushed toward Maurício, the naturalised midfielder he brought in to give the team a passer it otherwise lacks — the same man who came on for Enciso against Nicaragua. A goal for the hosts would do more than settle nerves; it would drag Paraguay into the open game they cannot really play.

If it is still level after seventy, the night turns on the benches and the temperament, and there the United States hold the deeper hand. Reyna is the sort kept back for a stretched, tiring finish; Pepi and Haji Wright are fresh finishers to send on; the crowd, if the hosts are pressing, becomes a real advantage rather than a weight. Paraguay's replies are fewer, and the discipline that holds the block together is hardest to keep when the legs go. There is no furnace here to wear anyone down — a mild Los Angeles night under the roof removes that excuse — so the last twenty minutes are a straight contest of quality and nerve, and the hosts, at home, should have more of both to call on.

Group D offers three contrasting examinations — Paraguay's block, Australia's physicality, Türkiye's technical edge — and the opener colours all of it. For the United States the maths is unforgiving in a way it would not be for a visiting team: at home, with this manager and this generation, anything short of a clear run out of the group will read as a moment let slip rather than steady progress. A win turns the rest of the group into a platform. A flat night invites the country's doubts back into the room on the opening evening.

For Paraguay the calculation is colder and, in its way, freer. Alfaro's most plausible route runs through frustrating the United States and Türkiye and treating Australia — by which point Enciso may be back — as the match they cannot lose. A point taken from SoFi would be worth far more than its line in the table: it would bank something toward the round of thirty-two and buy time for the player the whole plan was built around. A country that waited sixteen years to return is holding its breath twice over now, once for the result and once for the daily word on Enciso's thigh, and the surest way to keep both kinds of hope alive is to take something from Los Angeles on the first night.

Everything about the United States' tournament comes back to one moment, and Paraguay are the first to stage it properly: when Pulisic is doubled and the obvious route is shut, who makes the pass that matters? Against Germany the answer never came, and a hard-running attack lost 2-1 without ever finding its second gear. The candidates are all on the field — Tillman drifting into the pockets, McKennie arriving late, Reyna held back for the hour the game stretches — but a candidate is not an answer.

There is a mirror to it on the other bench. Paraguay are likely without Enciso, the one man who could have done the same job for them, so both sides are hunting an inventor neither is sure it has. The difference is that the United States are at home, are expected to make the running, and have to find theirs first. Solve it, and the talent in this squad should tell. Leave it unsolved, and a tight, irritating night is exactly what Paraguay came for.