After the game, Tillman let the world in on a little secret: he wasn’t particularly happy with his performance. The reason why was quite ironic.
“I wasn’t satisfied at halftime,” he admitted, “especially because of my set pieces.”
Perhaps Tillman was just saving his big set piece for the right time. In the 82nd minute, after a Bosnian foul just outside the box, Tillman and Antonee Robinson stepped up to the ball. Robinson took half a step, but Tillman took a few more before firing off a shot with his right foot that went up and over the Bosnian wall.
“Their team is huge,” Chris Richards said after the game. “I think like the average height on the wall was like 6-foot-6, so for him to get it up and down was really amazing.”
Bosnian goalkeeper Nikola Vasilj never saw it coming. Stationed on the right side of the goal, all he could do was helplessly leap in an effort to get a hand to Tillman’s shot. There was no chance.
“The second goal came when we just had the ball, and we were controlling the game,” Vasilj said. “We started creating situations, and then out of nowhere, we conceded that second goal.”
The goal gave the USMNT a 2-0 lead, one they wouldn’t relinquish in the game’s final moments. It also ignited a crowd that, at that point, had grown tense after 18 minutes of watching a 10-man USMNT group defend for their lives.
The moment that ball hit the back of the net, the pro-USMNT Bay Area crowd exhaled. So, too, did the American players on the field.
“It’s such an important moment,” Christian Pulisic said. “We would have had to defend and try to hold off until the end of the game, of course. For him to get that, it gives us that cushion, and it gave us so much confidence.”
Added Haji Wright: “We’re excited for Malik. That decided the game for us and kind of calmed any nerves in the stadium that were there.”
It was a once-in-a-lifetime goal in a once-in-a-lifetime moment. It was, however, not a once-in-a-lifetime free kick.
