Weston McKennie discusses the state of the USMNT ahead of World Cup
Soccer standout Weston McKennie discusses the state of the USMNT and how Mauricio Pochettino is getting the squad ready ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
Sports Seriously
Mauricio Pochettino wanted to use Tuesday’s friendly against Switzerland as a test for some of his most inexperienced players.
As the U.S. men’s national team coach himself acknowledged after the game, he picked the wrong opponent for such an experiment.
Switzerland embarrassed a USMNT side already low on confidence, taking a 4-0 lead within the first 36 minutes of the friendly and then cruising to victory by the same scoreline.
The USMNT is now on its first four-game losing streak in 18 years. Pochettino is the first USMNT head coach to lose five of his first 10 games since Lothar Osiander (1986-88).
With the USMNT already under pressure after an awful Concacaf Nations League Finals in March, Pochettino opted to shake up his roster for the Gold Cup this summer.
Of the 26 players headed to the Gold Cup, 15 are from MLS. This comes after a lengthy period when Pochettino’s predecessor Gregg Berhalter would routinely call rosters almost entirely comprised of European-based players.
While Pochettino had several absences to key players that were out of his hands, he still omitted several European-based options in favor of untested MLS players.
Pochettino started many of those players on Tuesday, with disastrous results.
“First of all, it’s our responsibility and my responsibility for the choice of the starting XI,” Pochettino said after the game. “We wanted the entire team to have minutes and to play. I think that can go in the wrong direction.”
Six players started the game against Switzerland with five or fewer caps. Three players (Nathan Harriel, Sebastian Berhalter and Quinn Sullivan) made their first USMNT start.
Many of those players looked out of their depth against the Swiss. Pochettino was forced to make five halftime subs with the match already out of hand.
After the game, Pochettino tried to shift the focus from some of his players’ awful displays onto himself.
“We were never in the game against a very good team like Switzerland, with experienced players and a team that is playing really well,” he said. “My first thought was not to blame the players but to blame ourselves, because it was our decision.”
Pochettino is right to some degree. The Argentine put his team in position to fail, starting so many untested players against seasoned stars like Granit Xhaka and Manuel Akanji.
But Pochettino will also have to reckon with why some of the players he started were even on his roster at all. In sending a message to the USMNT, Pochettino cut players like Gianluca Busio, Tanner Tessmann, Joe Scally and Josh Sargent from his Gold Cup roster.
Those four have a chance to make the World Cup roster next summer. Some of the players who started against Switzerland won’t — or at least shouldn’t — be in the mix.
In some sense, the defeat to Switzerland provided clarity for Pochettino. But the coach won’t be happy with what he learned. Because the USMNT will now enter the Gold Cup with even more pressure and a roster that doesn’t seem capable of even surpassing the best in Concacaf.
That will put the onus on Pochettino, who may have to produce a signature coaching performance in the Gold Cup to overcome some of his self-inflicted selection mistakes.
“My responsibility is to build the team. It’s my responsibility. It’s not to blame the players. But I think it’s important for young players who have made a debut to see that it’s a high level,” Pochettino said.
“You have to give more. With more experienced players in the second half, we matched the opponent. For the Gold Cup, we’ll learn from that and make better decisions in the future.”