{"id":26085,"date":"2025-06-30T03:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T03:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/26085\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T03:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T03:11:08","slug":"usmnt-survives-costa-rica-thriller-advances-to-gold-cup-semifinals-via-matt-freeses-penalty-shootout-heroics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/26085\/","title":{"rendered":"USMNT survives Costa Rica thriller, advances to Gold Cup semifinals via Matt Freese\u2019s penalty shootout heroics"},"content":{"rendered":"

MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 The U.S. men\u2019s national team scraped past Costa Rica in a dramatic Gold Cup quarterfinal here on Sunday, winning 4-3 on penalties<\/a> after a 2-2 draw over 90 roller-coaster minutes.<\/p>\n

The USMNT erased an early deficit, but blew a second-half lead. Then, after the 90 minutes ended level, it blew another lead in a roller-coaster shootout. But goalkeeper Matt Freese, in his first month as the U.S. starter, made three massive saves to one-up Costa Rican legend Keylor Nava and send the USMNT through to the semifinals, where they’ll face Guatemala.<\/p>\n

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“Penalties are my thing,” Freese said post-match. “[On] the plane ride over here to Minnesota, I was studying penalties. I’ve been studying them all week and I was ready for it if we needed it.”<\/p>\n

Freese first sprung low to his left. Conversions from Tyler Adams and Malik Tillman \u2014 who’d missed a penalty in regulation \u2014 put the U.S. ahead. But Sebastian Berhalter’s miss relinquished the advantage.<\/p>\n

Freese then stood his ground, in the center of the goal, to slap away a penalty from Francisco Calvo. That gave John Tolkin a chance to win the shootout for the U.S., but his well-struck penalty was saved by a sprawling Navas.<\/p>\n

Freese, though, was not done. He denied Andy Rojas. Substitute U.S. striker Damion Downs then stepped up, scored, and sparked the wild celebrations.<\/p>\n

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The night began with the U.S. going behind in the 12th minute. Max Arfsten’s clumsy tackle gave Costa Rica a penalty. Francisco Calvo converted.<\/p>\n

And for 20 minutes thereafter, the U.S. struggled. After half an hour, it had two shots and zero on goal.<\/p>\n

The USMNT looked as stagnant as ever, until Malik Tillman played a slick one-two with Patrick Agyemang. Tillman’s cross came to nothing, but a Costa Rican follow-through caught his ankle. A few minutes later, referee Walter Lopez went to the monitor, and, after a VAR review, pointed to the penalty spot.<\/p>\n

Tillman stepped up, and missed the penalty. But from there, the U.S. came alive.<\/p>\n

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Arfsten, who was at fault on both Costa Rica goals, set up Diego Luna for a deflected equalizer.<\/p>\n

And then, after halftime, Arfsten put the U.S. ahead. Tillman, whose head had dropped after missing the penalty, engineered an incisive attacking move to set him up.<\/p>\n

From then on, their first-half faults were forgotten. The U.S. looked comfortable. A semifinal matchup with Guatemala, and a path to a final against Mexico, seemed to have opened up.<\/p>\n

But in the 71st minute, Costa Rica’s Carlos Mora split Arfsten and Luca de la Torre, and knifed into the box. He fired a shot at Freese. He took the rebound, and teed up Alonso Mart\u00ednez for Costa Rica’s second goal of the night.<\/p>\n

From there, it was Los Ticos who pressed for a winner. Mart\u00ednez slammed a well-hit shot off the post in the 85th minute.<\/p>\n

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Neither side could find a winner, though, and a tense match went to penalties.<\/p>\n

That’s where Freese came up huge to send the Americans to the semifinals, where they’ll face Guatemala on Wednesday in St. Louis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 The U.S. men\u2019s national team scraped past Costa Rica in a dramatic Gold Cup quarterfinal here…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[22995,22992,22996,8898,22990,22997,11172,22989,22991,22994,8883,8887,2222,8882,22993,62,8894,67,132,68,8885],"class_list":{"0":"post-26085","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-andy-rojas","9":"tag-arfsten","10":"tag-carlos-mora","11":"tag-costa-rica","12":"tag-costa-rican","13":"tag-damion-downs","14":"tag-diego-luna","15":"tag-francisco-calvo","16":"tag-john-tolkin","17":"tag-luca-de-la-torre","18":"tag-malik-tillman","19":"tag-matt-freese","20":"tag-mexico","21":"tag-patrick-agyemang","22":"tag-sebastian-berhalter","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-tyler-adams","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usmnt"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114770128644417893","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}