Paxo the rubber chicken becomes USA's unlikely World Cup mascot after Richards' Conference League find

A rubber chicken named Paxo has become the United States’ unofficial World Cup mascot, carried to Seattle on Friday by Crystal Palace and USA defender Chris Richards — or more precisely, by his parents Ken and Carrie, who brought the bird to the Americans’ 2-0 win over Australia.

Richards picked up the chicken on the pitch in Leipzig after Crystal Palace won the UEFA Conference League final last month. He posed with Paxo alongside the trophy, and the joke took on a life of its own.

“I just kind of ran with it and had a few pictures with it in the Conference League trophy,” Richards said, laughing, after the Australia match. “And so now it’s kind of making the U.S. tour as well, right?”

The USA are not alone in finding feathered fortune at this World Cup. Mexico have adopted a real bird named Merlin, while Scotland supporters marching through Providence, Rhode Island, took in a duck named Dawn as their own. Paxo is the only one made of rubber.

Not all of Richards’ teammates are yet in on the joke. Defender Auston Trusty, speaking after what he described as one of the most famous wins in the American men’s team’s 113-year history, looked genuinely baffled when asked about the chicken. “A chicken?” he said. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.” Richards, asked whether he planned to make introductions, was characteristically relaxed: “Not yet. We’ll see.”

Richards himself was fortunate to be at the tournament at all. He missed Crystal Palace’s Conference League final after suffering an ankle injury on 17 May in a Premier League match against Brentford, and also sat out the USA’s pre-tournament friendlies against Senegal and Germany. He had previously missed the 2022 World Cup through injury.

“I was pretty devastated. I feared the worst,” he said when he arrived at the USA’s training base in Southern California ahead of the tournament.

On the field, Richards has been one of the standout performers of the early rounds. Against Australia he helped the USA keep a clean sheet, ending a run of 10 consecutive games without one. His passing has been extraordinary: he completed all 83 of his attempts against Paraguay in the opener, then went 91 from 95 against Australia. Across both matches he has completed 175 of 179 passes — an accuracy rate of 97.8%, the second-best figure for any player who has attempted at least 100 passes at a World Cup since 1966. Only Romania’s Gheorghe Popescu has bettered that mark.