The final tune-up before the World Cup couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start but a resilient United States Men’s National Team found the equalizer only for Leroy Sane to score the deciding goal for Germany in a feisty 2-1 win at Soldier Field in Chicago on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Kai Havertz scored two minutes into the match for Germany but a brilliant strike by Antonee Robinson in the 37th made it 1-1 before a goal by Sane in the 57th minute from an Havertz assist gave the No. 10 team in FIFA’s rankings their ninth straight win.<\/p>\n
The stadium was rocking with players from the 1994 team — the last time the World Cup was held in the U.S. — in attendance, the fans waved red, white and blue flags and the national anthem was rowdy.<\/p>\n
Then the match started.<\/p>\n
Just 1:45 after kickoff, Havertz got his head on a bending free kick by captain Joshua Kimmich. The sequence began with a Tyler Adams foul on the edge of the penalty area.<\/p>\n
On the restart, Havertz slipped behind Miles Robinson and directed the ball past Matt Freese, who was slow to react.<\/p>\n
Equally stunning as the Germany goal was the thunderous left-footed strike by Robinson for the equalizer.<\/p>\n
Christian Pulisic sent a right-corner into the box where it was cleared to the top of the arc. Robinson met the looping ball with a fastball past goalkeeper Oliver Baumann and followed with a pair of back flips.<\/p>\n
“It was a real shoulders-back-and-smash-it kind of moment,” Robinson said on the broadcast after the match. “I just seen the ball looping. I thought, ‘Just commit, hit it, look down and try and hit the target.’ Luckily, it went in, and yeah, it was a great feeling.”<\/p>\n
It was emblematic of the resurgence after the early setback, and the U.S. finished the first half leading in corners, 8-1.<\/p>\n
But on the winning goal, Sane’s shot from near the top of the box was deflected slightly and went to the left corner past a diving Freese.<\/p>\n
Baumann preserved the lead with a reactionary save of an 18-yard liner by Brenden Aaronson.<\/p>\n
“Ultimately we saw what we wanted to see in this game,” Adams told TNT Sports after the match. “To concede that early in a game like this is always going to make it difficult but the character we showed, the energy, the resilience – I mean, guys were going at it like it was a World Cup final and that’s what we want to see.”<\/p>\n
U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino fielded what could be his starters for the first match of the World Cup with the exception of injured defender Chris Richards.<\/p>\n
Whether the match showed the U.S. is ready or not, the World Cup begins for them Friday in Inglewood, Calif., vs. Paraguay.<\/p>\n
–Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final tune-up before the World Cup couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start but a resilient…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30396,5,207,327,805,30397,363,30405,30407,284,30406],"class_list":["post-31812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-antonee-robinson","tag-germany","tag-joshua-kimmich","tag-kai-havertz","tag-leroy-sane","tag-miles-robinson","tag-oliver-baumann","tag-tyler-adams","tag-united-states-men39s-national-team","tag-world-cup","tag-world-cup-final"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}