The U.S. men’s national team’s disappointing 2025 continued on Saturday with the program suffering its sixth loss of the calendar year.
Mauricio Pochettino’s squad suffered a 2-0 home loss to South Korea at Sports Illustrated Stadium, continuing a worrying run of form under the Argentine manager. Despite improving in the second half offensively, the Americans were playing catch up from the 18th minute onward after first-half goals from Son Heung-Min and Dong-Gyeong Lee.
Pochettino knows the results haven’t come as consistently as he would’ve hoped as USMNT manager, but believes they will come soon with improved performances.
“Overall, I think we were better than South Korea, but then if you are not clinical in your own area, and in the opposite box, it’s difficult,” Pochettino said in his postgame press conference. “Because we create more chances, we have the feeling that we control the game.”
“I think we were better,” he added. “Disappointed, of course, because I am very disappointed about the result, but I think overall in the performance…it’s a massive improvement. I told the players, I think the results will arrive soon, for sure.”
The USMNT welcomed back several key starters on Saturday including Christian Pulisic, Chris Richards, and Sergino Dest. However, even their returns didn’t lead to a victory in Harrison, New Jersey, as South Korea looked comfortable from the opening whistle in a World Cup preparation match for both countries.
Both Richards and fellow substitution Folarin Balogun came closest to finding the back of the net in the second half, but South Korean goalkeeper Jo Hyeon-Woo played his part valiantly in the visitors’ performance.
Even with several other key stars not selected for this international window, Pochettino credited his team for working together in their latest opportunity as a collective unit.
“I am so pleased, if I put the result [aside], I am so pleased in the way that we are evolving from the Gold Cup,” Pochettino said. “Today with different players, different roster than the Gold Cup.”
The USMNT are now down to nine months until the bright lights of the 2026 FIFA World Cup begins. 2025 will conclude with matches against Japan, Ecuador, Australia, Uruguay, and Paraguay before only two international windows remain in 2026 ahead of the group stage of the historic tournament.
Although pressure is growing on Pochettino and his players to find their groove, the 53-year-old admitted the fans and players need to be together for success to happen.
“We need to start to win when the World Cup starts,” Pochettino said. “They [the USMNT players] need to believe, the message [to the fans] is they need to believe. The important thing is at the start of the World Cup we need to have everyone who is going to be on the roster in their best condition.”
The USMNT next faces Japan at Lower.com Field in Ohio on Tuesday.
it was a tale of two halves but the half with the changes was still 0-0. similar to switzerland was 0-0 with the starters subbed in but 0-4 with the bench started. our best scenario seems to be we might tie a decent team.
if your system is working, the bench shouldn’t look at sea, the scheme should lift them up. similar on personnel. if you have no ideas other than get jedi healthy and some of the omitted regulars back, if you can’t seem to identify many helpful prospects, you don’t have many ideas in general, do you?
i thought the system looked ridiculous, bunch of guys standing around waiting for the ball, no runs. and then i thought starting the glacial ream with the not much more mobile blackmon felt ill advised. to me richards and CCV are the only CBs playing to standard. mckenzie, while more athletic, has the same issues as blackmon showed, in terms of staying put and not diving forward. ream has stunk but for some reason got kept around to compete for his spot with blackmon. fielding an under fire back with his potential replacement ended up destructive rather than constructive.
to me he needed to call fresh CB for summer at which point hopefully we find 2 functioning CB to add to the pool.
and then we keep calling downs then leaving him on the bench. so i just watched sargent suck some more then balogun play well. balogun should be a no brainer like richards. that’s not moving the roster ball forward much.
the rhetorical answer folks keep landing on, is bring the regulars back. let’s just ignore copa and NL then. i thought this needed fresh faces last year after copa and the new coach. i hoped for new faces for NL. we only saw some for GC because the starters mutinied. and yet the answer is go back to the same guys who couldn’t win a few tournaments in a row.
fans are panicking, the coach has said no more experiments, but this isn’t fixed.
“ if you can’t seem to identify many helpful prospects, you don’t have many ideas in general, do you?” Or perhaps there just aren’t helpful prospects out there? Who are these difference makers because they aren’t standing out at there club either. You said down below we should go to a defensive lineup but you don’t actually name this defensive 11. You never name these stay home defensive fullbacks you want to replace Dest and Jedi with. This isn’t your club where your coach just went and sweat talked the parents of the best players on the other team to come play for you. Poch can’t give Son eligibility.
Results really don’t mean much before a WC. Either losses or wins. Wins tend to gloss over areas that need to be fixed before a WC. I shall see how the team does tomorrow. Poch could turn this around. And quite frankly if we do do well at the WC no one is going ro care about the losses.
dude, they do not have the quality wins to show this is going anywhere. like i said, they play a decent half with different players and different style, and it’s 0-0 with a mere top 25 team.
people always say what you say re MLS preseason. my experience you look at your 1s vs. their 1s and over a whole preseason that hints if you are any good.
i also think that the longer term trend is us falling back to something like 3rd or 4th in the region, and uncompetitive in many games against the better teams from europe or other regions. that is a sea change from being the best in the region and a team that could beat anyone on the right day.
if i wanted to get pointed, we have been screwed by the tactical direction this has gone. i don’t get what we are trying to do. i don’t think trying to walk a ball up 120 yards is going to work. i don’t think you’re gonna catch teams on the switch if you have no passing tempo. i don’t think you’re gonna score many goals if you either start dumb 9s or can’t find the good ones with any service.
and then the defense is the worst i have seen from us since like 1998 or 2006. and that might be harsh on 2006 because they fought like heck in that italy tie.
i mentioned in another comment this has retreated from where it was to a mere qualifying team that struggles abroad. well, that’s 80s or early 90s level competitiveness. the defense feels pre bora. the talent should blow that out of the park but at some point this took an aesthetic turn. and yet doesn’t look pretty at all while it loses.
i really don’t think this should be that hard to fix, but it needed to go outside of this particular scheme for the coach hire.
Quality wins mean nothing. I have witnessed much bigger national teams crumble come the WC. Winning or losing has teaching moments. But winning a plethora of friendlies before WC means squat. I have watched the WC since 90. Teams crumble regardless of talent and wins.
As fans of course we want to see the team win games. All fans of every national team want to see their team win games.
Like I said if this team does well at the WC which is subjective then losing games won’t mean a thing. My subjective is that the team.makes QF’s. If that happens I will be happy with their showing.
I think without Son, the game would have been a tie. Ream did win one battle with Son, but mostly Son had his way in the first half. We do not have a player of Son’s quality.
Generally, the teams that win the WC have 2 or even 3 players of that caliber or better.
to me it comes down to this coach and his predecessor have been unable to ensure the short list of key opposing players on a good team are marked out of the game so they don’t beat us. someone should be sat on son. a world cup competitive team has some backs who do that. we sat richards and don’t seem to care if we find anyone else capable of marking.
if you want to do that, you better be an attacking machine. after being fairly flip about defense, we are then tentative on offense. like you’d think a team who farts around with the ball with cross-backline passes you teach a U10 not to do, and emphasizes offense in defensive selection, would look more aggressive and risk taking other end. no, at the other end we start a striker to chase the other team, and we nibble around the edges emphasizing possession over chances.
i thought they had a handful of good players — including that keeper — but so do we. but their scheme was active and aggressive, and we didn’t seem interested in marking their key players. they were holding pulisic and weah to not much. luna got the odd run. balogun had to fight for what he got.
If we were the better team but lost 2-0, how can I not conclude that he did a bad job of coaching?
Delusional from Poch.
We got Son’ed…..plain and simple lol
look Coach, belief is earned, ok? I WANT to believe!! we all do man, geez.
if you were getting these results coaching Argentina, you’d get fired.
please stop TELLING me to believe and earn it instead. I WANT to believe, come on, but I can’t fake it. There is a huge difference.
please man, stop telling me, the fan, that I NEED to believe, I mean, dude…just earn it and we’ll all be there!!! it’s a simple equation Coach, you know this!!
I promise that. Again, I WANT to believe, but it’s got to be real. come on now
let the counterattacks begin 😉
speaking of which, we suck on the counter these days
I ..
I believe …
I believe that …
I believe that we …
I believe that we’ll get grouped!
I believe that we’ll get grouped!!
I believe that we’ll get grouped!!!
I think only 16 of the 48 teams get eliminated in the group stage. I expect them to get out of the group but face a team with better players in the new round of 32 and you only beat teams with better players if you are lucky.