CHICAGO — It took Antonee Robinson 23 yards, one first-time volley and 37 minutes to answer every question about what this U.S. team is capable of producing at its best. The ball dropped out of a jostle at the edge of the area. He hit it clean, and goalkeeper Oliver Baumann had no time to move before it streaked beneath the crossbar.
That strike — Robinson’s third national-team goal off a volley — announced something beyond a scoreline. Eight months ago, the Fulham left back had undergone knee surgery and couldn’t predict whether he would recover in time for a World Cup. “I couldn’t really see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said Saturday after the United States fell 2-1 to Germany at Soldier Field. “But now I’m feeling in pretty good shape, and happy we’ve got through the game, and I get to go and help my country at another World Cup.”
He limped off in the 61st minute with what he described as cramps. Pochettino said the energy of the goal had emptied him. Both chose to frame it as nothing. The question of whether Robinson lines up fit and sharp against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium on Friday night — the first Group D match of a tournament the United States helped draw and is co-hosting — is already settled in Pochettino’s mind. The question that isn’t settled is standing on one leg somewhere in a Chicago locker room.
Chris Richards has not played in three weeks. An ankle injury kept him out of Saturday’s starting eleven, with Miles Robinson filling in beside Tim Ream at centerback. Miles Robinson was on the field for Kai Havertz’s second-minute header — a free run at a Joshua Kimmich ball that Tyler Adams had gifted Germany with a foul — and for Leroy Sané’s 57th-minute winner, where a long sequence of passes found Sané at the top of the box and Ream backed off just enough to give him the angle. It was a goal that crystallized the defensive exposure this team carries into every high-possession opponent it faces.
Richards, when healthy, is the better read. Whether he can play 90 minutes in a World Cup opener less than a week removed from his last training session is a question Pochettino declined to answer directly. “We will see,” he said, in the measured tone of a manager who has already run every scenario and has not liked all of them.
Saturday’s lineup, save for that one asterisk, read almost exactly like what Pochettino intends to put on the field against Paraguay. Matt Freese started in goal and played the full 90, distinguishing himself from Matt Turner and Chris Brady who split time in last Sunday’s 3-2 win over Senegal. Sergiño Dest and Robinson ran the flanks. Malik Tillman lined up deeper than usual in midfield — what Pochettino has described as a hybrid conduit role, accelerating ball movement between the defensive line and Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Folarin Balogun ahead of him.
Tillman, soft-spoken and precise, explained the positioning in the way a player does when he has thought about it seriously. “Kind of a different position for me under this coach,” he said. “But I know how to move, how to get on the ball. I can find my spaces basically almost everywhere.” His numbers backed him up: three chances created against Germany, tied with Robinson for the most on the team.
Tyler Adams was in the middle of everything, for better and worse. His foul gifted Germany the free kick that produced the opening goal. His passing tempo, when the U.S. got going, was the heartbeat of their best spells. “Pretty s***,” he said of conceding in the second minute. Then: “The response, the character, the resilience — all those kinds of things you want to see — we can raise our quality now.” Adams said that without irony, because he meant it, and because he has seen enough of this group over 19 months to believe it.
Pochettino repeated his most-used maxim after the final whistle: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It is a line that tells you what he values and also tells you very little about whether this team can beat a side pressing at the same intensity as Germany once tournament football begins. The Americans have still not defeated a global top-ten opponent under Pochettino. The Uruguay and Senegal wins were encouraging. Belgium and Portugal in March were not. Germany was something in between — a genuine contest that the U.S. led in quality at stretches and lost in the margins.
The pressing structure was not incidental. Pochettino adopted a tactic borrowed from his time at Paris Saint-Germain: deliberately kicking off out of bounds to force an immediate defensive press. The Boston Globe’s Frank Dell’Apa noted that PSG quietly abandoned the same approach in the Champions League final against Arsenal after the analytics suggested it lost its effectiveness against Bayern Munich in the semifinals. The U.S. will need it to work for 90 minutes, three times in the group stage, against teams that have studied it.
None of that gets resolved until the whistle blows at SoFi Stadium on Friday. The stadium itself has been the subject of labor uncertainty in recent days, with UNITE HERE workers having authorized a strike less than a week before the World Cup opener. Whether that situation is resolved by the time Paraguay walks out under those lights is another variable outside Pochettino’s control.
What he can control is the eleven he sends out — and there is one slot still in flux. Mark McKenzie came on as a second-half substitute Saturday and was seen leaving the locker room with what appeared to be a foot ailment. No details were available. Center back depth, already thin with Richards sidelined, is the position the U.S. can least afford to lose bodies at before a tournament where winning a group that includes Uruguay and a third qualifier will require early points, according to ESPN’s analysis.
“We have very good balance with all of the things we were talking about during one year and a half,” Pochettino said. “Now it’s about all together to put the interest of our federation, our soccer, our people, the fans and the country to give our best.” He looked like he believed it. The team boarded their bus to the airport shortly after midnight, headed west, carrying a 2-1 loss and a culture that eats strategy for breakfast, toward the eight years of waiting that ends Friday night.
Whether Richards is on that bus in condition to start is, for now, the only question Mauricio Pochettino cannot answer for you. The full account of Saturday’s match is available on Eastern Herald.
