Mauricio Pochettino is bringing fight and focus back to the USMNT

0 0 5 minutes read

Mauricio Pochettino is bringing fight and focus back to the USMNT

There is something cosmically funny about all of this. Late last summer, the United States men’s national team went out and hired the most qualified manager it could find. The one with the most impressive coaching resume far of anyone US Soccer had ever employed on the men’s side. The most expensive, certainly. By a multiple. The man brought in to arrest the tailspin the USMNT had slowly slipped into after the 2022 World Cup. To finally unlock that elusive next level. To help a golden generation, or at least a shiny one, come good at last. To salvage something, anything, from a World Cup played mostly on home soil a year from now. Not to squander it all.

Related: Diego Luna double fires US past Guatemala and into Gold Cup final

And what should Mauricio Pochettino add to the US national team’s brew of aptitudes and attitudes but pluck and grit? The very same underdog mentality, the ferocity and fitness, that had once taken the US from global laughingstocks to merely unembarrassing and then to internationally competitiveness.

That sort of mindset had a ceiling, it was decided a decade and a half or so ago. And the Yanks kept on bumping their heads into it. So they hired Jürgen Klinsmann to sprinkle his fairy dust over the team, except he didn’t understand how to execute his own lofty plans and dismantled the team’s mentality-monster culture in the process. And then Gregg Berhalter brought it back for a bit, only to misplace it again.

That was still more or less the shape the US was in three weeks ago. A mirthless two-loss debacle at the Concacaf Nations League in March. Two more defeats to Turkey and Switzerland, both playing at three-quarters speed, in early June. The Americans were underdogs again. Long shots. A soccer community mumbled to itself about those 10 regulars lost to rest and injuries and the Club World Cup.

Since then, something elemental has been reclaimed. The USMNT are competitive again, proud again. By going back to basics.

They ground out a 2-1 semi-final result against Guatemala in St Louis on Wednesday, courtesy of Diego Luna’s 15-minute brace, to reach Sunday’s Gold Cup final with Mexico in Houston on Sunday – a record 13th appearance in the regional title game.

In the broad assessment of Pochettino’s time in charge of the US – likely following the World Cup when he’ll probably go chase after some other project, as is the wont of the most sought-after managers – Sunday’s penalty shoot-out win over Costa Rica in the quarterfinal will likely loom large. The Americans prevailed in a feisty game, matching the intensity of an opponent intent on making a slugfest out of the bout, showing some personality at long last.

On Tuesday, Pochettino elaborated on just how much he appreciated the urgency with which his team had rallied around Malik Tillman that day. The American attacking linchpin was taunted by some of his Tico opponents after missing a penalty, whereupon a big scuffle broke out involving the entire US team. “It’s the whole group,” Pochettino said, clearly delighted that the press conference had landed on the merits of a good scuffle. “It’s the keeper [Matt Freese] also, because he ran 100 meters to be in the fight. That was amazing. That means something. For me, I’m Argentino – we love to fight – that means a lot.

“That means that we are connected, that we care about my teammates,” Pochettino continued. “That needs to be natural between them. We can select 26 players, but to be a team is a different thing.”

He liked, the Argentine said, that after four weeks together, team meals were lively. That the three tables the USMNT eats at have an energy sparking between them that makes them feel like one. Or something. “That is a spontaneous situation that you cannot force, you cannot push,” said Pochettino.

The long and short of it is the Americans are a team again.

Certainly, there is sophistication at work in their run to the Gold Cup final as well. This incarnation of the USMNT is increasingly well-drilled in its defensive organization and attacking patterns. A team that was inexperienced and unfamiliar a month ago moves as a unit, shifts shapes in transition, zings the ball around cleanly. Within a clear structure, there is room for Tillman and Luna to express themselves, to roam and to assert their influence both creatively and as the team’s high pressers. The Americans have scored some wonderfully well worked goals in this tournament.

The victory over Guatemala made for a strange sort of game. The US were utterly dominant early and ran out to a quick 2-0 lead, only to spend the rest of the game defending it increasingly frantically against the world’s 106th-ranked team, getting outshot 20-12.

Before a heavily pro-Guatemalan crowd at Energizer Park in St Louis, one of the spiritual homes of the American game, Guatemala played in their first Gold Cup semi-final in 29 years. They turned up with a roster that was domestically based but for six players active in the US and Canada and one each in Romania and Moldova. These were not pedigreed players, yet their countrymen in the stands roared for a second successive upset, after Los Chapines dispatched Canada on penalties in the last round.

“Today, I need to tell you, it was like to play in Guatemala, in Tegucigalpa,” said Pochettino. “And that was good for our players, because it was an atmosphere we didn’t expect.”

In the fourth minute, Luca de la Torre shot from outside the box, following a long, crisp American buildup. Luna snuck ahead of his marker, José Rosales, snagged the rebound and then tucked it past Kenderson Navarro. Ten minutes later, Luna ran at the box, beat his man with a stepover and located a crack of space and time to rip his shot past Navarro at the near post.

From that point, Guatemala would be the aggressors, forcing several strong saves by Freese and seeing a goal disallowed as it put ever more attackers on the field. In the 80th minute, 18-year-old Olger Escobar found some room in the American area and finally beat Freese to narrow the score, provoking a furious final assault. Few things in soccer are quite as dangerous as an unchained team, playing for the equalizer with absolutely nothing to lose.

Still the US held on, avoiding the penalty lottery that nearly undid them in the previous round, collecting just enough clearances and disrupted Guatemalan attacks to see out the clock. Perhaps there was something slightly undignified in clinging on against a team that, on paper, ought not be a threat. The other interpretation is that it was a sign of growth.

“It’s the grit, it’s the determination that we’ve been lacking, to be honest,” Luna told Fox. “It’s fighting to the end, every ball, every moment.”

Presently, it’s no use arguing with the USMNT’s pint-sized scrapper. For he has come to embody its new ethos.