Nelson Valdez feared this day would come from the moment his native Paraguay was drawn into the same Copa America Centenario group as the United States.
Sounders teammate and USMNT veteran Brad Evans started the locker-room smack talk almost immediately. Privately, though, Valdez hoped both sides would somehow clinch quarterfinal berths before facing off in the group-stage finale.
Colombia laid waste to those dreams on opening night, cruising past the USMNT in Santa Clara before surviving a Paraguayan scare a few days later.
And so it is with an air of inevitability that their collision course finally comes to a head on Saturday night in Philadelphia, Clint Dempsey’s USMNT and Valdez’s Paraguay playing for a single knockout-round berth.