\u201cThere’s a lot of people here that maybe have never come out to support us,\u201d says McKennie. \u201cBut hopefully today, with this performance, they can connect with us. We want to be relatable. They can see the joy that we have when we play.\u201d<\/p>\n
The game wasn\u2019t all roses. Before the World Cup, Pulisic grew frustrated with all the talk about his goal-scoring slump, for both club and country.\u00a0 \u201cSuch bad questions,\u201d Pulisic told TIME<\/a> in an April interview about this drought. \u201cI’m not concerned about it, man.\u201d <\/p>\n Pulisic did score a goal in a World Cup tune-up game against Senegal in late May, but more importantly, on Friday night, showed how he can shape a game with his playmaking. Pulisic came out blazing, but got kicked in the calf and sat out the second half. \u201cWhen he finished the first half, he could not walk,\u201d U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino said afterward. \u201cWe\u2019re hopeful the next game he\u2019ll be available.\u201d<\/p>\n That potential setback shouldn\u2019t overshadow the team\u2019s accomplishment, or its promise. Defender Chris Richards<\/a>, the reigning U.S. Soccer men\u2019s player of the year, returned to action from a May ankle injury: All he did was complete all 83 of his passes, the most passes with 100% accuracy by any player in a World Cup match since 1966, according to ESPN Insights<\/a>. Remember Gio Reyna,<\/a> whose alleged lack of effort nearly got him sent home by former coach Gregg Berhalter at the last World Cup, and led to a stunning public feud between the Reyna and Berhalter families? Reyna, a reserve on Friday, chipped a shot into the net right before the final whistle, making his case for a super sub role. \u201cHe deserves it,\u201d says Pulisic, of Reyna\u2019s goal. \u201cWe see stuff from him like that every day.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere’s a lot of people here that maybe have never come out to support us,\u201d says McKennie. \u201cBut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":701917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24,84938],"class_list":["post-701916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}