USA will face Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday in the first competitive meeting between the two sides, and the timing puts Tim Ream’s calm words under immediate scrutiny. Ream said he does not really feel too much pressure at this minute, even as the USA carry a 13-match winless run against European opponents into the knockout rounds.
That run has been building since a win over Northern Ireland in March 2021, and it has become the backdrop to this game because the USA have not found a way past European opposition in 10 straight losses. Ream said the pressure comes from within the squad rather than from outside, a sharp line for a team that knows Wednesday is not just another match but the start of the next stage.
Gio Reyna, who played 76 minutes in a rotated lineup to close the group stage, said knockout football changes the mood fast. “With knockout rounds, anything can happen,” he said, adding that this team really does well with challenges. For Reyna, the run-out mattered too: it was his longest since a Borussia Dortmund match on 15 December 2024, a sign that the USA are trying to keep key players sharp without overloading them.
Bosnia and Herzegovina arrive with their own profile. They managed only 20 passes into opponents’ boxes across three games, the third-fewest among teams that advanced, which points to a side that can be structured and selective rather than expansive. The squad also includes familiar names such as Esmir Bajraktarević of PSV, Kerim Alajbegović of Bayer Leverkusen and Edin Džeko, who is still described as timeless.
There is also a thread of uncertainty inside the cleanest-looking storyline. The most recent meeting between these teams was a friendly on 18 December 2021, and only three members of Mauricio Pochettino’s squad for this World Cup were involved that day, while Bosnia and Herzegovina bring just one player from that match into their 26-man squad this summer. Ream said he does not fully expect Bosnia and Herzegovina to be purely defensive, and that may be the real problem for USA: a team that has struggled against European opponents now has to solve one in a match that cannot be replayed.
Wednesday asks the USA to do something they have not done often enough lately — finish a European game with the result in hand. Reyna has already framed the occasion as one where anything can happen. The question is whether the USA can make that openness work for them before Bosnia and Herzegovina turn the game into something tighter than Ream is willing to admit.
