The USMNT will play Bosnia and Herzegovina in the World Cup round of 32 on Wednesday at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., with kickoff set for 8 p.m. ET on Fox. It is the next test for a team that now has to turn a knockout match into something more than another date on the schedule.
That is why people are asking when the USA play in the World Cup now: the answer is Wednesday, and the setting matters because this is a round of 32 game. For Tim Ream, the numbers behind it were impossible to ignore last week, even if he refused to dress them up. Asked about the U.S. record against European opponents, he called it what it is and said there is nothing about it the team can control.
The weight of the matchup is in the numbers. The U.S. has lost 10 straight games against European opponents, has won just once in 18 tries against full-strength European teams over the past decade, and has not beaten a European team at a World Cup since 2002. Wednesday’s game will also be the first time the U.S. has faced a European team in a World Cup knockout match, a detail that makes the stakes feel larger than a single evening in Santa Clara.
That history does not sit evenly with the way the U.S. has played most other opponents. Much of the recent success has come against teams from four continents other than Europe, and the gap has been wide enough to shape the conversation around this match. European teams are usually stronger, and Bosnia and Herzegovina is not considered a European football blueblood, but the draw still leaves the U.S. facing the part of the bracket that has given it the most trouble. The last meeting with a European side at this tournament ended in a 3-1 loss to the Netherlands in the 2022 World Cup round of 16.
Sergiño Dest put the challenge in plain terms on Sunday: if the U.S. wants to win this World Cup, it has to beat everyone. That leaves Wednesday as more than a chance to advance. It is the first chance to find out whether the team can carry its strong play into the one kind of opponent it has not been able to solve.
