Last night saw the US men's national team pull off their most dominant effort in a World Cup game in generations, defeating Paraguay 4-1 in the highest-scoring performance by the USMNT in tournament history. As it turns out, the USMNT weren't the only ones making history. The fans were too.
During the pregame show for Saturday's World Cup action, FOX announced that at 15.986 million viewers, the USMNT-Paraguay game was the most-watched U.S. men's match ever on an English-language broadcast. The number doesn't account for Spanish-language or other foreign language broadcasts, which could wind up causing the number to skyrocket.
For perspective, the last three USMNT openers were noticeably smaller. Just 8.31 million Americans tuned in for the English broadcast of USMNT-Wales in 2022. 11.1 million tuned in for USMNT-Ghana in 2014. The prior record was 13 million tuning in for USMNT-England in 2010.
Granted, the numbers FOX presented were from their own data, not the official national numbers, which won't be available until Tuesday. But it's still a very strong indicator that the final number will break the prior record regardless.
The action on the field certainly would have warranted it anyway.
© Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images
The Game
The USMNT-Paraguay saw the home side dominate for the entire first 45 minutes, scoring three goals against the South American side. The opener came off an own goal, but the next two came from striker Folarin Balogun, who made history by becoming the first USMNT player in 96 years to score multiple goals in a game.
In the second half, things settled down a bit, especially once star midfielder Christian Pulisic was subbed off. Paraguay scored a goal to prevent the USMNT from keeping the shutout, but super-sub Gio Reyna avenged that goal with a screamer of his own on the final play of the game to make it 4-1.
Those four goals were the most in team history at the World Cup, and the three-goal margin of victory was tied for the best in team history.
Confidence is going to be ultra-high heading into next week's game against Australia.
