WASHINGTON (AP) — Tyler Adams has set a bold goal for the U.S. soccer team, aiming to reach the World Cup semifinals for the first time since the inaugural tournament in 1930.
“Everyone’s going to want us to say winning it is obviously the goal,” the American midfielder said Friday after the World Cup draw, “but I think setting the benchmark of the furthest the U.S. team has gone is also realistic.”
The 14th-ranked U.S. will start Group D against No. 39 Paraguay on June 12 in Inglewood, California, and then play 26th-ranked Australia six days later at Seattle. The Americans conclude the group stage on June 25 back at SoFi Stadium against the winner of playoffs among Turkey (25), Slovakia (45), Romania (47) and Kosovo (80).
“Getting three points right off right off the bat like that would be would be an amazing start for us and just put us in a great position in the group,” star Christian Pulisic said.
It appears to be among the less difficult of the 12 groups. The top two in each advance to the new round of 32 along with the best four third-place teams.
“Listen, we all want to win a World Cup,” defender Tim Ream said. “You don’t play a tournament just to be there and so we’ve had conversations, Chris and I have had conversations about, yeah, we wan to win. I think people can laugh and say whatever they want.”
In recent friendlies, the U.S. lost 2-1 to Turkey in June, beat Australia 2-1 in October and defeated Paraguay 2-1 last month.
“Potentially we played all three of these teams in the last six months but that can be a little bit of a false kind of sense of security,” defender Ream said.
In nearly a century of World Cup play, the U.S. is 1-7 in knockout games, getting outscored 22-7. The Americans’ only win was 2-0 over Mexico in 2002’s round of 16, which was followed by a 1-0 quarterfinal loss to Germany. The Americans are winless in their last 12 World Cup matches against European teams, outscored 20-10.
“There’s no easy game in a World Cup. In fact, I think some of our hardest games in the previous World Cup were against the lesser opponents,” Adams said.
At the 2022 tournament in Qatar, the U.S. tied Wales 1-1 and England 0-0 before beating Iran 1-0 on a Pulisic goal to advance.
“It’s fair to say that the last World Cup we couldn’t set a bar or standard for anything. We didn’t know what to expect,” Adams said. “Now looking back on it, I think we have more experience. We’re a lot more mature. We’ve grown a lot as individuals and as a team.”
Coach Mauricio Pochettino has scheduled friendlies against Belgium and Portugal in March and vs. a team to be determined and Germany just before the tournament.
As he mulls his roster, Pochettino thinks about “Miracle,” a 2004 movie he watched last month about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team of young players that upset the heavily favored Soviet Union and went on to win the gold medal. Coach Herb Brooks’ decisions made an impression on Pochettino.
“We don’t need the best players, we need the right players to make a team a strong team,” Pochettino said. “The right players to build a powerful team with the possibility to fight with any team in the in the world. Good and right are completely different.”
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
