We already know the United States men’s national team is coming to the Bay Area to start the World Cup knockout round. But who the Americans will face may still take days to determine.
The U.S. officially clinched the top spot in Group D by winning its first two matches and watching both teams it beat, Australia and Paraguay, beat Turkiye in their matchups. In FIFA’s predetermined paths for the knockout rounds, the U.S. will play at Levi’s Stadium (which is being called San Francisco Bay Area Stadium for the tournament because of FIFA’s branding restrictions) on Wednesday, July 1 at 5 p.m. Pacific.
In the expanded 48-team tournament, 32 teams will advance to the knockout stage: all first-place and second-place finishers in the 12 four-team groups and the top eight third-place teams. The Americans will face one of those third-place teams in their first knockout match.
So who, exactly, will it be? FIFA published 495 possible combinations for which group the eight third-place teams will come from. For the U.S., it means they’ll get an opponent from one of five groups: B, E, F, I or J. All five of those groups have finished two matchdays now, clearing up the picture considerably.
The match to watch to figure out the U.S. opponent will come on Wednesday night, when Qatar faces Bosnia and Herzegovina in Seattle at 8 p.m. Out of the 330 scenarios where Group B’s third-place team finishes in the top-eight, all but one of those has them facing the winner of Group D. With each country sitting at one point so far, if there is a winner from Wednesday night’s match, that country would have four points, which is expected to be enough to advance.
The Athletic’s forecast gives Bosnia a 58% chance of winning on Wednesday, with Qatar set at 18%. But if the Qatar-Bosnia and Herzegovina match ends in a draw, each team will have just two points and likely miss the next round — opening up the possibilities for the Americans. Using The Athletic again, the next-likeliest opponent as of Tuesday night is Senegal at 8%, followed by Algeria at 5% and Ecuador and Austria at 3% each.
Four teams from those five groups have clinched a top-two finish in their group: Germany, France, Norway and Argentina. Group B’s other two teams, Canada and Switzerland, have effectively clinched top-two spots as well. Jordan was officially eliminated from Group J in thier 2-1 loss to Algeria at Levi's Stadium on Monday night. And Tunisia in Group F has been officially eliminated after two blowout losses, and group leader Netherlands faces them next (who are expected to win and clinch the group). So you can cross off all of those teams from the "possible U.S. opponent" list.
The U.S. team will wrap up its group stage match on Thursday, facing Turkiye in Los Angeles at 7 p.m. while Levi’s Stadium hosts a winner-gets-second-place match between Paraguay and Australia at the same time. After that night, it’s on to Santa Clara and the start of the win-or-go-home matches.