ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap Weighs In on USMNT’s “Astounding” 2026 World Cup Debut

Jeremy Schaap has been to World Cup matches for 32 years, and he had never seen the United States play like this. The best performance ever, he said, and it isn't close.

The opponent made it more remarkable. Paraguay had a terrific qualifying campaign in South America and gave up almost no goals along the way, a determined, formidable team. The idea that they were steamrollable, Schaap said, is ridiculous. Yet the United States ran them off the field. An own goal in Los Angeles started it, and what followed before halftime was jarring. The Americans were faster, crisper, better coached, and more aggressive. They were spectacular.

Schaap ran through the standouts. Pulisic was brilliant. Weston McKennie was brilliant. Chris Richards had a great game. Tyler Adams, of course. And the man of the match was Balogun, the 23 or 24-year-old who plays for Monaco, scored around 20 goals across all competitions this season, and once found the net in eight consecutive games. If one in 100 American sports fans knew Balogun's name before Friday night, Schaap said, he'd be surprised. The same goes for Richards and, to a lesser extent, McKennie.

Now those players have a chance to do something special at home. A World Cup, Schaap noted, isn't a once-in-a-lifetime event for these guys, since many will play in several. But a World Cup at home is once in a career, with the whole country watching. Twenty-five million people watched the Paraguay match, and even short of the knockout stages, it has changed everyone's sense of the team's ceiling.

The conversation also produced a running bit about a "hydration break," which Rich seized on with mock concern for Schaap's wellbeing despite the 70-degree weather, joking about the Super Bowl blackout and how Fox, which got a discount after the 2022 Qatar tournament, knows exactly where to slot its commercials. Schaap played along, allowing that a heat-index threshold would at least keep teams from complaining about timing.

Then he returned to perspective, the part he insisted on. Paraguay's coach, Gustavo Alfaro, comes from the same Argentine province as USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino, and his team was no pushover. The last time the United States won a knockout match by multiple goals was the round of 16 in 2002 in Korea against Mexico. In fact, that Mexico game is the only knockout-stage win the program has ever had. So yes, Schaap said, fans have every right to rejoice and be buoyant. But it's one game, and the perspective has to stay.