The United States will begin knockout stage play in the World Cup Wednesday in Santa Clara against Bosnia-Herzegovina, with free watch parties being held throughout Los Angeles County.
The Stars and Stripes scored a team-record eight goals as it won Group D with a 2-1-0 record, defeating Paraguay, 4-1, June 12 at SoFi Stadium and Australia, 2-0, June 19 at Seattle, to assure itself of winning the group.
The United States lost to Turkey, 3-2, Thursday at SoFi Stadium, to complete the group stage, with coach Mauricio Pochettino making nine changes to the starting lineup from the Australia match, the most ever between two U.S. men’s national team World Cup matches and the third-most in a single match in World Cup history.
Bosnia-Herzegovina finished third in Group B with a 1-1-1 record, tying Canada 1-1 on June 12, losing to eventual group winner Switzerland, 4-1, June 18 and defeating Qatar, 3-1, last Wednesday, to finish as the fifth-best third-place team to advance to the round of 32.
“For us, it is the final of the World Cup tomorrow,” Pochettino said in his pre-match news conference Tuesday at Levi’s Stadium. “If we don’t think in this way, we are going to struggle. We are seeing already in all the games after the group stage how difficult it is. Not one game was easy for no one, and it’s very competitive because of the factor of this World Cup.”
The Stars and Stripes are 15th in the unofficial rankings released after the completion of Tuesday’s play by FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. The Dragons are 61st.
The rankings are based on a point system in which points are added to or subtracted from a team’s total based on the latest result. The ranking is considered unofficial until all matches are approved as international “A” matches. The latest official ranking was released June 11, the day the World Cup began.
The Opta supercomputer gives the United States a 76.08% chance of advancing to the round of 16 based on 10,000 pre-match simulations, and Bosnia-Herzegovina a 23.92% chance.
The U.S.- Bosnia-Herzegovina winner will face the winner of Wednesday’s Belgium-Senegal match in a round of 16 match Monday in Seattle.
The Dragons’ roster includes midfielder Esmir Bajraktarevic, who was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, played on various U.S. youth international teams and a 2024 match with the U.S. national team, before switching his allegiance to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where his parents were born.
Bajraktarevic is a teammate of U.S. forward Ricardo Pepi and defender Sergiño Dest with the Dutch club PSV Eindhoven. Bosnia-Herzegovina forward Haris Tabakovicis is teammates with U.S. midfielder Gio Reyna and defender Joe Scally at German club Borussia Monchengladbach.
Bosnia-Herzegovina is playing in its second World Cup. It failed to advance past the group stage in 2014.
The Southeastern European nation had been part of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, then part of Yugoslavia from 1918 until gaining its independence in 1992.
Free watch parties for the 5 p.m. match will be held at the Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park in Harbor City, Echo Park, Sheldon-Arleta Park and the Los Angeles Central Library’s Taper Auditorium as part of the Kick It In the Park program organized by various city of Los Angeles departments.
Free watch parties will also be held at Galaxy Park at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles.
The match will be televised in English by Fox and in Spanish by Telemundo.