With Mauricio Pochettino in place as USMNT coach, the heat will be on his players to elevate the program

Now that all the complexities of the hiring process to install Mauricio Pochettino as head coach of the United States men’s national team have been resolved , and the niceties of his introductory news conference have been completed, what will remain to be addressed for the entirety of his tenure are the eccentricities of the program’s fan base.

Those have endured for a while, and have been amplified by the still-growing contagion of social media. Whereas the fan base’s identity a few decades back mostly was established by the enthusiasm of Sam’s Army and then the American Outlaws, now it ricochets in myriad directions through TikTok or Facebook or whatever the owner is calling Twitter these days.

For the past 5½ years, the focus has been on one element of the program, almost exclusively in a negative sense: Gregg Berhalter, the USMNT head coach from December 2018 to July 2024, with a short sabbatical toward the end of that period.

Whatever happens now, though – whether the U.S. advances to the World Cup semifinals in 2026 or plunges to three consecutive group-stage defeats or something in between – those who derided the American coach for possessing too little experience at the sport’s highest levels or lacking the necessary strategic acumen or simply being American will need to find some other targets for their derision.

This is both good news and bad news for those who play for the USMNT.

DECOURCY: The expectation is excellence with Mauricio Pochettino in charge

It’s bad because those who’d grown so comfortable yelling about Berhalter’s pre-national team coaching resume will search elsewhere to expend their vitriol in the event of a disappointing performance. They won’t be able to blame Pochettino, who has all the qualities they insisted were absent from Berhalter: a high-end coaching tree (Poch played for renowned technician Marcelo Bielsa); achievements at the game’s highest level (he reached the final of the UEFA Champions League as Tottenham Hotspur coach) and he comes from a soccer-rich nation (Argentina).

It’s good because properly managed discomfort can be invigorating for a team by encouraging players to fight harder to maintain their positions and prominence. So long as everything remains within the boundaries of good taste, it might be advantageous for the USMNT to gain some outside motivation.

We’re not talking a Jurgen Klinsmann-level of discomfort. That mess produced significant unrest among the player pool – brilliantly reported by Brian Straus for The Sporting News – during qualifying for the 2014 World Cup and the 2018-cycle failures that led to his dismissal.

No, we’re talking about players not being able to assume they will own starting spots, or that their performances will be acceptable, merely because they are under contract to significant European powers.

The team will gather for the first time under Pochettino in advance of an Oct. 12 friendly in Austin against Panama, who defeated the U.S. in Copa America group play when Timothy Weah drew an early red card. Then the USMNT travel to Mexico to face El Tri on Oct. 15.

“Of course we have a plan, but the most important is to feel how they are – how they feel when together,” Pochettino said of his players. “They can express how they see the team. It’s really important … to be open to analyze. That is going to the first time we’re going to be together, and to try to know them, and for them to have the opportunity to know us.”

During Berhalter’s tenure, the players took blame from the public only if they arrived in national team camp directly from a club in Major League Soccer. During the condensed, unprecedented World Cup qualifying process over seven months in 2021 and 2022, and even into the tournament in Qatar, such players as Jesus Ferreira, Shaq Moore and Christian Roldan were identified by some in the public as catastrophic most anytime they stepped onto the field.

Moore entered as a late, defensive replacement at right back for two games at the World Cup, playing a combined 22 minutes in which the USMNT did not allow a goal – first in protecting a draw against England and then an essential 1-0 victory over Iran – and there are fans who’ll identify those moments as calamitous.

The squad’s Europe-based players never experienced such broad condemnation. Led by forward Christian Pulisic and midfielders Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams, they were referred to as a possible “golden generation” of American talent, a reference that seemed to have originated with USMNT veteran DeAndre Yedlin but was widely deployed by major media headline writers eager to draw eyeballs to discussions of the team.

Now, Pulisic is one of the few now excelling with his club (he’s been involved in nearly half AC Milan’s Serie A goals to date). McKennie at Juventus and midfielder Gio Reyna at Borussia Dortmund are fading from favor at their clubs. Adams and right back Sergino Dest are experiencing significant injury issues. Weah delivered a strong start in his first game with Juventus, including a dazzling goal, then was hurt and might have lost his starting job.

We’ve already seen some of the glow diminished relative to this group of players by the failure to advance from group play at the 2024 Copa America. With Pochettino in place, the default response to any disappointing performance likely will be to harangue or dismiss the team’s player pool.

This is is an ideal time for Pochettino to arrive. This summer’s Copa performance created not only a job opening for him to fill, but an opportunity for him to seize. He is what the loudest portion of the team’s fan base have wanted to see for nearly a decade, or more.