Folarin Balogun scored twice against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium on Friday night, and the only story worth telling is why he was wearing a USMNT jersey at all. Per CBS Sports coverage of the 4-1 result, this is the first time a US player has scored multiple goals in a World Cup since Bert Patenaude’s hat trick — also against Paraguay — on July 17, 1930. Ninety-six years. Same opponent. Same outcome. The symmetry is almost absurd.
In May 2023, Balogun was an English under-21 international with a deeper striker pool ahead of him on the senior roster. He filed for a one-time eligibility switch to the United States, his country of birth, after fans flooded his social media with encouragement. It was a career risk dressed up as sentiment. England had options at striker and a World Cup cycle of their own. The USMNT needed someone who could score in the moments that matter. Nobody knew yet if Balogun was that person — not with certainty, not at this level.
He was.
The first goal came in the 31st minute — a Pulisic through ball, 14 yards from goal, bottom-right corner, slick and deliberate. The second came in first-half stoppage time: a Tillman through ball, Balogun juked two defenders and finished top-left corner, pumping a fist at 70,492 people who’d been chanting his name since kickoff. He played 71 minutes and walked off to a standing ovation. Pulisic finished with two assists on the night, giving him three career World Cup assists — one more than Cristiano Ronaldo’s career total — and those assists arrive from a player whose Pulisic’s goal drought concerns heading into this tournament now look like ancient history.
This was also our preview of this match’s best-case scenario playing out in real time. The USMNT controlled roughly 65 percent of possession, produced their first-ever four-goal World Cup performance, and capped it with a trivela from Gio Reyna in the 90th minute — a reminder that Reyna’s complicated road back to this roster has deposited a 22-year-old capable of pulling off that kind of finish when it stops mattering. It mattered. He did it anyway.
I watched Balogun’s second goal three times on replay, and each time I kept stopping on his face in the immediate aftermath — not elation exactly, but recognition, like he’d always known the moment would come and was slightly impatient it had taken this long to arrive.
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After the match, Balogun said the fans gave him the motivation to make the eligibility switch, that Friday was “a real dream, it’s a dreamy night.” Pulisic described him as “insane” and “lethal right now in front of the goal.” McKennie offered the most telling quote of the night: “This is something we don’t want to over-celebrate, because we want this to be the normal for us.” That’s the right calibration after a Folarin Balogun World Cup 2026 performance that rewrote the historical ledger before the tournament is 24 hours old.
Balogun’s decision to commit to the USMNT always looked like a leap of faith — Brooklyn-born, London-raised, Nigerian parents, English youth system, American flag. The biography alone was complicated. The choice to represent his birth country over the nation that developed him was harder than any of the goals he scored Friday. But he made it, AS Monaco made him a starter, and three years later he is the first US player to score twice in a World Cup since 1930, standing in the middle of SoFi Stadium while 70,000 people refuse to sit down.
When asked his post-game plans for a night this loaded with history, Balogun said he’d probably just watch some Netflix.
England’s loss never looked more expensive.
