Pochettino’s first USA squad is hardly revolutionary. But it may still prove revealing

Mauricio Pochettino arrived at the US men’s national team with as good a resume as anyone to take charge of the program, boasting in his introduction to the US media that he believed the team would win the 2026 World Cup could win, which would be organized at home. along with Canada and Mexico.

It sounded like the beginning of a revolution. His first team, named last week, was anything but.

Despite multiple injuries giving him plenty of opportunities to shake things up, the collection of players assembled this international window could just as easily be drafted by his predecessor Gregg Berhalter. There are no uncapped players under 25 who will mark the start of the Pochettino era against Panama on Saturday and Mexico on Tuesday. Perhaps the most surprising additions are goalkeeper Zack Steffen – who returns to the team after being the starter for much of the run-up to the 2022 World Cup, and Marlon Fossey, whose most likely role in this team is as a right back. Sergiño Dest, once he returns from injury. For a window that’s supposed to be all about change, American fans have seen most of these guys before, often multiple times.

What might be seen as disappointing can instead be revelatory. With familiar faces on the field, the focus will be almost entirely on what comes from the sidelines. More than any individual player, this period will be a test for Pochettino and the staff he brought with him from his generally successful stops at PSG, Chelsea, Tottenham and Espanyol.

“I feel like we’ve learned a lot already,” midfielder Brenden Aaronson told reporters Thursday. “We know one thing for sure: the intensity with which we want to play. We want to play with high intensity, play in the other team’s half, have possession of the ball, and yes, I think what he wants is just a confident team.”

That Pochettino has very little time to instill that confidence is one of the many new obstacles he faces as a new international manager.

Most urgently, a host of key players are unavailable due to injury. There is no transfer market to rely on for replacements and no chance to make a decision on playing time for injuries that may be healed and ready by Saturday or Tuesday. Seven players from the 2024 Copa America squad (Gio Reyna, Folarin Balogun, Tim Weah, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Tyler Adams, Luca de la Torre and Chris Richards) will miss this window with various ailments, as will starter Sergiño Dest. continues his recovery from an ACL tear. In a cruel twist, several young and unproven players who might have had a chance in their absence have also been out due to injury or recovery (including Kevin Paredes, Cade Cowell and Caleb Wiley).

Pochettino must also figure out how to integrate players from different levels of club form into a cohesive whole. Within this USMNT squad alone, he will be able to rely on the services of two leaders who are currently enjoying strong runs, with Christian Pulisic emerging as a key force for AC Milan and Weston McKennie essentially forcing Juventus to retain him despite a summer of speculation that he would. be sold. Pochettino will also oversee players who need a jump start, such as Tanner Tessman, who has only started once since arriving at Lyon following a big-money move from Venezia and was a healthy scratch for a recent match against Rangers, and Yunus Musah, who has struggled to find a consistent place in the same AC Milan team as Pulisic.

Then there are the goaltenders, who are either unproven at the top international level (Patrick Schulte), in poor form (Ethan Horvath, who hasn’t managed a shutout since April), second choice for his club (Matt Turner), or he wants still regaining the level of consistency that made him a national team player in the first place (Steffen).

If Pochettino can lead this small group to better performances than what we saw in the Copa América, the whole narrative and momentum around this team will change.

“That’s the part of the job as a manager: how do you get those guys all on the same page, coming from all different parts of the world and all different styles of teams and leagues,” defender Tim Ream said on Wednesday. “They have to manage the travel, the minutes played, the teams the guys play against, and try to combine all these things into one solid group and bring personalities and people together.”

With that in mind, it’s a very good or a very bad thing that the US will face the teams they find themselves in in this window. In Panama they will face the side that effectively, if not officially, caused their demise in the Copa America with a surprise 2-1 victory in the second group match, setting up the ill-fated do-or-die test against Uruguay . loss that was always going to be an uphill battle for the US

In international football, such a one-off result is likely to prevail over a team for some time. Look no further than the repeated invocations of Couva during meetings between Trinidad and Tobago and the United States over the past seven years. After T&T blocked the American path to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the US did not get a chance for revenge until 2019. Saturday’s meeting with Panama has a lead of only three and a half months. A win, decisive or otherwise, would help prove that this is indeed a new era. Any other outcome, virtually regardless of performance, will delay the onset of those good feelings a little longer.

From there, the window doesn’t get much less meaningful. Although the Mexican men’s national team has suffered from indifferent to poor performances in recent years, they remain the United States’ top rivals in the region in terms of talent. The cultural and historical touchstones are always present, even in a friendly atmosphere. The best-case scenario is a victory that preserves the current status quo. With any other result, there will be an argument that Pochettino may have taken on a bigger project than initially thought.

“It’s always an important game for us,” striker Josh Sargent said of the match against Mexico, which will be a rare away friendly against the rival. “But especially with a new manager you want to get off to a good start and get a few wins.

Results are not often the goal in friendly matches. Their non-competitive nature means that they are usually a place for processes to take place more than anything else. This window, however, is one in which that thinking does not apply. It’s not about the commitment. It’s about the new leader of a team with a lot of potential, and his only chance at making a first impression.