U.S., Paraguay play for survival

Elimination in Copa America Centenario is at stake for the teams in Saturday’s game.

PHILADELPHIA — When the U.S. invited 15 Latin American neighbors over to play a little soccer this month, Coach Juergen Klinsmann promised not to be a rude host and leave the party early.

Klinsmann said his team had to make it to the second round of the Copa America Centenario for the tournament to be considered anything other than a disaster.

By that measure, the U.S. will be staring disaster in the face on Saturday when it faces winless Paraguay in its final game of group play at Lincoln Financial Field. With a win or draw, the U.S. moves on to the

quarterfinals. With a loss, it watches the rest of the tournament on TV.

“It’s just a very clear situation,” Klinsmann said.

And he sought to keep it that way, dismissing speculation the U.S. might go conservative Saturday and settle for a tie rather than attack Paraguay and go for the win.

“We don’t have the character to pass it back and let them come and just go for a counter-break. That’s not us,” Klinsmann said. “We have to be really involved in the game. We have to set the tone. We have to keep a very high level of aggressiveness and determination from the first second of this game.

“We knew it was going to get down to the wire with the third game. That’s what we have now. I love this type of situation. This is already a knockout game.”

The question now becomes which U.S. team will show up to play it. Inconsistency has been the national team’s one constant in its five years under Klinsmann and that pattern has continued in this tournament.

In the Copa opener, the U.S. lacked cohesion and confidence and paid for it with a one-sided loss to Colombia. Four days later, Klinsmann started the same 11 players, but aligned them differently and the U.S. blew out Costa Rica, 4-0.

On Friday, Klinsmann, more a motivator than a master tactician, was looking at the Paraguay game as a test of nerves more than a test of strategy.

“You want your players to go … into it with a big chest and take the game to Paraguay. Show them we are able to play these games,” he said. “We came out of the ‘Group of Death’ [at the World Cup] in Brazil. This is a tough group as well. You want those benchmarks.

“That’s why, over the last years, we have always tried friendly games against big nations, going away from home, to learn to deal with situations that are difficult. Tomorrow will be difficult.”

It figures to be more difficult for Paraguay.

The South Americans are 0-2-3 since November and are playing for pride as much as they’re playing for a spot in the quarterfinals.

But they’re also playing without key midfielder Oscar Romero, who is suspended for the game against the U.S. after drawing two yellow cards in Paraguay’s loss to Colombia on Tuesday.

After that game, frustrated Coach Ramon Diaz attacked the officiating as well as a grueling schedule that gave his team only two days off between its first two games and then forced it to fly across the country twice in four days.

No other team in the tournament traveled that much in that short a time. The U.S., for example, had three days off between each of its games and had a week to get from California to Philadelphia.

But as least Diaz doesn’t have to worry about any complicated math at this point because anything short of a victory Saturday earns his team another long trip, this time back to Paraguay.

“The only result that’s going to do us any good is a win,” Diaz said in Spanish. “We’re playing the home team, who will have their fans behind them. But if we win we go through.

“Nothing is impossible.”