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The United States Men’s National Team<\/a> fell 1-2 to Germany in Chicago, Illinois, in its final send-off match before the 2026 FIFA World Cup<\/a>.<\/p>\n German striker Kai Havertz<\/a> opened the scoring in the second minute, but American left back Antonee Robinson<\/a> leveled the game at the end of the first half with a long-distance screamer. Germany’s Leroy Sane slotted a goal past USMNT keeper Matt Freese\u00a0<\/a>in the second half to seal the game in Germany’s favor.<\/p>\n The USMNT was not expected to win this match; it scheduled this friendly against Germany to test its mettle against the world’s best. When viewed through that lens, its close, hard-fought loss was no tragedy, but it did halt some of the momentum the team picked up after beating Senegal<\/a> 3-2 in Charlotte, North Carolina.<\/p>\n Here are the key takeaways from the USMNT’s acceptable, but not exactly inspiring, performance:<\/p>\n Antonee “Jedi” Robinson is one of the USMNT’s best players; stack-rank him against any left back in the world and he’ll come out looking competitive. But Robinson isn’t a goalscorer in the traditional sense \u2014 he’s much more of a creator than a finisher \u2014 so when he finds the back of the net, it’s headline news. His last goal for the USMNT was way back when in 2023.<\/p>\n Until now. Robinson scored a glorious long-range screamer off the bar to equalize the game at 1-1 in the first half. It was a cool finish from an infrequent scorer. And it was telling that his celebration \u2014 a pretty impressive acrobatic roundoff back-tuck situation \u2014 was just as on-point as his goal was. If Robinson hadn’t been expecting to score, he wouldn’t have thrown a Cirque du Soleil move like that off the cuff. He was drilled and he was ready…and his high-flying celebration proved it.<\/p>\n Robinson wound up limping off in the second half; here’s to hoping he’ll be back to his back-flipping best in time for the World Cup.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nAntonee Robinson was ready<\/em> for that goal…<\/h2>\n