U.S. men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino has less than two months until the CONCACAF Gold Cup begins, meaning his program cannot afford a similar slip-up to the one they endured last March.
The Americans finished fourth in CONCACAF Nations League play, losing 1-0 to Panama and 2-1 to Canada in the recent Final Four. It marked the first time in the competition that the USMNT did not win the tournament and it also marked the first time since 2019 that the Americans suffered back-to-back losses to rival opponents.
Plenty of criticism was voiced at the players following their disappointing March window and Pochettino admitted that the mindset and competition in his squad has to improve.
“The right mindset must be there, because we need to compete for our flag, our country,” Pochettino said in an interview with U.S. Soccer on Tuesday. “What we are trying to do as a staff is to optimize every single area of preparation, and the mentality of the players is really important.
“We need to be intelligent in the way that we are going to select the players and not just choose based on talent alone,” he added. “We need to have the right characters to be really competitive.”
The USMNT lacked physicality and energy in their pair of defeats, conceding a late winner to Panama before also conceding twice against the Canadians. While plenty of international stars such as Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, and Tim Weah were part of the squad, the USMNT failed to rise to the occasion, leaving plenty of fans to ponder about the upcoming Gold Cup.
Due to the FIFA Club World Cup taking place this summer on U.S. soil, Pochettino will be without both McKennie and Weah for the competition, opening the door for others to step in and fill the void. In addition, the European club season still has three-to-four weeks remaining, which could lead to other USMNT players potentially being absent, should injuries arise.
Pochettino will have plenty of roster decisions to make before the USMNT gets back on the field again, but overall the Argentine manager expects more commitment for the entire pool of players.
“For sure to start we must compete hard,” Pochettino said. “We must match the intensity of our opponents, because in these tournaments they are always motivated to play against the USA. Of course we must perform well to win and you don’t always get a result, but for sure in order to win you have to compete.
“It’s not just about showing up in your home country and trying to play nice soccer,” he added. “No, you must be proud, you must fight for the people that would love to be in your position, for the millions of kids that are going to see us and dream to be one day where we are. This is the type of responsibility and commitment we need to show in a different way than we did in Los Angeles.”
The USMNT will face Turkey and Switzerland in a pair of home June friendlies before kicking off Gold Cup play against Trinidad & Tobago on June 15.
So IV no preferred lineup for this Japanese style you want to play.
No problem.
We could just take over Japan, make them them 52nd state, after Canada, and then apply to FIFA to have their citizenship expedited.
I went and listened to the interview as well his pressers after the Panama and Canada matches. One, he says “we” a lot referring that he and the staff need to improve as well. Mentioning how they need to better prepare the team in training. The international timeline is new for Poch and his staff, it’s very different from club football and they’re figuring that part out. He also talked a lot about being more aggressive, but not just defensively as most commentators have suggested here, but with the ball as well. We not only didn’t play hard enough we didn’t make ourselves hard to play against. I also wouldn’t read too much into the term “characters” it seemed more he was looking for the right English word translating in his head what he wanted to say from Spanish. Not so much role player or goon but just the right player fit.
one of my concerns about the man was hearing him described as a new agey motivator type. i think we need smarter selection and actual soccer coaching, not just rah rah. that and honestly i think rah rah coaches tend to be overrated.
i’ve said the offense needs to be more about creating chances and playing more direct, but does that really sound like how “city” soccer gets played. the whole point is fart around fart around, bam catch you sleeping.
one reason i wanted change is i don’t think it suits. but another is i think it’s taught us to be tentative. it’s muscle memory for the scheme.
one reason i want counter is not just fit but it would demand aggression. to me you don’t yell for aggression, you select and scheme for it. guy not playing hard and not scoring hat tricks shouldn’t make the field in any scheme.
talk talk talk. start yanking some people and trying new ones. maybe play some formation where muscle memory isn’t to work the ball to the flag and then pass backwards.
Just pass around isn’t Poch’s usual thing. Possession soccer doesn’t mean just pass around, watch Columbus. I think the problem is the mental aspect. We are pretty bad at closing down the ball, making timed runs, and hitting line breaking passes on time. No guarantees that we could ever win the ball in those midfield traps, actually make a run behind the defense, and actually make the pass. As for replacing guys, one it looked pretty good with 4g in 60 minutes vs Jamaica so you think ok they know what to do. Then you pull out Jedi and play two teams that actually are organized defensively and it all falls apart. Jedi, Pepi, Balo, Dest, Malick, Paredes, Johnny and Campbell were all hurt. It’s one thing to say “we need to force guys out” but when the available replacements are from mid leagues and they aren’t producing there, you’re just praying. I guess we’ll see what Poch can do with a month with these guys in June.
IV,
“talk talk talk.”
Well, you would know about that..
“start yanking some people and trying new ones. maybe play some formation where muscle memory isn’t to work the ball to the flag and then pass backwards.”
And if that new guy isn’t right instantly, how many games will he get to prove he is the ONE? And if new guy is great first time out, what happens if he backslides and sucks big time in the second game?
And we are not talking just one guy, we are talking combinations of guys. How many games do these combos get to make their case?
How much time, how many games do you think you have to get those 23-26 players right?
They say that if you have a chimp randomly typing in front of a keyboard eventually he will write all the screenplays for every episode of Game of Thrones.
Do you have that much time? I call your style station to station coaching. Good luck with getting anything done in the time given.
And that’s not actually “coaching”. You’re just getting rid of guys who make mistakes. Coaching them would mean you would teach them how to stop making their mistakes. Apply that philosophy to dating and eventually you run out of people to date.
“i think we need smarter selection and actual soccer coaching, not just rah rah. that and honestly i think rah rah coaches tend to be overrated.”
Pochettino is not a rah, rah coach. What he is saying is while the USMNT may not have the talent level of the very elite level top teams, they have enough talent that if the USMNT mindset is right and the other team is maybe not at their best , then the USMNT can take them.
The history of the World Cup is littered with exactly that kind of upset. Look up North Korea’s World Cup history. And that is how the USMNT can make a good run.
But first, they have to get their mindset right. We lose to the Panamas of the world because, the first thing they do is get their mindset right. You can call it rah, rah or WTF you want.
But you’re never going to beat anyone if you don’t believe you can.
And , for this to work for Pochettino, he has to be really top notch about evaluating talent.
This whole thing will only work if Pochettino is:
A.) Evaluating USMNT talent correctly
B. ) A good enough coach to get our players’ mindset right.
JR,
Your point about the translation issue is a good one. It has been overlooked in this whole business.
I see that you and IV are ruminating over what Pochettino is now supposed to do.
Disclaimer: I have no inside information. I cannot read minds, so I have no idea what Pochettino is thinking now or has been thinking all along. Given what I have seen in the media, I doubt anyone else outside his inner circle does either.
I have never heard him discuss potential USMNT tactics, other than in the most general of terms. He has a long track record, so his normal preferences are there for all to see. However, the USMNT is a very different and special situation, so I do not know just how relevant his normal tactical preferences are. And unfortunately, we ain’t got no elite big ball difference makers like Messi, Mbappe, Harry Kane or Son.
CP is our very best player, and he is not in that class, at least not yet.
This means it will have to be more of a “team” thing.
Hence the emphasis on “character” and “belief”
All this hoo-hah about the USMNT going either the IV approved caveman way or the dreaded tik-tok Barca way that IV is so terrified of, is jumping the gun.
The first thing he must do is find his 23-26 guys with the appropriately sized balls.
And very obviously, he has not yet settled on them.
Pochettino’s hiring was accompanied by a lot of hype and smoke and mirrors, but the reality was regardless of who was the manager, the two NL games, a handful of friendlies, and the low rent Gold Cup, spread out over the course of about a year or so was not ideal for someone hired to cure whatever ails the USMNT.
So why take on a project with a very high probability of failure?
The money is good, but a failure would be a very high-profile stain on Pochettino’s reputation. When Pochettino was evaluating whether to take the job, in terms of the talent available, I am guessing he looked at:
• the player pool that included 2022 Qatar squad
• the players who have emerged since then
• the players who might emerge between now and early 2026.
Pochettino and his staff do not strike me as morons. I assume they concluded that, with a little luck, and good management, they would have the horses to get the job done.
What is “a little luck” and what is “the job” we are talking about here?
• A “little luck” is a good draw and having most of our players healthy and available. We have no control of either circumstance, hence the “luck”.
• The “job” is to advance out of the group, win the first knockout game and maybe the next one. I am going out on a limb here but whether they play select team, no fullback over the halfway line caveman ball or tik-tok pretty Barca ball, if they do achieve those objectives, the fans and media will not give a fuck about the tactics. I certainly won’t.
I was glad Pochettino took the job because I wanted someone, outside of the US soccer scene, with his credentials to evaluate the USMNT and the rest of the talent pool from the inside. Sure, he has not been a national team manager before, but I wanted someone with his knowledge and his experience to do a deep dive on the team and then put their money where their mouth was.
One other point, with a job like this where your time with the team is extremely limited, the very last thing you want to do is throw out all the old players and start over with a bunch of newbies.
My guess is, and it is just a guess, is that Pochettino started with the Qatar lineup as his baseline and is working his way back from there.
Even without a mandate to go full revolutionary, it already looks like Pochettino is going to have a WC team with quite a few regulars who had little or nothing to do with Qatar. Whatever you think of them, Balogun, Pepi, Diego, Patrick, Johnny, Tessman, and Richards, all non-participants at Qatar, already look like good bets to make the 2026 roster and be regular players along with CP, Tyler, Weston, Weah and Yunus.
I see Gio, Ream and Matt Turner as question marks . They need to pray for twenty-six player rosters.
Qatar had twenty-six player rosters so seven new players equal 27% roster turnover.
And if all seven start, that means 64% turnover from the Qatar starters, if that matters to anyone.
And there are other players on the way. Anyone who maintains that the USMNT has not already had significant turnover since the last World Cup is mathematically challenged.
If Pochettino can get his 23-26 big ball players together over the course of the two friendlies and the Gold Cup then installing the tactical package should not be that onerous. My guess is that they will try keep things fairly simple.
It’s an oversimplification but Deschamps kept France in a fairly straight forward defensive 442, waited for teams to make a mistake and then used their stars to punish them.
re “need the right characters,” a lot of that reeks of scapegoating and bait-and-switch unless i watch actual starters lose their jobs. we played a tournament recently. we played some players more than others. we lost. a team that wants to win — as opposed to merely discipline — changes starters. not just subs.
obvious example — reyna. i feel like that’s part of where this is headed. reyna is divisive in a political sense. but the thing is, reyna saw the field for 21′ down 2-1 in the 3rd place game. there was no further scoring either side after he subbed. he didn’t add, but he also wasn’t responsible for the loss. reyna did not even play in the semi.
i wouldn’t be surprised if reyna gets dropped. but inasmuch as he didn’t play much at all, that would be a bait and switch “scapegoat.” you say we need to set aside hype and whatnot. you then drop someone who had little to do with winning or losing.
it’s the starting lineup that is dooming this. until you address that sacred cow situation, this will continue to stink. you don’t fix the lineup by shuffling around who makes the bench, and in reality if you look back, reyna has often bailed this out as supersub.
so, can we ignore the “reyna” low hanging fruit political play — bashing the divisive but productive wing, who actually gets left off or not played a lot — and actually hamburger some starters??? as in the ones actually losing the games.
put your money where your mouth is, poch. otherwise it’s an exercise in bait and switch distraction. we talk about reyna or the like being out, and the convo gets steered there by USSF, but he’s been out for months before. so it doesn’t fix the actual problem.
Left off or not played a lot? Every time Gio has been healthy he has been called. Or not played: Gregg started Gio in 10 of 11 in his second stint as manager and 8 of 9 pre-hamstring injury. Only in ‘22 as they were trying to manage his minutes to prevent another injury did he ever sit much. He only has 3, DNP coach’s decision (2 during the WC fit, and the semifinal).
———————
At this point the only one responsible for this situation is Gio. He’s got more talent than 99% of the US pool, but there’s something else going on. That you read those comments and automatically thought he was talking about Gio says a lot. Either he’s toxic, he’s still hurt, or he’s so afraid of injury he’s not putting out effort.
you’re not getting my point. reyna is either being left off or playing little. his “play” is not what’s costing us losses at this point.
repeating myself, a team losing with its starters doesn’t fix its starter problem by only cutting subs.
IV but the US hasn’t been leaving him off or not playing him. At least until March. BvB and Forest did but the US always has played him when he was healthy.
IV,
“obvious example — reyna. i feel like that’s part of where this is headed. reyna is divisive in a political sense.”
“this” is already there.
Gio is not divisive in any sense.
You like to use him as one of your props for your rants about Pochettino’s incompetence but again it is you making stuff up.
Gio was in the toilet long before Pochettino got here and only Gio, not Poch can get his ass out of it.
Everyone is united in wanting Gio to succeed. A successful Gio makes the lives of everyone involved that much easier. No one gains from him failing.
The Gio we see now, he does no one any good.
again, you’re just getting triggered into a kneejerk reyna discussion. my point is the guy who got 21′ of garbage time is not why we lost. if you don’t change the lineup that lost the games the rest is pointless.
kind of like we were meh in qatar and reyna barely played and even though the real debate was could he have helped, it turned into almost an accountability shield when it was the players on the field who won 1 game all tournament and got destroyed by holland.
this is very basic. some guy off your bench isn’t the reason you are losing games. he has 21′ all year.
IV,
You’re taking this all way too personal. It’s not about you.
No one anywhere is blaming Gio for the USMNT ‘s performance, seeing as how he isn’t part of the team for now.
Everyone laments the fact that he is not at his best because if he was the USMNT would be a much better team.
first off, if the underlying concept — which doesn’t seem to have changed with either recent fulltime coach — is that we own possession a la City, you have already screwed up somewhat if we’re talking about playing a lot of defense at intensity. or do people miss the big picture? the idea is we are too busy owning the ball for the other team to have it and do anything.
i mean if pep was saying, “city needs to play defense harder,” you’d be wondering what’s wrong with their offense. surely the snobs watch city play and how their games go. city sits on the ball and then the opponent tries to bust out on a break if they overcommit and lose it. then city sits on it some more. emphasis on sits on it. a passive 433.
second, to execute that style offense you need technical players who can work in small spaces, evade defense, and keep the pass accurately going to the next guy.
third, we instead fixate on “8 type” mids who seem more about how we will play on defense. who cannot execute a “put them to sleep” offense where we own the ball 70%+ of the time and get goals off incisive balls played when the other team dozes off.
fourth, the only other reason to play 433 besides tiki taka, is to be like some naive barca or eredivisie type team that throws bodies forward in the attack, particularly down the wings, and doesn’t carry if they ship some goals because they are constantly trying to score. an aggressive 433.
IMO we are neither trying to sit on the ball and find cracks inside the backline, nor just throwing the whole team forward like it’s dutch league.
we are running out fairly defensive midfield choices, who cannot possess, while not trying very hard to score very often. we seem intent on winning 1-0 or 2-0. in this particular situation, chatting up the work rate needed to win those type games.
at which point, fifth, why the heck are we playing 433? if the idea is to be some scrappy defense first team worshipping the altar of work rate, 433 is a dumb formation for a shutdown style side. there are other formations that accentuate team defense by, say, loading up the midfield or backline with more bodies. the sheer number of bodies then leverages whatever individual effort you can manage. you’re playing hard and if you don’t win it the guy 5 yards away does.
sixth, that would also address some of the snippy personnel comments below. a 433 (or 352, which some have suggested) will tend to expose the mids and backs for either being good or bad at island defending. i don’t really believe we have come even close to tapping our mids and backs in the pool, but a 451 or 442 or like would give everyone help and cover.
but what generally happens is seventh, we do a schizo thing where the snobs win the aesthetic, over aggressive formation fight, but we quickly grasp we are not up to the defensive job in that formation, and so rather than change the formation, we load up the MF with physical 8 and 6 types……who then can’t possess or incisively attack in either the passive or aggressive versions of a 433.
congratulations, you have birthed something muddled and schizo.
we need to abandon the split-muddled-concept and try to make this either more attacking or more leakproof.
the negative nabobs saying we’re hopeless are not helpful. the results doing it this way are obvious. if a college team lost a couple games in a row some heads would roll or at least get rotated. people are preaching some combined arrogant and nihilistic crap where we can’t possibly do better than lose to panama. that doesn’t get fixed if i recognize everyone and the tactics next time and next time after that.
Pulisic is not a CAM. Just because he does so at Milan, or because he did with the USMNT vs Jamaica, and it was effective vs the Reggae Boyz, does not mean he is a CAM. Those arguments are seriously flawed.
Just because he plays at Milan as a CAM, does not mean he should, or that he is a quality CAM, or that he is effective in that position.
Pulisic’s Milan team is not the Milan team of the late 80’s / early 90’s. They are in 9th place in Serie A, have no money to buy players, and as a result, no one to compete with Pulisic, or others, for the attacking spots.
Regarding the USMNT, is anyone really still impressed if we beat CONCACAF teams from the Caribbean?? I want us beating Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, Germany, France, England, and Holland.
We’re not beating the aforementioned teams if Pulisic is our CAM. Hell, we might not beat those teams if he plays, winger, but we are DEFINITELY not beating those teams if he is in the middle.
Sup Primo Papi Grande! I like CP on the wing. I consider him a winger it’s just when Poch put him at CAM it was okay against Jamaica, but other times like against a Canada or Panama it’s a no for him at CAM. He does best magic on the wing.
Papi:
Poch’s style in the past has been his front four are interchangeable. So Pulisic might start under Sargent as the 10 and then pop up on the wing with Weah moving in. His Chelsea team last year made it very hard to mark players because they were never in the same spot and made varying runs. I was traveling and didn’t see the Panama match but it sounded like there wasn’t much movement if any. I saw some movement with Luna and CP switching in and out against Canada. My wonder is does he put CP there because he expects work out of his wingers in defense. Luna was one of the most aggressive defenders when Canada had the ball in their half.
——————-
I wouldn’t say playing CP as a 10 isn’t knowing your players. I’d say not bringing another FB so Musah didn’t have to play RB is not knowing the talent pool. It also kind of depends what you want your 10 to do. Playmaker, not CP. Playing underneath as a second striker where he would have space to operate between the lines, could be effective.
i have heard this said about poch. i have seen them actually play this way one time. otherwise they played in their channels and were highly predictable for that and 20 other reasons.
it’s not just the “channels” issue, it’s the activity level in terms of showing to the ball, that we’re not just standing waiting for balls like U14s, as well as the variety of runs where not everyone is back to goal looking for a pass, some are making sideways, diagonal, or long runs.
last, it becomes hyper-predictable what we’re doing when we just do short balls to the guy standing near you, no switches, skip balls, long diagonals, kickball, anything where a distant defender has to honor that the pass might be coming their way any second.
IV: give us your American player lineup in Japan’s 3-4-2-1. Who fits into your scheme and how would you line them up? If you don’t like their new formation give us a 4-4-2 or 4-5-1.
if you think mckennie or musah are somehow More CAM Than Pulisic or Reyna (or Luna) your brain has gone mushy.
you need to remember, as does every recent US coach, that rosters should be set relative to the pool and not on some abstract concept of value or effort independent of how they stack up against the other guys.
in short, if we continue to have striker injury issues, puli was 1 of 2 guys who scored at the world cup. if we want to play tiki taka and create anything centrally the quality of the CAMs needs to go up and they need to be more technical of players. puli could also do that.
i mean if a USMNT coach feels compelled to freaking start the useless sargent, or give white minutes in a regional final, then you should give up on specialism and be shifting puli, reyna, or weah around to 9.
either that or US coaches need to start figuring out it’s not a paper stats competition, it’s fitting a scheme and doing something that scores international goals. like it or not playing our athletic strikers through the backline works; whacking lofted crosses towards sargent does not.
i think we have regressed in about 20 basic international coaching notions, such as that sometimes club to country doesn’t translate, sometimes the guy with stats doesn’t fit the scheme……
as well as the basic notion that past some “squeal” point of nearing the bottom of the depth chart you’d be better off moving around the stars as opposed to playing specialist strikers #5 and 6 on the depth chart. “donovan dempsey.” QED
we have regressed that this even has to be reminded and said.
Striker91
What makes you think he does not know the players?
continuing with the existing, struggling set of players for more games suggests some mix of perseveration, ignorance, or laziness.
it’s pretty well a waste of his and our time for him to play the same people GB did in bulk, who sucked at copa last year, and then amusingly make the same public complaints GB was.
personally i remember getting shouted down by people like you when i pointed out the lack of personnel change. you told us dude had just been hired and needed time. i told you someone we hire for the job should show up with fresh ideas already on the team — you miss that part. and then even if we give him a pass on the first window, after that this should start to become His Squad.
and i feel like i am watching a GB team give or take some injuries. even luna that people rave about was not straight into the lineup.
personally what i am trying to sort out is how much is he really buys the same bs. or how much is he is lazy and USSF analytics are sending him the same list (with tiny incremental change) that didn’t work before, because of some mix of hype and perseveration.
i dunno it’s this jacked up situation where the results are obvious and bad, and yet proposing something else is “caveman” and proposing other people is “naive.”
if you know so well how this goes, where are the results? we have the most talent in the region By Far. something within the Machine is going wrong if you throw that on the field and can’t even beat regional 3rd best roster panama.
IV,
“personally i remember getting shouted down by people like you when i pointed out the lack of personnel change. you told us dude had just been hired and needed time. ”
Did I shout you down?
Good. I got that right. The USSF fucked over Gregg’s successor by letting Gregg piss away all that valuable Copa America time and experience that a new manager, whoever they might have been, could have used to lay the foundation for the new 2026 team. That’s when the USSF proved themselves to be nearly as amateurish as IV. If Pochettino can actually whip this crew into some kind of shape in the time allowed him, he deserves a medal of some kind.
“i told you someone we hire for the job should show up with fresh ideas already on the team — you miss that part.”
?? Fresh ideas might have been there. Poch and I don’t talk so, I could not tell you but what he did not show up with was fresh players. Why don’t you give me some names there IV? You know, the guys he should have showed up with, like he was supposed to know them before they belatedly hired him.
And if you mean fresh ideas for the incumbent players, what ? you think you just drill a hole in their head and shove those ideas in there?
“and i feel like i am watching a GB team give or take some injuries. even luna that people rave about was not straight into the lineup.”
Did you actually think that Pepi was suddenly going to become Harry Kane and CP was going to turn into Son? On the other hand Gio did turn into Dele Alli but then he’s been Dele for a while now.
What exactly is a GB team? A national team lasts only for the cycle of the tournament. it was built to compete in.
Gregg actually had two cycles and was on his third one.
Cycle one was qualifying for Qatar
Cycle two was Qatar itself.
Cycle three was WC 2026.
There is no more GB team.
“what i am trying to sort out is how much is he really buys the same bs. or how much is he is lazy and USSF analytics are sending him the same list (with tiny incremental change) that didn’t work before, because of some mix of hype and perseveration.”
How are you going to sort that out?
Do you read minds?
Have you seen this USSF analytics list? What does it look like?
“i dunno it’s this jacked up situation where the results are obvious and bad, and yet proposing something else is “caveman” and proposing other people is “naive.””
Anyone who reads your stuff knows that “caveman” and “naive” suit you.
The results are unpopular but bad? It depends on your priorities. My priority is trying to actually field a team that won’t get butt fucked in the World Cup and get grouped.
As I said earlier, I would have preferred that Poch not lose a single game leading up the World Cup. But, given all that, it is useful to know TODAY, that certain players have no balls , when you still have time to do something about it, when you still have time to get Dune Holmes and Julian Green in here.
“if you know so well how this goes, where are the results? we have the most talent in the region By Far. something within the Machine is going wrong if you throw that on the field and can’t even beat regional 3rd best roster panama.”
You’re just going to have to be patient. You can rave all you want but Pochettino will be judged by what the USMNT does in the World Cup good , bad or indifferent.
A real football association would have fired Arena in Couva as soon as the game ended and made him pay to fly back to the US. A real football association would not have re-hired Gregg. So cut out this bullshit you are pushing that Pochettino’s job is in any danger anytime soon, unless he gets a better offer. He’s actually trying to build a team now and when you do that things don’t always look pretty or always go well.
Panama did us a favor by pointing out how chicken shit some of our players are.
Are you concerned that the USMNT might be blown off the map in the World Cup? YOU SHOULD BE. I can see it happening.
Honestly, you should worry that we might not even have a World Cup if no one comes to the US because they are afraid they might get shipped off to some torture camp somewhere.
If he does not know the players how can he succeed???? Smh!
What makes you think he does not know the players?
Look at where he plays them, CP is not a CAM.
Striker, not that Milan has had a great season, but he has played there a decent amount for his club this season and it worked decently well against Jamaica at home.
Striker91,
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6163324/2025/02/27/christian-pulisic-form-ac-milan-usmnt/
Here’s one way to look at where CP is best played.
The important thing to remember is that this eval is about CP at Milan.
With the USMNT, CP is playing with different players who may operate in a different manner from CP’s Milan team-mates. That will certainly have an impact on where he will perform at his best for the USMNT.
I’m not one who thinks that if you play as a winger for you club that you HAVE to play winger for the national team. Your national team will be all different from your club in terms of players, manager, and opponents. So it is easy to see that maybe your skills might work better for the team if you play in another position.
Is that uncomfortable?
Yeah but playing for your national team is not a vacation, a fun cruise that is a reward for your good club play.
It is an honor and a service to your country i.e. it is a sacrifice and may be uncomfortable, at least from professional standpoint. Pros at that level often expect a certain level of organization and planning. And that level may not always be present with the national team.
However, if you are a pro at CP’s level, you’ve probably seen most everything you are likely to see and it is not unreasonable to expect him to be a little flexible. If he’s not then he doesn’t have to play for the National team, if he doesn’t want to. And at this point, CP seems willing to play anywhere and do whatever is asked of him.
I’m pretty sure if thought playing CAM was bad idea that he would work it out with the manager.
to me we have no particular knack for the half court soccer we seem to want to play. worse, we seem hell bent as an organization on casting reyna aside, who is one of the few people we have who might set someone up in a half court situation. i mean, that’s the sort of player i think poch is thinking of when i hear “talent isn’t enough.” ok, but otherwise in half court our MF kind of sucks.
similarly, in reality what we often do is cross the ball in the air. if you are going to do that then the 9 and maybe even a wing should be guys who can score headers. bluntly, i prefer us playing behind teams, but the roster needs to fit how the team actually looks.
last, the coach seems to be talking about defensive intensity but other than hoping adams sweeps things up, the formation is dumb for defense, and i haven’t seen us trying to do anything clever in formation or even approach to stop anyone. and in general the defensive choices have become cliched and stuck.
so we need to decide what the attacking identity is and match it to personnel. and then he needs to actually coach the defense as opposed to nag about work rate. personally i think the formation is the primary problem and ever since JK tried similar things his first stint, we’ve been trying to paper over the difficulty of defending 433 by work rate. has it succeeded? not for full games. it’s too exhausting — wales. move on, please.
either pick another formation for defense’s sake, or commit to truly, directly attacking from the 433 and just write off some goals allowed. right now we’re trying to control games from a formation poorly designed to do so. when i was a kid and we played 433 one year, no lead was safe either way. i don’t know how we got it in our head what we do controls the game.
you’re not controlling the game if we have to keep ramping the work rate up and up and up and beef at the players to do more.
The problem is that to play Japan’s style we’d need a vastly different roster. CP and Reyna are not going to give the defensive work rate (with the defensive skill) that the Japanese 10s play with. We have a hard time finding 2 CBs that can focus for 90 mins let alone put a 3rd out there. Let’s not even get into Adams complete lack of positional awareness, chases the ball like U7 leaving his teammates often exposed. Due we have another #6 that can equal Adams intensity to cover for him when he leaves his position? You can say then bring in other players, we can play that style with MLSers or German youth division players. Can we? Japan sure as heck doesn’t. Their roster is almost all top 5 league guys and guys who play tons of minutes. They aren’t playing with plucky J Leaguers. With this beloved style, they haven’t even won the Asian Cup since 2011 and have never gotten out of the round of 16.
———————————-
This group has some attributes that make them in some ways some of our greatest players ever, but they all lack balance in their game which makes them incredibly frustrating to watch. Pulisic constantly over dribbles. Jedi lacks the ability to combine, Dest cannot focus for more than 30 secs on anything, Reyna no longer runs or looks interested, Aaronson falls over in a light breeze, Musah can dribble thru 5 defenders only to take an extra touch instead of putting the runner in behind, do you trust Turner to make 5 or 6 saves every game. He faced one shot on goal against Panama. If you are going to give other team 60% of the ball you better have a shot stopper. We don’t have one.
————————
This team almost to a man lacks urgency. That shows up in winning second balls, closing down the ball, taking shots on goal, making runs, playing the ball to runners. Tactics won’t change that.
it’s kind of funny to hear people calling my counter ideas “caveman soccer” when (a) we play ugly like we do and (b) the best this coach can offer is “play harder.”
it’s kind of telling, to me, when you hear a coach just kind of vaguely asking for more work rate and not talking tactics, fit, or at least how his tactics require us to play harder.
my experience “go out there and play hard” is the refuge of a second rate coach. and at their level almost everyone plays hard. so maybe coach some actual soccer.
Poch is making a back-stabbing negative remarks about the players in general. The last couple coaches (Klinsmann and GB) did that and JK did the sorst ion thjat regard. It is no wonder that he pretty much lost the team in the end (and the WC qualification.)
The last coaches for whom the USMNT played over their heads (Arena and Bradley) did not do that. They saved their criticism for private moments. It is management 101!
I can’t say I mind Poch’s criticism myself, after the last two matches, I find it to be completely valid…for certain individuals. That’s the rub, some guys were absolutely busting their butts, giving everything, and it seemed like some weren’t. I think at this level of professional athlete it’s reasonable to call out that criticism. You can argue whether it should be public or not, but I really think that’s a style choice more so than one way works and the other doesn’t. To give an example from a different sport, Phil Jackson called out his players in the press all the time, and he has plenty of titles to argue his style motivates. Another point is that nothing can damage team chemistry like a player that isn’t working as hard but still keeps getting playing time, that is as true for u14s as it is for the USMNT.
shut up and coach. he hasn’t really mixed up personnel, he’s plugged injury holes in the same unit that lost GB his job — who then lost another tournament badly. if you don’t like the effort call up some different people.
he could say the same thing when the GC roster comes out (with changes) and it would be received more professionally.
what constructive purpose does this serve? they are in club until season end and he won’t get them until late may or june. at least when JK complained about career choices he was trying to influence player choices. there’s not a thing we can do about NT effort until june.
and to me GB ranted about this. i think a caretaker ranted. he’s ranting. how about dump the chumps to the bench or off the roster and call people you have scouted as ready to play the way you want.
i also don’t see the point in ranting now because we have running injury issues and often have to improvise.
and if this is about reyna this is a dumb team that seems to be looking for excuses to run out the tryhards as opposed to the NT game changers. the easy answers USMNT staff seem to come up with seem at odds with putting a winner out there.
It’s hard to back stab someone in public in full view of the media and fans.
Pochettino said nothing that everyone here on SBI has already said so I did not find his remarks very noteworthy.
You have a very liberal and wide ranging view of what backstabbing means. Did you expect him to say nothing negative?
Did you expect him to say that the boys went out there lethargic and lacking energy as part of my game plan? That we were trying to lull Panama into a false sense of security and left it just a little too late?
There is only so much you can do to cover the scent of shit. Pochettino’s ultimate weapon is that he says whether you go the World Cup or not.
And that is a pretty big deal to these guys.
He’s just making it real obvious.
you think he will make those choices. he doesn’t start putting a winner out there and he won’t be coach in a year. period.
i think dude knows it too which is why we’re blaming the players in public. he’s protecting his image.
based on what i have seen so far, his ideas are limited to when the max talent shows up. without jedi and the 9s this looked like GB.
i expected to see a freshening that didn’t happen.
what sane coach plays the same guys who got his predecessor fired? luna is one of the few adds who might get time when everyone is healthy, but i think it’s at reyna’s expense which is a step forward and 2 backwards. i like agyemang but does he see the field much with a full set of 9s. he rarely plays fossey who was a good add. he forced steffen back on the team which meh. he might be more ream-happy than GB was. he’s stuck on most of the same malfunctioning MF and backs that cost GB.
IV,
“i expected to see a freshening that didn’t happen.”
Name names?
IV
“what sane coach plays the same guys who got his predecessor fired? ”
One that has very few alternatives. One that thinks that maybe a new manager can get something out of the player that the last guy could not. In the history of sport that has occasionally happened. Michael Jordan did a lot better once Phil Jackson replaced Doug Collins though obviously that is not all down to one individual.
Pochettino is not Tuchel who can drop every Southgate player and still have a team that could beat your Select team. You got better guys? We know about Duane Holmes and Julian Green but name the rest.
“luna is one of the few adds who might get time when everyone is healthy, but i think it’s at reyna’s expense which is a step forward and 2 backwards.”
That’s on Gio or maybe more on BVB. Whatever the reality, Diego actually gets on the field in real games while Gio does not. And guess what everyone may not get healthy or come back the same as before. Only an idiot would rely on Tyler Adams staying healthy.
“i like agyemang but does he see the field much with a full set of 9s.”
It would be nice if your “full set” were actually healthy enough to get on the field at all. Since they are not, you play the 9 who can actually get on the fucking field.
” he rarely plays fossey who was a good add. ”
Says who? Fossey rarely plays because he’s not a significant upgrade over the usual suspects.
“he forced steffen back on the team which meh.”
No one is forced back into the USMNT picture. Steffen is there because he wants to be. If he doesn’t like it he’ll leave. I notice Steffen has played a lot of USMNT minutes under Pochettino. He might as well be Horvath.
” he might be more ream-happy than GB was. ”
What are you basing that on? Name a better performing CB .
“he’s stuck on most of the same malfunctioning MF and backs that cost GB.”
This gets back to your first “comment”. Names? You got better proven alternatives? Like who?
my experience you can nudge some players with latent nastiness but generally speaking if you’re not getting work rate and intensity, you bring in new players you have scouted with that edge to their game. this is multiple coaches now “saying” they want more intensity but then what they “do” is call the same people.
i have said it 20 times, the grander failure of this is it is neither fish nor fowl. it’s a fanboy all star team of players from the right places. we don’t put a ton of skilled or fast players on the field at once and try and own offense. our AMs are often sloppy while we premise the team on possession.
nor do we seem to have a defensive concept. how are we going to stop teams? where are our clever “panama” type strategies to bottle up and beat better teams? worse, we often send the wingbacks up at risk of counter, while not trying too hard to score too much. when dutch teams send their wingers they are trying to score 4 or 5 goals on you, where any mistakes come out in the wash.
nah, we are kind of stuck in between someplace and thus not really good either end. offensively we should be sending the 9s with speed behind defenses. waiting for teams to get back undermines the very thing our 9s are built for. they are not built to finish crosses.
and then we need to decide if we are selling out on offense or trying to play defense first. to me this needs to get either more aggressive in attack or the sort of team that pitches shutouts.
i would go something more like leicester in the vardy era. or japan now. get back. egg the other team forward. trap and swarm in the area between the half and the 18. win the ball. long, direct passes to the forwards. try and play our 9s or weah behind their defense.
we are not that skilled a team. we are not going to win games trying and failing to own possession. leicester would usually lose the possession stat, but the idea was to create chances for goals as opposed to milk clock.
i think there is a knee jerk opposition to this as “surely kickball.” no. i was once part of a goal off a kickoff where it went from center to 18 to other side of the 18, to 70 yard pass downfield, fakes out man, scores on keeper. 3 passes, 15 seconds maybe. ball never leaves the ground. can someone show me where in the rulebook it says every pass has to be some predictable short pass to the next guy over that goes about 5 yards? this is fooling no one. this is why we struggle to build out or score anything.
if the team gets back that also helps cover up any individual defending issues by sheer bulk.
to me the big question is, is poch married to the same personnel and tactics as GB. the personnel remains conservative and muddled, and the two wrinkles poch had offered were pushing jedi assymetric, and setting up the pivot closer to half instead of in the flag area. the net result was opposing defenses would suck up to the high pivot, and we could then play behind them. but we have regressed to slow predictable builds and sticking the pivots out by the flag where many an attack goes to die. we play backwards instead of directly forwards. and then we don’t defend soundly. not a winning recipe.
it doesn’t need to be “counter” soccer, but it needs to be something similar built around springloaded, athletic ballwinning transition that feeds our athletic 9s behind a defense that doesn’t get to jog back and set up shop too deep for us to find the strikers.
in short, something that creates then exploits green space behind opposing defenses.
that he feels he needs to say those things is a bummer
we are way too concerned what the rest of the world thinks of our tactics — “am i pretty” — and issuing missives to the media about how we wish things were different as opposed to taking control and changing formations, tactics, and personnel.
this’ll win when we figure out tactics are things to win games, or that some of the sacred cow fanboy favorites need to be hamburgered. right now this is a vehicle for name brand players to show off and not a functioning unit that looks like it’s played together before and punches above its weight.
i mean for a team that deliberately made an aesthetic tactical choice, we are ugly to watch. to me we need to embrace we are athletic and a little sloppy. more direct, less timid.
IV,
“we are way too concerned what the rest of the world thinks of our tactics — “am i pretty” —”
Who is we? Really who is we? You’re making stuff up again. You have the cart before the horse.
The USMNT fans and media don’t give two shits about “our tactics”.
What they care about is that we play with heart and commitment and give it our all.
Our most disgusting USMNT performance ever was at Couva. Losing and dropping out of the World Cup were awful enough. But it was obvious that the team was way over confident and thought that just by showing up that TNT, a terrible team, would just bend over and assume the position.
And when that did not happen, Bruce had no answer. The entire thing was about arrogance, stupidity, condescension and entitlement and it all started with Arena ( who was already working on his lineup for Russia) himself and seeped down to dunderheads like Ariolla.
You always talk about the good old days. Since about 1994 the USMNT has been, at best, a second tier team. One that was hard to beat and on a good day, was maybe capable of beating a big boy team.
We have been a team that basically gets out of the group and loses the first knockout game. 2002 was an outlier because they got Mexico as their knockout game somehow and DMB has said that as soon as they knew it was Mexico , every single player knew they were going to beat them..
The point?
However good we were with your old school caveman tactics and however bad we’ve been with these new-fangled, tik-tok tactics, we’re still the same team…… A mediocre second tier team that can be hard to beat, but on their day, might be able to upset a big boy.
In your “good old days” they had never been a serious contender for a serious deep run in the World Cup. Never. I’ve seen the great upsets, Spain, Portugal. Those games came with qualifications to the win, usually extreme condescension and arrogance by our opponents. The best chance they had to win something more or less serious was the 2009 Confed Cup loss in the final to Brazil where we had a 2-0 halftime lead on them. We had them until Brazil suddenly woke up and remembered who they were, it was that quick.
You talk about changing personnel as if we were Man City. Well, we can’t work it like they can. We have to work another way.
dude, sorry, but the way morocco or japan plays — more what i am suggesting — is not “caveman.”
dude, sorry, by 2010-2014 this was past “caveman” and able to beat some of the best teams in the world. and the ball was on the ground far more than you’d admit. this had moved past mcbride kickball after 2006.
if you can’t see where this is less competitive you’re blind. 2000s the only teams in the region could beat us were MX and CR, and only at their places.
maybe you need a refresher. arena’s
i get some of you snobs didn’t like how defensive we had to play spain in 2009 but back then we got the job done some of the time. and you’re living on your own planet in another galaxy thinking this unit can play the way this coach or GB wanted.
if you want to turn this into some sort of “flash” barca style team you need to go back and remake 23 new players to play that way from U5. you can’t remake sloppy athletic 25 year olds into technical gods. and manage that with 30 different MLS academies not necessarily wanting to play how you want to, but controlling most of their development.
IV,
You’re the only person on SBI who has ever said that the USMNT is trying to head towards being a “flash” barca style team. Barca sures scares you. Or maybe you just like arguing with yourself?
Your grasp of history and your logic, as usual, is fractured, and crafted to fit your narrative.
Sure we beat some of the best teams in the World in the time period you are vaguely talking about. Big fucking deal. Every one of those wins, I was overjoyed to take but every one was tainted.
Portugal? Sheer blind arrogance and over-confidence by Portugal, who did not take the game seriously until they were back at their hotel. But I did not care because it was exciting and fun at the time.
Same with the Spain win. They had the same issue Portugal did in terms of not taking us seriously. Fernando Torres said as much. Apparently you have conveniently forgotten that it was JR who reminded you that the USMNT can’t play like they did in 2009.. We no longer have Howard, a reasonably solid back four, in Spector, Demerit, Gooch and Boca, a solid defensive midfield, and a Davies, Jozy, Clint and LD.
But I think most USMNT fans were like me and were happy but not stupid enough to think that those wins actually meant we were in the same class with those guys. We were not and still are not.
We were still a second tier team that every once in a while could beat some big boy team that forgot who they were and who we were because it was a friendly or they forgot that Americans knew how to play soccer. Always been that way since about 1994.
Serious World Cup or Copa America contenders? No way. We would get out of the group and lose the knockout game. That was our level, about 16th in the World and I think that’s where we are today, though since Gregg took over it’s a little worse. Teams would look at him and his record and think “That’s their manager?”? That stuff adds up. But it’s not entirely Gregg’s fault. All those whiny Ex-USMNT pundits crying about dying for the shirt and God and country? Growing up, the USMNT, the World Cup, were the ultimate for them.
This current group? A starting job at a club in the top five leagues, one that plays Champions League. That was not realistic for the pundit USMNT generation but it might be for these kids.
Pochettino is going to have quite a job getting these kids to focus.
Along with Mexico, we used to dominate CONCACAF.
Gold Cup titles tell you that. But even in the good old days there was always a Costa Rica. In 2024, Panama has become the new Costa Rica. Those of you who were amazed by Weah’s red card vs. Panama, Costa Rica got Matt Besler the best red card I’ve ever seen. It was a CONCACAF classic.
But guess what, we dominated CONCACAF then and still do. Winning three straight NL’s and 3 out of the 4 ever played tells you that. And as long as we maintain our economic edge ( no sure thing these days) we always will. Still things always change and the main difference today is the emergence of Canada.
Today we have more talent available to us but that is only relative to what we had 10-20- 30 years ago. In that same time frame the rest of the world has progressed, in some cases, more than we have. Look at South Korea. We’ve never had a player anywhere near Son’s class. Ever.
The logical way to look at it, in 2025, is who are the top 5-6 teams in the World?
Then go team by team and compare their players, coaching staffs and over all cohesion and identity to the USMNT. How many of those teams are you confident that we can stay with? Don’t give us that Select team bullshit. These are professional, national teams.
Right now we are heading into the World Cup and looking like we’re going to get smeared. However, Pochettino still has time to pull some interesting shit in the Gold Cup.
I think he’s going to go heavy on Cupcake/obscure players.
V: you are obviously making an aesthetic argument rather than a win-maxing or pragmatic one. personally the purpose of tactics are to fit the pool and max your wins. i could give a flip how pretty you think it is, and i can trace a line from aesthetic arguments like yours to roughly when bradley had a team. which btw was the last serious shot at progressing in a world cup, which he blew with the ghana lineup.
you think you have a better mousetrap. i do not see it on the field. we could be a top athletic side or we can be the 25th best skill team in the world. skill is appealing but i prefer being actually good at what i am trying to accomplish, and winning soccer games.
again, repeating myself, if you want pretty, technical soccer, go back to 5 year old kids and teach them different. most teams who have athletes or big lunks play like athletes or lunks. they don’t try to play skill soccer with a bunch of athlete-soccer hybrids.
and the irony of your trolling argument is if you really believed this needs to be some technical side to pass and dribble teams to death, you should be defending reyna more. if there are a limited set of guys in the pool wired to do what you want, you should be advocating them.
no, in reality you seem more status quo defensive than anything. you defend the tactical choices, but also the personnel ones, many of which are at odds with slick soccer. musah and weston aren’t slick.
nah you just defend whatever they do which is ironic as the results make it self-refuting.
“but at least it’s ground soccer.” and the funny thing is leicester under ranieri were only occasionally kickball. i grew up playing counterball in a 352. we had it drilled in us to keep it on the floor as much as possible. i think you have some cliched idea how a counter can be played.
and i think a midfield “trap” — swarming players receiving passes just our side of the half, including help from the line ahead of you — as opposed to an upfield “press” — pulling out of shape high to chase defenders with forwards…….is not as draining and has better ballwinners doing the work. personally i was taught chasing around way upfield because you lost a ball was often only compounding your mistake and destroying the defensive shape.
how often do we get a goal off pressing defenders? and it only seems to encourage dumb ideas in terms of who to select as wings. eg arriola. “but he doesn’t press well.” yeah, he’s a forward, does he score???
IV,
“V: you are obviously making an aesthetic argument rather than a win-maxing or pragmatic one. personally the purpose of tactics are to fit the pool and max your wins. i could give a flip how pretty you think it is, and i can trace a line from aesthetic arguments like yours to roughly when bradley had a team.”
You keep ranting to show us just how much smarter than Pochettino you are . The reality is, as embarrassing as the NL losses were, they served the purpose, it would seem, of showing Pochettino how big everyone’s balls on the NL roster were. The NL was just another obstacle on the obstacle course to the World Cup. It’s over and the idea is Pochettino and his staff can now take the lessons learned and combine them with what they learn from the Gold Cup.
?? Aesthetic argument?
You talking to me?
As a long time USMNT fan the expression “aesthetically pleasing USMNT” rarely, if ever, came to mind when watching them play.
I’m a USMNT fan but I’m not stupid. I don’t watch their games for aesthetically pleasing soccer. There are much better teams for that purpose. Disclaimer: I don’t consider it aesthetically pleasing when we turn on style vs some intramural CONCACAF team and blow them away 7-0. I watch USMNT games because that is what “real” fans are supposed to do. It has never been about good soccer. It’s a duty.
That is why I was able to watch every one of Gregg’s snoozefests, even the ones with Lletget in them.
Go ahead and check my posts. I’m the guy who is interested in results that make the team better. Ask Tele57.
When I say your advocacy of the USMNT taking your advice and going back to the days of setting up like Bobby, Mikey and the Boys is meshugganah, it is not about advocating for aesthetic play.
It’s about the current 2025 players not really being suited for what Bob wanted to do. As JR said, no Keller, Freidel, Howard or Guzan. They don’t even have a Marcus Hahnemann. Against Spain Bob had Spector, Demerit, Gooch and Boca., four guys who could be pretty dour defenders.
You seem to be under the impression that Pochettino is leading the USMNT down the garden path to aesthetically pleasing hell, right next to Cruyff and tik-tok Pep.
Why you think that I haven’t a clue.
As far as I can tell, Pochettino has been pretty good about saying nothing of substance and keeping his cards close to his chest. He has said nothing about how he wants to setup or what kind of “tactics” he will employ. .He does have a long track record but the USMNT is different from anything he has done before. Once he decides who his 23-26 will be then he can figure out your precious tactics.
The recent NL unpleasantness may well have complicated the media hulaballoo around him. It has certainly given our pundits, mostly ex-USMNT guys a chance to vent their inferiority complexes. You’ve even got your boy Arena coming out and criticizing Pochettino for not understanding American players and USMNT culture. This from Mr. Couva himself. Bruce, responsible for arguably the most pathetic and worst USMNT loss in history, has a great understanding of Americans. It sure helped a lot at Couva didn’t it? Scumbag.
Pochettino took Cupcake very seriously when most of us did not. He seems to be taking MLS very seriously when most on SBI leak their bodily fluids on it.
Which means Pochettino may well NOT buy into the SBI approved theory of indirect merit, i.e. if you play in a “better” league, you MUST be a better player, whatever the fuck that means.
About what Pochettino just said, let me help you. He said he was looking for the right character. In English that means he is more concerned with the intangibles, i.e. your attitude, personality, cojones, how you react to failure etc, than your overall talent.
Unlike a lot of you, who thought the team culture under Gregg was good, that it just needed an infusion of IV approved tactics and a talent infusion, one thing that is clear is that Pochettino thinks the team culture that Gregg left behind was fakakta.
It’s useful to remember that Pochettino was a center half for Argentina in a World Cup. That means he had absolutely no compunction about doing whatever it took to get the job done. Those guys took dirty to a whole new level. Your beloved tactical concepts only apply until the first kick in your balls. Then it gets interesting. That’s how teams from Argentina think. The only USMNT player I’ve ever seen who understood what that meant was Jermaine Jones. I don’t know if we have anyone in the pool with the required “character”. Maybe that’s what Pochettino is looking for. He could hire Jermaine as their version of Snape, the Professor of Dark Arts.
Since you are making it a Gio vs Luna thing, Gio has way more ceiling than Diego ever had or ever will but Diego is here now while with Gio it is all potential not realized. And that does not pay the bills. Love the one you are with. One more cliche to see if you get it; a very good player who shows up consistently , not named BA, is more useful than a great player who shows up every once in a blue moon( and I don’t mean Manchester City) .
Gio can play with anyone and for any team but he won’t. Not until he figures out how to get his fucking ass on the pitch. And at this point that’s all on Gio. If he wants to bad enough he and his people can find a way to get himself somewhere, anywhere in Europe, where he can have a stage to show his stuff. So please don’t give us this bullshit about how it is somehow Pochettino’s fault that Gio has let BVB piss his talent away. It wasn’t Mauricio who butchered that Forest loan. Gio didn’t get much PT when he was in camp? Maybe that’s because Pochettino did not want to risk a new injury to a player who still had a bunch of games left with BVB. Out of shape players in national team camps are prime injury candidates if not managed correctly. Ask Jesse Marsch. And with Diego going well, it makes it easier. Gio has some work to do if he wants to avoid being the next Dele Alli.
By the way, you can have JR check the math but here is something you may have misremembered about math.
11 divided by 2 = 5.5. Round that off to six.
Patrick, Diego and Captain Jack = three. All three may become regulars and maybe, starters.
If Pochettino can come up with three more “not the usual suspect “ players who might become regulars or even starters, that would give him six players (3+3 = 6) who had nothing to do with Qatar 2022.
If he could lineup with more than half (six) of the Qatar WC starting lineup changed that would pour excrement on your whine that Pochettino has not made significant personnel alterations.
In fact, I just realized, here are three, non- Qatar WC participants who would come from more SBI approved sources (that Bosnian guy, he’s not popular with the SBI crowd) and who have a chance to be regulars or starters under Pochettino.
1. Pepi
2. Johnny
3. KPar
otra vez,
Diego, Patrick, McGlynn, Pepi, Johnny, K Paredes
All could become starters or at least regular players by the time the World Cup rolls around. And there are probably others who might get Gold Cupped that can add to that six.
Right now the only Euros who are locks are CP, Weah and maybe Weston, Pepi and Johnny1
That’s five. If you have a twenty three man roster that leaves eighteen players who might be different from the Gregg hive.
Eighteen is more than three right? I’m no math wiz, check with JR to be sure.
“We need to be intelligent in the way that we are going to select the players and not just choose based on talent alone,” he added. “We need to have the right characters to be really competitive.”
Picking a twenty three man roster for a seven game tournament, that you actually want to win, is a very different thing from picking a 24-30 man roster for a 30 + game club season. Clearly, the NL has told Pochettino that the chemistry as not right and he will have to address that., one way or another.
Pochettino is telling us that he’s not going to pick a lineup that the fans will agree with.
And he probably shouldn’t.
I’ve seen some guys who will kill for the shirt. Tyler Adams comes to mind. Pepi. Aaronson. Diego Luna. Tim Ream. Tanner Tessmann. Jedi. Usually Pulisic. I know he messed up large in Copa America but Timo usually rips his lungs out for the team too.
There are a fair number of others who convince me a whole lot less. I have no doubt several of them have higher EA Sports FIFA player ratings than some of the harder workers but if intensity is contagious, so’s casualness.
It’ll be genuinely fascinating to see who gets left out of Gold Cup this summer. It’ll likely tell us a fair bit about where Poch’s head is at regarding certainly guys.
Hopefully it’s backed up. Playing for a well known team isn’t enough, thinking you can just show up and roll over competition. Panama wasn’t pretty but they played great team defense and converted the chance when they got it.
we used to be panama. hungry, pragmatic, and trying to figure out how to beat spain and other good teams. their coach sits down, looks at your formation and tactics, and comes up with ways to bottle your offense and create chances the other way.
we are trying to prove some sort of muddled aesthetic point where we emphasize possession — mostly around the back or out by the flag — don’t create a ton of chances and don’t play sound defense.
i think we are trying to do some sort of barca/city hybrid without a rich pro club’s ability to train up its own youth players to suit the concept, or checkbook their way to the same result. also, what we’re trying was popular c. 2010 and teams like the USMNT and others figured out how to stop what we’re trying to do.
this team should be based around playing our fast 9s behind the defensive line of the other team. on no planet should a team this sloppy be building from the back or premised on possession.
and then we need a more functioning strategic mousetrap on defense. since roughly klinsi our defense has been based on sheer hyperactivity we cannot keep up for more than about 50 minutes. and of late we seem to adore sending the wingbacks which teams like holland exploit.
they need to sit down and think about, how are we going to stop good teams. and the answer needs to be more global than hope adams is healthy. and then, how are we going to create chances. something that fits this pool and not some imagined endpoint we want to reach later on. if you want to change DNA you need to go back to elementary school and shape the players young. you can’t just tell a team of 25 year olds to try and be city or barca.