Day -4 until kickoff
Twenty-eight goals in thirty World Cup matches. That's the number that has haunted American soccer for three decades — a scoring rate so meager it reads less like a statistic and more like a confession. The USMNT has qualified for every World Cup since 1990, built world-class midfielders, developed technically gifted attackers, and still couldn't solve the one problem that ends tournament runs: they couldn't score enough. Now, with the tournament opening on home soil in four days, three strikers are about to either bury that history or repeat it.
The Man Who Chose This Moment
The centerpiece of Mauricio Pochettino's attack is Folarin Balogun, a 24-year-old who had every reason to be somewhere else right now. Born in Brooklyn, raised in London, developed at Arsenal, he could have waited for a call from England or answered one from Nigeria. Instead, he committed to the United States in 2023 — and the timing is about to look either prescient or perfectly timed, depending on how the next few weeks go.
"I feel like my individual journey is a bit full circle now, approaching the World Cup," Balogun said this week at the U.S. training base in Orange County. "Especially with the World Cup being here, the opportunity to represent my nation in front of a home crowd is going to be something special."
The credentials back up the sentiment. Balogun finished fourth in Ligue 1 scoring this season with 13 goals for Monaco, was named the club's Player of the Season, and across all competitions found the net 19 times. USMNT captain Tim Ream, who has faced him daily in training, put it plainly: "He's probably the most annoying striker for me to have to deal with in training because he is so quick with his movements, physically strong and able to seemingly glide past people."
That's the kind of endorsement you can't manufacture. Balogun is the focal point — the No. 9 the program has been searching for.
The Depth Is Actually Deep
What makes this striker situation genuinely different from previous World Cup cycles isn't just Balogun — it's that the backup plan is also good.
Ricardo Pepi wears the No. 9 shirt and arrives off a 19-goal season for PSV Eindhoven, where he helped the club to another Eredivisie title. He narrowly missed the 2022 World Cup roster and has spent four years proving that omission wrong. "The pressure aside, we see it more as an opportunity," Pepi said of playing in front of a home crowd.
Then there's Haji Wright — a Los Angeles native who scored the lone striker's goal for the US at Qatar 2022 and has since racked up 18 goals while helping Coventry earn promotion to the Premier League. All three of these players arrive with legitimate European scoring records. That's not a coincidence; it's the product of a generation that took the path seriously.
FIFA's official squad announcement confirms all three are in Pochettino's 26-man group, with Balogun described as the "main No. 9" and Pepi and Wright providing depth behind him.
The System Has to Meet Them Halfway
Here's the honest caveat: having good strikers and using them well are different problems. The Guardian's analysis of the USMNT's pre-tournament friendlies flagged a real tension — the team's tendency to build up the left channel through Ream and Antonee Robinson gets Christian Pulisic on the ball more regularly, but can leave Balogun isolated as the attack tries to work back into the central third. In the Germany friendly, that pattern was visible enough to notice.
Balogun averaged just 26.4 touches per 90 minutes across six friendlies since last summer — not a lot for a central striker who needs rhythm to stay sharp. The saving grace is that 24% of those touches came inside the opposition box, which is where it matters. He doesn't need to be involved in every sequence; he needs to be in the right place when the ball arrives.
Pochettino's system is built around Pulisic's creativity and McKennie's engine. Balogun's job is to be the destination — the player who converts the work everyone else does into the goals the program has historically failed to produce.
The Opener Is the Test
The US faces Paraguay on Friday night in their Group D opener, and the striker conversation will either get very loud or very quiet very fast. The US Soccer website has already documented what happened in that match — but the broader point stands regardless of the scoreline: this is the most credentialed American striker group in World Cup history, and the tournament is being played at home, in front of crowds that will make the noise feel like a physical force.
Twenty-eight goals in thirty matches. That's the number Balogun, Pepi, and Wright are playing against. Four days to start rewriting it.
