Win or go home: The U.S. to face Bosnia and Herzegovina in World Cup knockout game



The U.S. men's national team has had an impressive start to this World Cup — winning its group and getting an advantageous path in the knockout round. That round begins Wednesday with a Round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Santa Clara, Calif.

The U.S. men's national team has had an impressive start to this World Cup — winning its group and getting an advantageous path in the knockout round. That round begins Wednesday with a Round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Santa Clara, Calif.
The U.S. men's national team has had an impressive start to this World Cup — winning its group and getting an advantageous path in the knockout round. That round begins Wednesday with a Round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Santa Clara, Calif.
Manu Fernandez/AP

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The U.S. men's national team's ambitions of a deep run at the FIFA World Cup hang on something they have not accomplished since 2021: Beat a team from Europe.

In Wednesday's must-win Round of 32 match at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, the Americans hope to finally climb that hill with a win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. A victory would mark the first World Cup knockout win for the U.S. since 2002.

Compared to powerhouses like France or Spain, Bosnia is a relative minnow of European soccer. Ranked No. 64 by FIFA ahead of the World Cup, the Bosnians fought their way into the tournament on an upset playoff win over Italy in March — then, they muscled into the knockout round after a 1-1 draw with Canada and a 3-1 win over Qatar.

The Americans are the favorites. But no knockout game is a sure thing, as Germany proved Monday when it fell to Paraguay on penalty kicks.

"For us, it's the final of the World Cup," said U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino on Tuesday. "If we don't think in this way, we are going to struggle."

The U.S. expects to field a fully healthy starting 11 for the first time in this World Cup, thanks to the return of star winger Christian Pulisic, who left the opening game against Paraguay at halftime after a calf injury was exacerbated when he was kicked by a defender. The U.S. went on to win that game 4-1 and their next one against Australia 2-0, with Pulisic sitting out.

Pulisic returned as a sub in the Americans' third group stage match against Turkey. "I felt great in the game against Turkey, so I'm feeling good this week," he told reporters on Tuesday. "I'm definitely ready to go for tomorrow."

Playing for Bosnia is the American-born winger Esmir Bajraktarević, a 21-year-old native of Appleton, Wisc., born to Bosnian parents who came to the U.S. in 2001 after fleeing conflict in their home country during the 1990s.

In Bosnia, Bajraktarević's parents and their families lived near Srebrenica, where some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in July 1995 in one of the only events in history formally deemed a genocide by the International Court of Justice. Multiple members of their families were killed.

Bajraktarević grew up speaking Bosnian at home, he has said, and stayed close with relatives who remained in Bosnia. Although he came up through MLS academies and U.S. Soccer youth national teams, Bajraktarević formally switched his national team to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2024.

Bajraktarević scored the game-clinching penalty that sent Bosnia to the World Cup in its March upset of Italy, which was then ranked No. 13 in the world. After his kick found the net, Bajraktarević tore off his jersey and held up the back of it, with his family name across the top, to the fans and cameras.

"He can feel the jersey he's wearing. It means very much to him," said Bosnian coach Sergej Barbarez on Tuesday. "He knows where he belongs. He knows which team he plays for. He knows where his parents come from."

It is Bosnia's second World Cup appearance after being eliminated in the group stage in 2014.

U.S. fans have had many reasons to believe at this World Cup. The U.S. won its group and has moved on to the Round of 32.
U.S. fans have had many reasons to believe at this World Cup. The U.S. won its group and has moved on to the Round of 32.
Ted S. Warren/AP

Copyright 2026, NPR



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What is KPI

KPI is nothing but a measurable value, which shows the best ways for organizations to achieve their essential goals of the business with efficiency. Companies take the help of KPIs at various levels for their successful evolution to reach targets. The concentration of high-level KPIs is on the entire business performance, and the focus of low-level KPIs is on departments processes like HR, marketing, sales, support, etc. we can say it simply as a set of value measures, which is used by organizations to evaluate its entire performance.

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When to use a KPI

It is the best choice when we decide to use KPI. We can use KPIs in the given situations.

  • We can use KPI for progress measurement and to answer the questions like “where am I in front or behind”.
  • We can also use KPIs for distance measuring for companies’ business objectives, and we can answer the questions like “how much distance is there behind or ahead.

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KPI requirements

The visuals of KPIs are based on particular measures, the main intention of these KPIs is to help us in present value evaluation and the defined target metrics. Base measures are essential for the visuals of KPIs, which helps in value evaluation, target measurement, and target measurement. Its dataset requires maintaining the goal values for KPI, in the case when there are no goal values with our database, then we may design them by combining an excel sheet with our model of data goals and the file of PBIX. 

Prerequisites to use KPI in Power BI

There are two main prerequisites to use KPIs in power bi, the given below are those prerequisites.

  • To use KPIs in power bi we need to install a power bi desktop in our system.
  • We have to maintain the data source and the relevant existing report for KPI which we designed.

Requirements for creating KPI in Power BI

To build KPI in power bi there are some essential requirements, they are like threshold value, trend, target value, measure value, etc. for value evaluation we must require the base measure. For our power bi report generation, we need to choose the goal and base value from the database, which you are working on currently. With the help of these values added to our database, in later sections we are permitted to create a KPI. 

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How to create KPI

Let us see the process of KPI creation in the Power BI desktop with simple steps.

  • First, we need to open the report editor then choose the required report. On the right side there is a visualization pane, click on the KPI visual.
  • After the KPI visual selection three blank spaces appear on the field section, they are target measure, trend axis, and indicator.
  • The field panel contains all the fields of imported tables, we take the values from them to put in the indicator column.
  • In the next step, we fill the columns of the trend axis with the fiscal month and the target measure column with the goals field.
  • As shown in the given diagram, KPI is ready with our selected values. Now we need to format this KPI by choosing the paint roller icon in the format section. Then we are allowed to fix the properties for title background, title, color coding, trend axis, etc.
  • Finally after the completion of the KPI formatting process according to our preferences, the output came as shown below.
Business Intelligence & Analytics, power-bi-kpi-description-0, Business Intelligence & Analytics, power-bi-kpi-description-1

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KPI elements in Power BI

We can classify KPI in Power BI into three elements They are thresholds status, target value, and base value.

  • Base value: It is a measured value, that is an average of sales and gross profit.
  • Target value: It is also the absolute measure value, it is a bunch of goals the evaluated target value. We can fix the target up to 200 units per month for a while, then our base value will be recorded for the month. Either it may be less than 200, 200 or more than 200.
  • Thresholds status: Thresholds status offers a range for base and target values evaluation, the visual also provides low and high end of the range between the values fall of base and target.

Advantages of KPI in Power BI

KPI is simple to use, we may utilize them to expose the complex information equally. The given below are the two main advantages of KPIs in Power BI.

  • We can utilize KPIs for progress measures, they are like negative and positive changes. We can know if we are gaining proper results or not, about meeting targets, and lagging.
  • KPIs are also used for distance measures for the target, we can analyze the distance like how far we have with the achievement of our target.

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KPI custom visualizations

Along with built-in KPIs, which we created there are various visualizations. Those visualizations are related to KPI, which we can install from the marketplace of Power BI. We can add them by clicking on the icon from the marketplace, the given below are various visualizations.

  • Bullet charts: It works as a representative for measure value and target value evolution, it also offers the evaluation of context performance through marketers’ performance.
  • Dual KPI: Two visuals of KPI are exposed by a dual KPI that are next to each other, those visuals are dynamic and they can change the information in KPI. They are informative but there is no need for huge space for Dual KPI. 
  • KPI indicator: The visuals of the KPI indicator display the status with a cloured background. It displays the base value and the percentage is used to indicate the variations between the values of base and target.
  • Power KPI: It is a kind of multi-lined chart, which displays the base value in lines format with various colors. 

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Conclusion:

KPIs are simple in looks, but at the same time they are complex and while creating we may face problems. We require our KPI to be up to mark when we are new to using KPIs. As this is complex we must be careful and get a complete idea of these KPIs, then only we utilize it properly in power bi. We thought this blog may help you as much as you require. If you had any queries or questions that need to be answered please do comments below, to get your question answered quickly by our HKR expert trainers.

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