{"id":735173,"date":"2026-06-30T16:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/735173\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:48:08","slug":"bosnia-and-herzegovina-takes-on-usa-in-world-cup-round-of-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/735173\/","title":{"rendered":"Bosnia and Herzegovina Takes On USA in World Cup Round of 32"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-testid=\"paragraph-element\" class=\"rich-text mb-6 font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee mt-8 focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\">\u201cThis game is going to be like watching 11 U.S. Jet Skis against a large Bosnian battleship, really a Balkans collective,\u201d says Bennett, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/03\/17\/nx-s1-5750358\/we-are-the-world-cup-book-review\" title=\"undefined\" target=\"undefined\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">whose book <\/a>We Are the World (Cup) was released earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"paragraph-element\" class=\"rich-text mb-6 font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee mt-8 focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\">A pair of Bosnian players to keep an eye on are Edin Dzeko and Esmir Bajraktarevic. Dzeko, 40, is the all-time leading goal-scorer for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one of Europe\u2019s most feared strikers, having suited up for the likes of Manchester City and Inter Milan. \u201cHe\u2019s one of the game\u2019s great eternal snipers,\u201d says Bennett.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"paragraph-element\" class=\"rich-text mb-6 font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee mt-8 focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\">Bajraktarevic, nicknamed \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7402831\/2026\/06\/28\/esmir-bajraktarevic-bosnia-herzegovina-usmnt-wisconsin-world-cup\/\" title=\"undefined\" target=\"undefined\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Milwaukee Messi,\u201d<\/a> grew up in Appleton, Wisc., and played for a Milwaukee-based club team starting when he was 13: he\u2019s the son of Bosnian refugees from Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in July 1995 in what the International Court of Justice concluded was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/observances\/srebrenica-genocide-commemoration-day\/about\" title=\"undefined\" target=\"undefined\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a genocide.<\/a> \u00a0Bajraktarevic made his Major League Soccer debut for the New England Revolution in 2022; in 2024, at just 18 and after playing for U.S. national youth teams, he got a call-up to the senior national squad. Bajraktarevic played in one game, a friendly against Slovenia, before switching to the Bosian team that summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis game is going to be like watching 11 U.S. Jet Skis against a large Bosnian battleship, really&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,403,21,19,22,20,25,24,84938],"class_list":["post-735173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-soccer","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\/735173","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=735173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}