Four goals, one Katy Perry set, and a stadium full of Americans who can now name a left back. The USMNT opened its home World Cup by beating Paraguay 4-1 at SoFi Stadium on June 12, and within an hour the discourse had already skipped three steps ahead. Beating Paraguay in Inglewood is not the same as becoming a football country, and pretending otherwise is how you set yourself up for the kind of round-of-16 exit that ends managerial careers.
Let's start with what actually happened on the pitch. Folarin Balogun scored twice. Christian Pulisic had a hand in two goals before getting pulled at halftime after taking a kick to his left calf, a substitution the staff called precautionary. Paraguay, to put it charitably, did not look like a team built to chase a game in warm Los Angeles weather. The U.S. were the better side. They were also playing the kind of opponent you're supposed to beat when you're hosting a World Cup.
The ceremony was the tell
Before kickoff, FIFA staged an opening ceremony headlined by Katy Perry, Future, Anitta, LISA, Rema and Tyla. Six acts. Zero of them American soccer players. That's not a complaint — it's a diagnosis. The U.S. is hosting this tournament the way it hosts everything: with pop stars, drone shows, and a confidence that the spectacle will paper over whatever the on-field product is doing.
And the spectacle is working, at least commercially. According to The Economist, around 10% of Americans now name soccer as their favorite sport, putting it narrowly ahead of baseball. Read that sentence twice. The country that didn't qualify for the 2018 World Cup is now a country where more people pick soccer over the sport with Babe Ruth in it. Something has shifted. The question is whether the national team is the cause or just a passenger.
What sustained excellence actually requires
Here's the thing about "elite status" in international football: it's not a vibe. It's a record. Germany has it. Brazil has it. France has it. You earn it by going deep in tournaments across a decade, not by winning a group-stage opener at home with the stadium DJ playing Mr. Brightside at 75% volume.
The USMNT's case for arrival rests on a small core of players who actually start for serious clubs. Balogun at the top. Pulisic on the left. A spine that, on a good day, can hang with most teams in the world. On a bad day, it gets bullied by anyone with a real midfielder. Friday was a good day. Most days in knockout football are not good days.
And the calf thing matters. Pulisic coming off at halftime as a precaution is the kind of bulletin that means nothing in June and everything in July. This squad without him is a squad that loses to teams it should beat. The depth chart is not what the marketing suggests.
The hype is the problem
American sports culture does one thing better than any other: it manufactures inevitability. A team wins one game and the segments start — is this a dynasty, are we witnessing a shift, where does this rank historically. Soccer doesn't reward that posture. Soccer punishes it. Ask Belgium's golden generation. Ask England, every four years, on schedule.
What the USMNT needs from this tournament is not a viral moment. It's a quarterfinal. A real one, against a team that's been doing this since before Lionel Messi was born. Get there and the conversation changes for a decade. Lose in the round of 16 to a Uruguay or a Switzerland and the 4-1 over Paraguay becomes a footnote in a column about wasted hosting advantages.
The good news: the door is open. The crowd is on their side. The draw, so far, has been kind. The bad news is the same as it's always been. Football doesn't grade on a curve, and nobody outside this country particularly cares how many people watched the opening ceremony.
Win the next two and we can talk.
