The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.Good morning! Embrace unrealistic expectations today. Inside:
Dreaming: Why not get excited about the USMNT?For the U.S. men’s national team, times have never been this good. The team won its group at the World Cup, playing in front of boisterous crowds on American soil. Two dominant wins preceded a sad but inconsequential loss in a third game that had no bracket stakes, with backups in the lineup. The energy was good anyway. A favorable group draw gave way to an arguably more favorable matchup in the round of 32: Bosnia and Herzegovina, who face the U.S. in the Bay Area on Wednesday.If you want, you can be boring about it. Yes, the group stage was nice, but it was the result of a fortuitous draw with Paraguay, Australia and Turkey, you could say. Our boys remain a deep long shot to win this World Cup, you might point out. (The Athletic forecasts a 1 percent chance.) Sure, this is among the most talented USMNT rosters ever, but it remains a good way short of “golden generation” territory. Yes, the tactics are working, but manager Mauricio Pochettino may or may not remain with the program beyond this World Cup cycle. All fair enough.Or you can be fun and look at the opportunity in front of this team right now.
