USMNT Open Home World Cup 4-1 Over Paraguay at SoFi

The United States men's national team opened its home World Cup with a statement on Friday, beating Paraguay 4-1 in front of 70,492 fans at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Folarin Balogun scored twice before halftime, Gio Reyna curled in a stoppage-time finish, and Mauricio Pochettino's first World Cup match in charge produced the largest USMNT World Cup win since the program's inaugural 1930 tournament, per Yahoo Sports.

The opening goal came in the seventh minute after Damian Bobadilla put through his own net under U.S. pressure, according to CBS Sports' live coverage. Balogun doubled the lead in the 30th minute and added a second in first-half stoppage time, finishing as the first American player with multiple goals in a World Cup match since 1930. CBS Sports also noted the four-goal total was itself a USMNT first at the tournament.

The Pochettino moment

Pochettino, taking charge of his first World Cup match as a head coach, told ESPN, "In the first 45 minutes, I said we were amazing. It's difficult to find a team to play like this." He returned to the fans in his post-match remarks, telling ESPN that "when you talk about America, that passion, that feeling, today they were amazing, and now they realize that soccer here in America is massive." For the road to 2026, this matters because seeding math moves with every result in the group: under the 48-team format, the cost of finishing second in Group D shapes bracket geography all the way through the new round of 32, and a Game 1 win at home buys margin that a draw simply does not. Readers planning around the USMNT's road through the 2026 World Cup can now treat a second-place fallback as a contingency rather than a working assumption.

Christian Pulisic, who assisted Balogun's opener with a first-half through ball, was substituted at the interval after taking a kick to his left calf. He told ESPN he was "really hoping that it's nothing." Sebastian Berhalter replaced him and, according to CBS Sports, formed the 24th father-son pairing in World Cup history with his father Gregg, the former USMNT manager. Pochettino's decision not to push Pulisic with the match settled is the kind of selection call that compounds across three group games.

Balogun's night, Reyna's coda

Balogun said afterward, per CBS Sports, "I visualized scoring, so to put that memory into action is amazing." He added to Yahoo Sports that the evening was "a real dream, you know, it's a dream. It's a dreamy night." Reyna entered late in the second half and finished the scoring in stoppage time with what Yahoo Sports described as "an exquisite goal with the outside of his foot from the top of the box." Paraguay's lone reply came from Mauricio in the 73rd minute, per CBS Sports.

For viewers who picked between live attendance Friday and a stream from the couch, the staging at SoFi sets a reference point for the rest of the group stage. The U.S. home crowd reached 70,492 inside the bowl, per ESPN, and the result was settled by halftime once Balogun's brace went in. Fans tracking the rest of the Group D schedule now have a working sense of the U.S. home-venue match-day pattern.

What is next

Pochettino's group now turns to Australia on June 17 at Seattle's Lumen Field, with a 3 p.m. ET kickoff, per CBS News' tournament schedule. The U.S. then returns to SoFi on June 25 to close the group against Turkey. A second result against Australia would lock in advancement and put first place in Group D within reach before the Turkey finale, a planning horizon worth keeping in view alongside the host venues set to stage knockout fixtures. Weston McKennie, per Yahoo Sports, framed the immediate task plainly: the team should not "over-celebrate" and must hold these standards as the normal expectation.

Sources

• CBS Sports: USMNT vs. Paraguay live updates and score result
• ESPN: Balogun leads USMNT rout of Paraguay in dream World Cup start
• Yahoo Sports: Folarin Balogun scores twice as USMNT beats Paraguay 4-1
• CBS News: U.S. men's 2026 World Cup schedule