U.S. can claim a win despite falling to Mexico in Gold Cup final
The United States was completely outdated by Mexico in the Gold Cup final Concacaf on Sunday. He was surpassed, outstripped, exceeded and undoubtedly outside his league.
Which, surprisingly, was partly how coach Mauricio Pochettino wanted it. Because the one-month tournament has never really been a question of results for the United States, it was a question of finding the heart, the grain, the determination and the dedication. It was a question of taking the pulse of his player swimming pool a year before the largest football event returned to North America.
And these are things that are not easily measured by the results alone.
Thus, while Mexico rightly won the Battle of Sunday 2-1, the greatest war, thinks Pocsettino, is raging.
US defender Chris Richards celebrates with Alex Freeman, Patrick Agyemang, Malik Tillman and Diego Luna after Richards scored against Mexico in the Gold Cup final on Sunday.
(Ashley Landis / Associated Press)
“This,” he said after Sunday’s final, “is the way we want to build our trip to the World Cup.”
When Pochettino gathered his team for the tournament in early June, he lacked up to six starters of first choice for various reasons. Some had club tasks, some were injured. Others preferred resting resting to play for their country.
Pochettino therefore called a list that was on average only 25 years and 14 players with less than five international ceilings and challenged them to prove that they belonged. It was the team that took place in the last unbeaten on Sunday (barely) in five games from the Gold Cup. It was the team that entered the last 15 minutes against a veteran team from Mexico, even on the dashboard.
If it was the team “C” of Pochettino, no one has troubled it to the players.
“It’s an honor,” Gold Cup Diego Luna told the United States. “I think each of these players think about it the same way as me. This is the n ° 1 dream that we had as a child and we will fight so that it is so likely to wear it. ”
Crédit Pocsettino for having taken the lemons which were given to him and transform them into a lemonade. After the USMNT’s innately apathetic performance in the Final Four of the League of Nations of last March, where he marked only once in consecutive defeats against Panama and Canada, the coach learned the majority of his programming of the first choice planned to let the Gold Cup pass, the latest games in the team before the World Cup.
If the United States had lost its identity, had lost its way, at the end of the League of Nations, the absences of the veterans Yunus Musah, Gio Reyna, Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie this summer gave Pocettino an unexpected opportunity to redefine what it meant to be a national team player. He pushed his inexperienced young list of the players of the national team of Fringe to show how much they cared, to show that they really wanted to be part of the program.
And it worked.
The United States players pose for a team photo before the team of the Concacaf Gold Cup of the team against Mexico in Houston on Sunday.
(David J. Phillip / Associated Press)
Luna started for a World Cup place through the grain and hunger alone. Others such as goalkeeper Matt Freese, the field circles Sebastian Berhalter and Malik Tillman and striker Patrick Agyemang also shone brilliantly enough that the coach declared that his alignment for the friendly matches in September with his team with South Korea and Japan, even less the World Cup, was widely opened.
“All American players have the opportunity for September to be on the list,” he said on Sunday. “It’s always a year from the World Cup. But now we have to build a list for September. We must analyze each player, see circumstances, situations, performance, fitness level.
“Don’t worry. We are people who are very open, and not closed. And which deserves to be [there] will be [there.]””
Pochettino’s message is that national desire and pride are as much an obligation to play for the national team as talent. It is partly a bluff, of course. He will not go far in the World Cup with Luna and Berhal playing in place of Pulisic and McKennie because all the starred celebrations in the world cannot hide the fact that the team that Pochettino organized this summer was deeply imperfect.
He prepared for the Gold Cup by exceeding 6-1 in losses against Turkey and Switzerland, executing the team’s defeat sequence against four games, it has been longer since 2007. The United States has rebounded with narrow victories over Saudi Arabia and Haiti to advance the group phase of the tournament and in the Knockout stadium, he beat Costa Rica on the kick Guatemala for one to reach the final.
Of these six opponents, only Switzerland ranks in the top 20 of the world, according to FIFA. Guatemala is not even in the top 100. And the defeat against Mexico was the fifth in as many games against the best teams since Pochettino took more than nine months.
It won’t do it in the World Cup.
If the heart, effort and belief really matter, talent too. This makes the pocket task in the next year: he has to find a means of jersey the accessories developed this summer with the talent he will need to win next summer.
While the players moved from the Houston NRG stadium after Sunday’s defeat, this merger already took place.
“There are now some non-negotiations,” defender Chris Richards told journalists. “It was a kind of change of game.
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