“You're back, you're really back, the men's national team…”
Those words were uttered not by an in-stadium hype man or an adoring fan blogger, but “The Today Show” host Savannah Guthrie as she and her co-hosts Hoda Kotb and Craig Melvin welcomed Benjamin Cremaschi, Caleb Wiley and Gaga Slonina to a live appearance on one of the most-watched television platforms in the United States on Thursday morning, the iconic Eiffel Tower looming in the background behind them.
This is just the type of mainstream exposure that Olympic success can earn athletes, and it’s a reflection of the rarified air the US men’s team has reached by advancing from the group stage to a high-profile quarterfinal duel with surprise package Morocco on Friday at Parc des Princes (9 am ET), where the lush grass is usually prowled by Paris Saint-Germain’s megastars.
Only once in the modern era have the US men gotten this far at the Olympics: at Sydney 2000, where departed icon Clive Charles led the team to first place in their group, then edged Japan in a quarterfinal decided by penalty shootout before falling to Spain in the semifinals and eventually finishing fourth.
One step closer to a medal
Olympic soccer matches are usually held all over the host nation, so the US men are literally just now joining the event’s main party in Paris by progressing this far. USMNT legend Tim Howard was on that 2000 squad, and during his commentary on the broadcast of Tuesday’s emphatic 3-0 dispatching of Guinea, he described the experience of arriving in Sydney proper in awestruck terms, almost like the protagonists in “The Wizard of Oz” glimpsing the Emerald City.
“Nothing’s really been accomplished yet,” Nashville SC’s Walker Zimmerman told The Washington Post. “We’re at the first step of what we came here to do. Hopefully the fans are going to get behind us and keep supporting from back home, and hopefully we can give them something to be proud of.”
You won't find many neutral observers picking the young Yanks to go much further in a final-eight field that includes global elites Argentina, Spain and France and highly technical, talent-rich contenders like Japan and Egypt. But with the momentum of comprehensive, assertive back-to-back victories, this MLS-dominated US squad are surging in confidence.
“We’re ready,” D.C. United product Kevin Paredes told reporters after his two-goal, man-of-the-match performance on Tuesday. “Straight up, we’re ready.”
Head coach Marko Mitrović drew ample critiques for his roster selections heading into this tournament, particularly for the decision to leave out Diego Luna despite the Real Salt Lake starlet’s strong 2024 form and key contributions to the Under-20s side that booked the United States’ place at these Summer Games.
But the former Chicago Fire assistant has gotten plenty right on French soil, building a study defensive group in John Tolkin, Miles Robinson, Zimmerman and Nathan Harriel and goosing more out of the attack by partnering D.C. United alums Paredes and Griffin Yow on either side of Paxten Aaronson in a false-9 role in the group-stage finale. The latter trio were clever, creative and incisive throughout.
“We can possibly make a lot of issues with our dynamic moments with these front three guys,” Mitrović said after Tuesday’s win. “Sometimes those ideas are good, sometimes it works, sometimes they don't. But today it worked, and it was good.”
The sheer effervescence of that forward trident vs. Guinea would seem to make them a no-brainer for Friday’s starting XI vs. Morocco.
“We’ve been together the past couple camps, really finding ourselves together like a brotherhood, each and every day, getting used to each other,” Paredes said. “It just shows in our football. We’re so happy to have the ball. We’re so happy to play together. In these past couple of games, it really showed.”
Tough Morocco test
With somewhere around two million-plus Moroccans and people of Moroccan descent living in France, this will almost certainly be a strongly partisan crowd in favor of the Atlas Lions, who’ve brought PSG star Achraf Hakimi as an overage player and boast the tournament’s leading scorer to this point in Soufiane Rahimi.
The UAE-based striker has four goals in their first three games, including the brace that powered Morocco’s supremely dramatic – and chaotic – 2-1 upset of Argentina, the result that enabled them to win Group B. But then again, the Atlas Lions haven’t often been here before either.
While their senior squad reached the semifinals of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the only other time they reached the Olympic knockouts was in 1972, under a dramatically different format and context than the present day.
Survive this test, and the US can play for an Olympic medal in a Monday semifinal vs. the winner of Japan vs. Spain.
“It's probably going to be our toughest game as of now,” Slonina told the “Today” crew. “We don't just want to be the team remembered as making it past the group stage [for the first time] in over two decades, we want to be known as the team that comes away with the gold medal.”
