LOS ANGELES STADIUM\u00a0\u2014 <\/strong>So much for a perfect group stage.<\/p>\n After winning its first two games at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the U.S. men\u2019s national team finished the first round with a 3-2 defeat to already eliminated T\u00fcrkiye on Thursday on literally the last kick of the ball.<\/p>\n With the USA having already clinched Group B with a game to spare, coach Mauricio Pochettino made nine changes to the lineup that beat Australia last week in Seattle. But despite taking the lead less than three minutes in thanks to defender Auston Trusty\u2019s first international goal, the Americans were outplayed by the visitors for the rest of the first half.<\/p>\n Pochettino\u2019s team went into halftime trailing, with Orkun K\u00f6k\u00e7\u00fc and 21-year-old Real Madrid playmaker Arda G\u00fcler finishing well-worked plays that left the U.S. defenders chasing shadows.<\/p>\n But rather than make substitutions at halftime \u2014 even at the risk of a second Sebastian Berhalter yellow card \u2014 Pochettino stuck with his plan.<\/p>\n And it almost paid off. Berhalter, who set up the Stars and Stripes opening goal from a corner kick that Auston Trusty banged home, scored a second-half equalizer as part of a greatly improved last 45 minutes before Kaan Ayhan knocked home the winner in the final seconds of stoppage time.<\/p>\n That means the World Cup co-hosts head into next Wednesday\u2019s must-win round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the San Francisco Bay Area Stadium off their first loss of the tournament.<\/p>\n Here are four takeaways from the USA’s defeat:<\/p>\n Even before Trusty coolly settled Sebastian Berhalter\u2019s corner kick and blasted it past U\u011furcan \u00c7ak\u0131r, the home side had chances to score. So when the ball hit the back of the next, it felt like the U.S. could roll the way they had in those multi-goal victories against Australia and Paraguay.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not how it played out. For all the talk about how the U.S. reserves would treat this game as their World Cup final, the Turks were\u00a0the ones to impose themselves, winning tackles and putting the Americans \u2014 who, to be fair, probably were never going to look as cohesive as the starters given that they\u2019d never played together as a starting 11 (or even close to one) before.<\/p>\n Whatever Pochettino said to his players at halftime worked.<\/p>\n The World Cup co-hosts came out flying. Again, they had opportunities to draw level even before doing so. And it still only took four minutes of the second stanza for Berhalter to get on the end of a failed clearance at the top of the Turkish box, half-volleying a blistering strike past \u00c7ak\u0131r.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was moments away from earning the Stars and Stripes to earn a share of the spoils.<\/p>\n With no disrespect intended to the bottom of Pochettino\u2019s roster, there was an obvious drop-off in quality with almost all the usual suspects \u2014 Weston McKennie and Ricardo Pepi were the lone holdovers from last game \u2014 on the bench ahead of the knockout stage. That\u2019s the case with most teams, to be sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n And again, the fact that most of these guys had never started or even played in a World Cup before in their careers was surely a culture shock in the first half \u2014 especially with the Turks hell-bent on showing that they are far better than the results of their first two games, both losses in which they failed to score, would indicate.<\/p>\n The good news for the Americans is that they responded. And while it\u00a0wasn\u2019t enough to prevent a loss and head into the knockout stage undefeated, the experience they gained in losing could still pay off handsomely if and when a few of the understudies are called upon against the Bosnians \u2014 or beyond.<\/p>\n The best news of the night from a USA perspective has to be the sight of Pulisic, Pochettino\u2019s most irreplaceable attacker, sprinting onto the field just before the hour mark. Pulisic had played just the first half of the first game for the U.S. before being felled by a sore calf that also kept him out of the 2-0 victory over the Socceroos last week in Seattle.<\/p>\n As encouraging as that game was in showing that the co-hosts can win a World Cup game even without their marquee star, they did miss Pulisic\u2019s quality both in that match and for the first 57 minutes on Thursday. No, he didn\u2019t get on the scoresheet (although he came close).\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t matter. What does is that he\u2019s healthy again and, barring something unforeseen, will start the first knockout match. If the Stars and Stripes are to make the deep run they believe they\u2019re capable of, make no mistake: Pulisic will be one of the catalysts \u2014\u00a0 if not the driving force \u2014 that takes them there.<\/p>\n \u00a0(Photo by Stu Forster\/Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n With the group stage now over, the attention can finally now move to the game U.S. fans \u2014 if not players \u2014 have been looking ahead to ever since Paraguay upset this same Turkish squad last Friday to ensure that the Stars and Stripes would play for a spot in the round of 16 in the Bay Area on July 1.<\/p>\n It\u2019s probably not the matchup the Americans wanted. It\u2019s definitely not the easiest one they could\u2019ve gotten, nor the ideal reward for finishing in first place.<\/p>\n The Bosnians showed just how dangerous they can be in March, when they eliminated four-time World Cup champions Italy in Europe\u2019s qualifying playoffs. They were probably unlucky not to beat Canada in front of a hostile, partisan crowd in Toronto in their opening match at the main event.<\/p>\n Still, man-for-man, the U.S. is the better team. With Pulisic back, the rest of Pochettino\u2019s first-choice players rested and another colossal home field advantage expected at San Francisco Bay Area Stadium, they are and should be the favorites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY LOS ANGELES STADIUM\u00a0\u2014 So much for a perfect group stage. After winning its first two games at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the U.S. men\u2019s national team finished the first round with a 3-2 defeat to already eliminated T\u00fcrkiye on Thursday on literally the last kick of the ball. With the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}