It’s easy to assume that the onset of the World Cup knockout rounds brings immediate tension. These are the games where legacies are crystalized in a zero-sum manner – every heroic turn paired with a Baggio-like blemish. Then again, the round of 32 is new. The field doesn’t truly feel like it’s been narrowed down yet.

So maybe the ho-hum start of the tournament had brought the temperature down as Tim Ream fielded questions from the press on Monday, hours before boarding a plane to the Bay Area and ending the team’s lengthy stay here in southern California. The knockout round journey is about to begin.

“Would it be weird if I told you I don’t really feel too much pressure at this minute?” the US captain quipped when asked about Wednesday’s date with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“I just think there’s so much pressure that we put on ourselves. It feels very different this time around than 2022, I will say that – not because [this is] the round of 32 and that was the round of 16. I think we felt more pressure for that first game against Paraguay than than anything, and that’s coming from ourselves, not from from anything on the outside.”

This will be the first competitive clash between the two teams, after three friendlies. The most recent, on 18 December 2021, involved just three members of Mauricio Pochettino’s squad for this World Cup; only one of Bosnia’s players from that day is on their 26-man squad this summer.

Yet history still looms. The aftermath of USA’s dead-rubber defeat to Turkey has restored hand-wringing over the team’s record against Uefa opposition – the Americans have failed to win in 13 consecutive matches against Europeans since a win over Northern Ireland in March 2021. The US have lost the last 10 of those.

“With knockout rounds, anything can happen,” Gio Reyna said, donning a backwards snapback that drove home his youthfulness compared to Ream. “This team really does well with challenges.”

Reyna has undergone a years-long challenge to get playing time for club and country. He cracked Pochettino’s rotated lineup to close the group stage, exiting after 76 minutes for his longest run-out since a Borussia Dortmund match on 15 December 2024.

There was evidence of rust. Reyna struggled to find viable passing lanes into dangerous areas and saw most of his upfield passes fail to find a target, instead recirculating often before his exit. His frustration was visible at times, such as when he slammed a ball into the turf as the referee blew for halftime.

If group play is any indication, lock-pickers like Reyna will be necessary to unsettle a well-structured opponent. Bosnia managed only 20 passes into opponents’ boxes across three games, the third-fewest of any team that advanced to the knockouts. Pressure will likely come from wide areas, as the youthful wing tandem of Esmir Bajraktarević (PSV) and Kerim Alajbegović (Bayer Leverkusen) offers dynamism and a threat to cross on to the timeless forehead of Edin Džeko.

Unless they change their approach, of course.

“I don’t know that we completely expected Paraguay to be the way that they were in the first game,” Ream reflected. “There’s always things that get thrown at you, so I don’t know that we fully expect Bosnia to just be defensive. I think we have to be able to expect the unexpected, as we proved against Australia. You see similarities [with Paraguay and Australia], but then there’s also things that we’re going to have to solve that they throw at us in situations in game. That’s down to us as players to figure those puzzles out.”