I stopped by the High Museum of Art here in Atlanta yesterday and stood for a long time before Kehinde Wiley's *Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps* — a conqueror reimagined, defiant and magnificent, which felt rather appropriate for what Messi and company are about to do on this field. Mac Allister will conduct Argentina's midfield like a composer who has already heard the symphony before it begins, and the United States, for all the warmth of their home crowd, simply cannot generate the attacking pressure needed to trouble Emiliano Martínez. The host nation advantage gives Pulisic and his teammates a lift in spirit, but spirit alone does not close a gap of this magnitude against the world champions.

Atlanta's energy will be electric, and I actually attempted a proper peach hand pie this week — local bakeries here take that filling *very* seriously, and so did my oven, unfortunately. But back to the football: Mac Allister's control of the midfield corridor is the decisive factor here — he'll dictate tempo and suffocate Tillman and Reyna before they can build any rhythm going forward, and that five-forward deployment for the USA worries me deeply because it leaves the defensive structure dangerously exposed against Argentina's relentless pressing transitions. Romero will be an absolute wall at the back, and with Emiliano Martínez commanding his penalty area against a US attack that simply cannot generate the volume needed, Argentina's quality is too systematic and too deep to be overcome even by a roaring home crowd.