USMNT, Folarin Balogun dominate in 4-1 World Cup debut win vs. Paraguay

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Folarin Balogun can make the game seem effortless with the way he moves. He glides, really, team captain Tim Ream marveled recently.

The U.S. men’s national team has on it a prized striker, and on Friday, Balogun dazzled and dominated in his World Cup debut with two first-half goals in the Americans’ convincing 4-1 win against Paraguay.

The group-stage victory to open their World Cup journey on home soil produced a star performance at SoFi Stadium. As the Americans controlled possession in the first half, Balogun was moving well and found the back of the net in the 28th minute, but was ruled offside. Then came the barrage.

Balogun, the 24-year-old Brooklyn native, made it look easy in the 31st minute, depositing a perfectly-delivered cross from Christian Pulisic past the goalkeeper.

Then in added time before the half, he made a run toward the penalty area to take a pass, shake a defender with a touch off his right foot, and bury the shot with his left in the upper corner of the goal.

“It was a dream,” said Balogun, who became the first U.S. player to score multiple goals in a World Cup game since 1930. “It was a dreamy night.”

The three-goal outburst in the first half made a winner out of coach Mauricio Pocchetino, an Argentine who is coaching the Americans in the World Cup for the first time and trying to get them to the next level in the tournament. Balogun, a multinational player who grew up in London and plays for Ligue 1 club Monaco, committed to playing for the U.S. in 2023 and said the team made a statement with the win.

The Americans got off to a promising start, going ahead in the seventh minute on an own goal from Paraguay’s Damian Bobadilla. Pulisic split two defenders in the penalty box, passed to Weston McKennie, whose touch toward Balogun never made it. Instead, Bobadilla accidentally kicked it in.

Three decades earlier just up the road at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, the U.S. notched an upset World Cup group-stage win over Colombia that was aided by an own goal from Andres Escobar. Rather than remain in the U.S. after Colombia was eliminated and stay with family in Las Vegas, Escobar returned home. Ten days after his own goal, Escobar was shot and killed in his home country.

What might have been an eerie occurrence to onlookers of a certain age on Friday with Bobadilla’s accidental touch was celebrated joyously by the Americans on the field. After all, Pulisic was magnificent on the play and throughout the half.

The margin of victory not only gave the Americans a leg up on goal differential, but also enabled Pocchetino to sub off Pulisic at halftime for precautionary reasons after the top player was kicked in the calf.

“I’ve seen us play like this recently,” Pulisic said. “The guys were up for it. We have the ability to play and do the things when we do have the ball, score goals. Today, the effort, everything was there. To me, not a huge surprise.

“Being an American and having this crowd, the red, white and blue … it’s awesome.”

And they got quite the exclamation point with a goal on a strike from Gio Reyna in added time just before the final whistle.

Mauricio scored in the 73rd minute for Paraguay.

Contact Diamond Leung at dleung@reviewjournal.com. Follow @diamond83 on X.