IRVINE, Calif. — Going into halftime the last time the United States played Australia, head coach Mauricio Pochettino wasn’t happy. And he let his players know.Pochettino screamed. Slapped his hands together. Lambasted the group, not for the performance but for a lack of fight. For being bullied by a physical Australian team, in a game which star forward Christian Pulisic was forced to exit in the first half with an injury following several heavy challenges, and not punching back.“’We’re American, we don’t take s—.’ That’s something he really drilled into us,” midfielder Sebastian Berhalter said on Tuesday. “Even though he’s Argentinian, he has that mindset. This is what we do, this is who we are and this is what America is about.”The United States and Australia will renew that rivalry on Friday (3 p.m. ET in Seattle) with a top-of-the-group clash in Group D. The U.S. and Australia impressed with wins to kickoff the tournament and, with a war of words brewing off the field between media pundits, the fight will continue on it.Pochettino’s halftime speech was captured in Episode 5 of the HBO docuseries around the team called “U.S. Against the World”, as well as in U.S. Soccer’s own “Behind The Crest” series. In the second half, the U.S. took those words to heart and showed up with more fight.“They come and they fight,” Pochettino said in his speech. “When are we going to fix that? … Match their aggressiveness.”By the end of the game, Chris Richards said if he didn’t get a “s— yellow card”, he “probably would’ve killed somebody.”The U.S. won the game 2-1, behind two Haji Wright goals but, more importantly, fought for each other.“I remember going to halftime, the coach wasn’t too happy with letting them punch us, in a way, without punching back,” Wright said. “So I think going into this game we’ll be able to prepare a bit more, knowing how they’re going to be.”Surprisingly for such a physical game, there were just two yellow cards handed out. By fulltime, the U.S. was called for more fouls (16) than their opponents (13).“That game in Colorado was fun,” winger Tim Weah said, with a big grin. “That experience was fun. It was aggressive. I think from that game, we’ve changed a lot. We’ve gotten a bit more aggressive as well.”Friday’s match will be even more intense and the U.S. is waiting to find out the status of Pulisic. The star forward exited the team’s win over Paraguay at halftime with a knock (calf). As of Tuesday he was still in modified training, not with the group, and is labelled as “day-to-day” by the team. His teammates have said this week that they expect him to be ready for the game, though.Either way, no matter who is on the field, the United States is ready for the fight. So is Australia, who won’t back down, either. Both groups of players respect the other locker room. Whoever wins will control their destiny in Group D, as finishing first place sets up a much more manageable knockout round path than sliding to second or third.Neither team is thinking of that yet, though. Just trying to pick up three points and fight like hell for every blade of grass.“It’s going to be a great game, they’re going to fight,” Berhalter said. “We like teams that have that brotherhood, you know? We like teams that you can see they’re hungry, they want to fight.”