MORRISTOWN, N.J. – With nine months to go until the 2026 World Cup, the U.S. men’s national team are in timeline purgatory, experiencing the friction of the calendar, the stop-start nature of international soccer and the weight of expectations. It is still unclear how much time is enough time for a host nation to prepare for what onlookers hope will be a groundbreaking performance next summer, but almost a year into the job, head coach Mauricio Pochettino has set his agenda — this month’s friendlies against South Korea and Japan will be the last chance to expand the player pool, the roughly 10 games on the calendar afterwards enough to fine-tune things.
Pochettino’s agenda is rooted in the fact that the mission was accomplished at this summer’s Concacaf Gold Cup, even if his group surrendered an early lead and eventually lost in the final to Mexico. Spending much of the summer with inexperienced players rather than the team’s veterans, the team is describing this month’s camp as a continuation of the learnings of the Gold Cup, a tournament that offered his first real opportunity to work with the USMNT for more than a few days at a time.
“[Being] successful is to keep what we started to build in the Gold Cup,” Pochettino said on Friday ahead of a friendly against South Korea. “Always, it’s good to win because that gives you the confidence and trust, but I think the objective is to add players, new faces that really start to buy the idea that we started to build when we started the Gold Cup … I think that is why I am a little relaxed that the main group is starting to understand what we want and we want to arrive in the World Cup in our best condition. They need to know each other.”
For the players that played at the Gold Cup, the foundational elements of Pochettino’s intense, attack-minded style of play are starting to become clear, and the fact that they have had almost a full week to prepare for South Korea has made it easy for them to help the others catch up.
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“I think they definitely stay the same,” midfielder Jack McGlynn, a Gold Cup participant, said about the team’s core principles, “starting with intensity and just fighting for each other. … I think probably just some of the ways we press, just working on that with some of the new guys here in camp. It’s pretty similar to how we were in Gold Cup, but I think it’ll be great to have them in it and just keep working on that because we had a good week of training.”
The responsibilities differ for defenders, who act as an anchor for the team.
“Offensively, he gives us a lot of freedom to do whatever we want,” defender and fellow Gold Cup attendee Chris Richards said, “but I think defensively, I come from playing a five in the back, so I’m maybe being less aggressive when I’m stepping out but making sure that people around you are in the right position.”
That juxtaposition is a key fixture of Pochettino’s tactical vision for the USMNT and a stark reminder of a key pain point for this team over the last few years. The USMNT currently boast several impressive attacking players like Christian Pulisic, who Richards described as “our star boy,” but the group has rarely strung together a genuinely impressive offensive performance. Injuries to different players have made it difficult for Pochettino to strike that balance with a first-choice group but is a priority of his, especially so as he chooses the performance over the result this month.
“That is the thing that I hate, being predictable,” Pochettino said, “but you need these types of talents, talented players that can do different things from respecting the organization, but having the possibility to also create the chaos in the opponent because he’s creating the chaos in the other team, but with organization. I don’t know if I can explain, but I try.”
His attempts in creating organized chaos will be aided by the reintroduction of Sergino Dest, who is finally back with the group after suffering an ACL injury last year that kept him out for roughly a year. Richards said Dest, “brings something to the team that maybe we were lacking in the summer” and is “probably the most attacking fullback in the world,” the player comfortable on both the left and right flanks. It is unclear how big a role Dest will play this month, describing himself as close but not at full fitness just yet, though he may be key to Pochettino’s free-flowing stylistic plans for the USMNT.
“He’s a player that we definitely see an ability to play high, to play with him, his quality, using him like a midfielder, using [him in] different set-ups, different positions,” Pochettino said. “For me, the most important [thing] is we need to find the right organization, but from this organization, from that position, you have to have the freedom to move, to create superiority. If he plays inside, he also has the possibility to go and to create … and to have space on the line because he’s a player you see there and has the capacity to move forward and be a player that scores goals.”
Dest met Pochettino for the first time in June for a pre-Gold Cup training camp, though the coaching staff wanted the player to prioritize a full return to fitness over the summer instead. His first impressions of Pochettino and company are positive ones, though, as he plans to reassert himself as a go-to for the USMNT.
“I feel like at the moment, it’s maybe a little bit more strict and we have some more things that we have to do,” Dest said about the current vibes compared to what he experienced under Pochettino’s predecessor, Gregg Berhalter. “The staff came to visit me during my injury sometimes, so I really appreciated that. … I like the staff. I just like them. They approach me good and also, they helped me as well. When I got back to Europe in June, I went to Barcelona and obviously, they live there so they have some contacts so they helped me set up some training sessions.”
The strictness is perhaps the point. Pochettino has used his first year on the job to expand the player pool to around 60 players, a bold choice that has been viewed by some as sacrificing chemistry, increasing pressure on a team with plenty of potential but with few performances or results to show for it. The head coach has insisted on leaving no stone unturned in player recruitment, though, laying out the argument while answering a question about Noahkai Banks, the FC Augsburg-based 18-year-old who could earn his first cap this month.
“He’s really young but it’s good to see him and because he can go fast to the next level. This type of player always, you need to understand, to know before because after, you can be surprised and say we didn’t have the possibility to see or to know how he is,” Pochettino said, fearful of the idea of learning of a player’s talent too late. “That is this type of thing that you need to be ready [for] and prepared because sometimes, his transformation or in the way his path, maybe he can be faster than another and he can arrive [in] six, seven or eight months and he can be the best center back in Germany. … At the moment, it’s not like we have 10 center backs and then he’s the 11th because the squad is really open.”
The argument reminds of a familiar theme in Pochettino’s first year on the job. The perceived frontrunners for World Cup roster spots need to actually earn them. This period of experimentation, surprising as it may have been for many considering the limited run-up to the World Cup, is designed to do just that – even if Pochettino will kick the can slightly further down the road on answering questions about whether or not this experiment has worked.
“I agree that there probably isn’t a hierarchy anymore and that you’re only as good as your last camp so I think that’s kind of the mentality that the training staff has given us,” Richards said. “Every time is a chance to come in here and earn your spot and if you were going to choose the roster tomorrow, it could completely change, probably to the next day. Every time you come into camp is a chance to earn your spot so your place is never safe.”
