SEATTLE (AP) \u2014 The U.S. national soccer team advanced to the knockout round at the World Cup without injured forward Christian Pulisic on the field, beating Australia 2-0 on Friday.<\/p>\n
A deep U.S. roster earned a knockout berth after only two matches for the first time. The last time the Americans served as World Cup hosts in 1994, they advanced by being one of the best third-place teams. They then lost to eventual champion Brazil in their next match, which was in the round of 16.<\/p>\n
Pulisic, who plays for AC Milan and has 33 goals in 87 international appearances, missed Friday\u2019s match because of a calf injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cC.P. is a fantastic player \u2014 the quality and the leadership that he gives us,\u201d said Folarin Balogun, who scored two goals in the 4-1 victory over Paraguay on June 12. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have him today, but I think you saw we\u2019re still capable to go out there and get a result and put up a performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Freeman, the youngest player on the team at 21 and son of Super Bowl champion Antonio Freeman, gave the Americans a 2-0 lead in the 43rd minute off a set piece. Freeman headed in a deflected shot by Sergi\u00f1o Dest for his first career World Cup goal. The goal was confirmed after a video review.<\/p>\n
The U.S. took a 1-0 lead in the 11th minute after a run down the left sideline by Balogun.<\/p>\n
He directed a centering pass towards striker Ricardo Pepi, who started in place of Pulisic. The ball never reached Pepi, deflecting off Australia defender Cameron Burgess and into the Socceroos\u2019 net for an own-goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be dangerous, I want to create opportunities,\u201d Balogun said. \u201cIt might not always be myself that scores, but if I can force an error that gives us the lead, then for me it\u2019s like a goal as well. It was a special start to the game to give us the momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEATTLE (AP) \u2014 The U.S. national soccer team advanced to the knockout round at the World Cup without injured forward Christian Pulisic on the field, beating Australia 2-0 on Friday. A deep U.S. roster earned a knockout berth after only two matches for the first time. The last time the Americans served as World Cup … Continue reading Without the injured Christian Pulisic, US beats Australia 2-0 to advance to World Cup knockout round<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-21 18:12:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1516877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1516878,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516877\/revisions\/1516878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1516877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1516877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1516877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}