Article by Mihai Mironică – Published Saturday, June 13, 2026, 4:23 p.m. / Updated Saturday, June 13, 2026, 4:51 p.m.
And we saw the best team of this World Cup start. The USA has reversed the poles. In America, football belonged to the South, not the North. This time, however, a team representing South America was not only defeated at the World Cup by the USA, but was even put on the ropes, with the ball being hidden from them in the first half, humiliated even in that first half of the match that ended with a 3-0 fulminant for the hosts.
The way it was played, Paraguay seemed to be the United States of American basketball and football, and the USA was the country between Brazil and Argentina.
OK, it's Paraguay and not a colossus of South America, only this year the overclassmen from Los Angeles won against Greece and Mexico, and in the preliminaries for this World Cup they defeated the Monsters of the continent, Argentina and Brazil.
Paraguay entered this first match of the tournament with footballers playing in Europe's elite leagues or in the strongest championship across the ocean, that of Brazil. Team USA turned a decent Worlds team into something of a sparring partner.
In the stands, there were a lot of celebrities, from Karim Abdul-Jabbar to Katy Perry, from Bill Gates to Marco Rubio or Justin Trudeau. By the way, although Canada was playing on the same day, the former Canadian Prime Minister and Katy Perry's current partner was at the United States game, in which his girlfriend opened. Personal love beats love of country.
But the most spectacular of the stars in the stands seemed to me to be George Lucas, the creator of the biggest franchise in the history of cinema, Star Wars. If Lucas wanted to recreate a football scene in Star Wars, the new arena in Los Angeles would have been the perfect setting for a game “from a galaxy far, far away.” SoFi Stadium, which should actually be called SciFi Stadium, shows us that the future has already arrived for years, since 2020, when this fabulous arena was inaugurated.
Captain America, in great shape
Christian Pulisic has a stage name taken from this sci-fi universe, Captain America. And he played up to the superhero brand. Folarin Balogun was rightly named man of the match, but Pulisic showed us in one half that he is the best footballer the World Cup has seen in its first four games.
Captain America had a great run which produced the first goal of the match and also came up with a decisive assist for Balogun. The second half, which ended with a 1-1 draw with Paraguay, showed us what the USA means without Pulisic.
Since this century, I have always been a fan of the United States at the World Cup for its fluid, technical, spectacular game, contrary to the prejudices about “soccer” in the USA. An attractive style that has also generated in the modern era a world quarter-final in 2002 and eighths in 2010, 2014 and 2022.
I highly appreciated Clint Dempsey, Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley for their refined game, I was impressed by the dynamism of a DeAndre Yedlin, the science of the game at Eddie Pope, the solidity of footballers like Jozy Altidore, Brian McBride or Tim Howard.
But the current American national team is said to be the Golden Generation of this team's history. In the game it shows, coach Mauricio Pochettino seems to be coaching a top South American national team.
It remains to be seen if this team can get to the ace box to truly deserve their title. It looks like Mission Impossible, but Tom Cruise was also in the stands and can give some advice on how to approach such missions.
It is true that next to him was David Beckam, who was said to have been the captain of the Golden Generation of England, a generation that did not rise to the level of the teams of '66 and '90, nor even to the level of Southgate's team of 2018. The vibration around the American national team is formidable, we will see if it is not exaggerated.
