Mauricio Pochettino had enough. Just for a minute or two, quickly enough to miss it, he broke free from the unrelenting positivity he appears to have shackled himself to in his year-long spell in charge of the United States men’s national team. For only a few moments, the Argentinian was clearly … como se dice … cranky.
“People sometimes create debate and talk with no sense,” he said on the eve of the USA’s friendly against Japan. “If people want to talk about bullshit, they can talk about bullshit.
“Sometimes people want to talk only to analyze the result and want to be negative,” Pochettino continued, responding to the swelling criticism of his call-ups and a slew of losses to the stronger opponents he faced when he had his much of his A-team available. “I think it’s a shame. We need to be positive because we need to be all together. Because the country deserves that we are all on one side trying to help to arrive to the World Cup in the best condition.”
And then Pochettino caught himself and flashed his winsome smile.
“Look, we started in October,” he said. “We needed not too much time. Normally, the process [of building a national team] starts to work after three, three-and-a-half years. In less than one year, the process is starting to work. Maybe not in results, but maybe tomorrow it starts to work in results. No worries, we have a plan. We have no worries. We have no worries about nothing.”
The comments rankled that day for their gaslight-y optimism, coming as they did in the wake of a sloppy 2-0 loss to South Korea in which the Americans had looked badly disjointed again. But sure enough, the next day, the US finally got the longed-for result. They looked convincing and coherent at last, defeating Japan 2-0 when the final score could have fairly well been double that.
Rather than gloat, Pochettino elaborated on his argument after the victory. There had been, he argued, a lot to do when he and his staff took over from Gregg Berhalter almost exactly a year earlier. “We didn’t arrive in a team that was performing,” Pochettino said. “We [didn’t] arrive and damage a team that was doing really well. I think that wasn’t the case.”
Pochettino also pointed out that when he’d called in the longtime USMNT regulars for the Concacaf Nations League in March, as fans and pundits expected him to, it had turned into a disaster. The Americans lost both their matches – to Panama and Canada – and looked entirely unbothered about the entire thing.
The national team needed a reset. And that required new faces and fresh energy and tactical experiments. This, inevitably, invited criticism when winning games became subservient to trying things. And Pochettino expected a certain latitude to do as he saw fit.
“Look, with all the information that we have … we take decisions … If all the people agreed with me in all the decisions, why I am here?” Pochettino said. He laughed, then repeated himself: “If I am doing all that you want and the people talk [about], what I am doing here?”
With a week’s hindsight, and just under nine months until the USA’s World Cup opener in Inglewood, it’s clear Pochettino had a point.
If the job was to call up the same old players, curate the same complacent culture, and play in the very same way, what did US Soccer need him for? Why hire one of the world’s most seasoned and admired coaches? Why not just hire some Berhalter-type from the American coaching ranks? There are plenty of them, after all. Hell, why not just retain Berhalter himself?
There is a clear-eyed case to be made that, actually, despite the hand-wringing, everything is fine and dandy for the US. Pochettino has been without key players for every single international window of his tenure. And he has leveraged those absences into assets, room to build depth and internal competition, both things that were lacking under Berhalter. He handed opportunities and then offered experience to MLS players, at least a half dozen of whom – Diego Luna, Max Arfsten, Alex Freeman, Matt Freese, Jack McGlynn, Cristian Roldan – have emerged, or been rediscovered, as handy pieces for the World Cup roster.
In the 3-4-2-1 system the US started against Japan, Pochettino found a formation that highlights his players’ best qualities and covers for deficiencies – against an opponent arrayed in similar fashion (albeit one that rested most of their first-choice players). During the run to the final of the summer’s Gold Cup, and in three of four halves in the September window, the Americans played with a hunger and tenacity that had been misplaced somewhere after the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
If you care to look past results, lots has been achieved in the past year.
The thing that you can’t plan for, or work your way through, however, is the degree to which the Americans performance at a second World Cup on home soil will be dictated by fortunate timing and plain good luck. Landon Donovan once made the point that the team’s success, or failure, at all three of the World Cups he played in came down to just a few bounces. That was also true of the fourth World Cup, in 2014, that he should have been a part of.
This was evident once again this past window, when Folarin Balogun, the Monaco striker beset by injuries for months, was finally back and flashed his class. Days later, Ricardo Pepi, the player pool’s other leading striker, scored a pair of goals for PSV in his first league start since December, owing to his own injury. Conversely, Daryl Dike, who might be somewhere on a crowded striker depth chart otherwise, is hurt yet again. Who will be healthy, and also happen to be in scoring form, come June? Will anyone?
Will Weston McKennie be in one of his annual periods at Juventus where the club decides it has no more use for him? Or will it be one of those times when the club decides that, no, wait, actually, he’s totally essential and deserves a new contract? Will Gio Reyna be on his 101st or 102nd manager by then, and will it be one of the ones who plays him regularly?
Pochettino has made the point several times that the Argentina team he started for at the 2002 World Cup hadn’t lost in more than 10 months before that tournament, winning 11 of 17 matches. And then they were knocked out in the group stage in Japan. South Korea, the other co-hosts of that tournament had won just three of 14 tune-up games, before going on perhaps the most stunning run in modern World Cup history, reaching the semi-finals.
And what about the US when they last hosted in 1994? The Americans had a three-month winless drought at the start of that year, including an alarming loss to Iceland. They won just a quarter of their games in the year before the World Cup started, and real doubts lingered about US head coach Bora Milutinović and his inscrutable methods.
“Has he panned out? If you look at the win-loss record, the answer has to be no,” US Soccer general secretary Hank Steinbrecher said of Milutinović just days before the tournament kicked off. “If you look at where we were three years ago – stylistically, lack of competition, credibility – the answer has to be yes.” The Americans survived the group stage at that World Cup, far exceeding global expectations of them.
While it’s hard to avoid measuring and comparing every step taken to the World Cup, when you’re automatically qualified, your buildup to the tournament doesn’t actually much matter. All that really counts, as Pochettino put it, is that you start winning “When the World Cup starts.”
Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out in the spring of 2026. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University.
