DO­HA, Qatar (AP) — Eng­land scored six goals in its open­ing World Cup game against Iran, but it was the two it con­ced­ed that con­cern coach Gareth South­gate and pro­vide hope for the Unit­ed States.

“By the end we looked slop­py,” said South­gate of the 6-2 win over Iran on Mon­day. He al­so warned the U.S. would be com­ing “full-throt­tle” in Fri­day’s Group B match.

The tour­na­ment has al­ready pro­duced some shock­ing re­sults, in­clud­ing Sau­di Ara­bia’s win against Ar­genti­na and Japan's up­set over Ger­many.

A win for the U.S. over Eng­land would not be on the scale of Sau­di Ara­bia's win — but Gregg Berhal­ter’s team is un­doubt­ed­ly the un­der­dog against one of the tour­na­ment fa­vorites.

The two goals con­ced­ed against Iran gave South­gate some­thing to fo­cus on in an oth­er­wise en­cour­ag­ing per­for­mance.

His mes­sage to the play­ers has been clear: They will need to be bet­ter against the U.S. team that tied 1-1 with Wales in its open­ing group game.

“They’re a top na­tion with a lot of top play­ers who have played in the Pre­mier League and who we’ve come up against,” said Eng­land goal­keep­er Jor­dan Pick­ford. “But it’s about us as a squad be­ing 100%. It’s about us tak­ing the re­sult from Iran and go­ing in­to the U.S. game pos­i­tive.”

One of those Pre­mier League play­ers is Chelsea winger Chris­t­ian Pulisic, a point of fo­cus for Eng­land's de­fense.

“He’s good with both feet, very clin­i­cal,” Pick­ford said. “We’ve got to be wary of him.”

A win for Eng­land would see it qual­i­fy for the round of the 16 with a game still to play - but the fate of Li­onel Mes­si and Ar­genti­na is proof noth­ing can be tak­en for grant­ed.

“It’s what World Cup foot­ball is all about,” said Pick­ford. “There are go­ing to be sur­pris­es.”

U.S. goal­keep­er Matt Turn­er is pre­dict­ing more of them at the World Cup.

“You see that the world of foot­ball is lev­el­ling out in a lot of ways,” he said. “Teams have game plans. Teams have been in­vest­ing in their youth acad­e­mies over a num­ber of years."

“I think the mes­sage is when you have one team that’s bought in­to the same mes­sage, you can beat any­one on any giv­en day.”

The U.S. fa­mous­ly beat Eng­land 1-0 in the 1950 World Cup and the teams tied 1-1 in 2010.

If the U.S. is to pro­duce the lat­est sur­prise of this year's tour­na­ment, it will have to con­tain an Eng­land at­tack that was ruth­less in the match against Iran, which fea­tured two goals by Bukayo Sa­ka.

“I think it’s pret­ty clear he’s one of the young stars of world foot­ball,” said his Ar­se­nal team­mate Turn­er. “He’s a top, top play­er and you don’t need me to tell any­body on our team how much of a threat that he pos­es in the game. He’s scor­ing goals in a va­ri­ety of ways. He’s re­al­ly de­vel­oped, ma­tured."