Jurgen Klinsmann on U.S.-Paraguay showdown: 'This is it'

"I think everybody's looking forward to a special game here on Saturday night, and we hope for a big house," Klinsmann said. "We hope for huge, huge support, because it's going to be a nail-biter. It's going to be where the fans can be really the 12th man on the field, if they understand the situation, to help us when things maybe don't go perfectly."

With over 45,000 tickets sold as of Wednesday afternoon, Klinsmann is likely to get his wish. And he will get his wish in another crucial area as well.

For so much of his tenure in charge, Klinsmann has yearned for big-time games that put big-time pressure on his team. Saturday night's showdown will be one. The U.S. needs a result to advance to the knockout rounds. Officially, a draw might be enough. Unofficially, outsiders and insiders alike will demand a win.

Those insiders may well include U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati, whose strong words about Klinsmann facing a potentially uncertain future with U.S. Soccer made major headlines.

"Every time you talk about pressure, you talk about expectations that come along with your role with your job, with being on the helm of an amazing program here," Klinsmann said. "Everyone is absolutely entitled to express their own feelings and opinions about it. That comes with the role. I'm enjoying this very, very much because it's a challenging job, but it's also an enjoyable one because you work with players that are hungry to improve, they are listening to you, they want to kind of write their own personal stories in their short careers... You are there to maximize their potential and hopefully get everything out of them, and then, the results, you know, they come along automatically. That's not the problem."

So, about Saturday. I asked Klinsmann: Isn't this exactly what you've wanted for so long?

Klinsmann doesn't always give direct answers to direct questions. This time, he did: