Mauricio Pochettino met with the media for the first time since he was announced as United States men’s national team boss, stressing competition, accountability, and belief as necessary items for his players ahead of the 2026 World Cup in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
Introduced by old friend and technical director Matt Crocker as “the best person and leader to take our program forward,” Pochettino met and raised the bar set by his new boss.
[ MORE: 10 intriguing players for Pochettino’s USMNT ]
Pochettino spoke for the better part of an hour and stressed that the door is open to all players in the pool, and that his job is to set a culture and reinforce it. As for the short period of time — around 21 months — until the World Cup, there are no excuses.
“Everyone thinks that there’s no time to prepare,” Pochettino said. “I am on the opposite time. I believe there is time enough. I don’t want to create an excuse for the players to say we don’t have time to buy into new ideas and new philosophy. Football is like this (snaps fingers) to touch the right button and start to perform. We are talking about football. The players are so intelligent and so talented and play in a different way.”
[ LATEST: USMNT 1-2 Canada | USMNT 1-1 New Zealand ]
Mauricio Pochettino stresses belief, open player pool
“Believe for me is a word that is so powerful,” Pochettino said. “You can have enormous talent and you can be clever but in football, you need to believe that all is possible. We will find a way to believe all together and for sure we will achieve all we want.”
Pochettino stressed that his priority is communicate his plans to the player pool, as well as his plans to execute them, so that they can hit the ground running in October’s friendlies against Panama and Mexico.
[ JPW: Pochettino the perfect fit for a crucial time? ]
“The most important thing is now to set an idea that can fit for everyone, an idea that the players want to buy,” Pochettino said, later adding that, “We need to see the players, feel the players, but we are very flexible. We want to play good football, exciting football. We are in the USA. We want to convince our fans, the aesthetic is real important. We want to play nice football, attacking football. Of course we want to have possession. The philosophy is to have the ball. We have to run, give good angles to your teammates. When we don’t have the ball, we have to be aggressive, to be competitive. We have to translate, to create this platform so when they come, they know exactly what they need to do, and how we have to behave like a team. The potential is there. The talent is there. We have only to create the best platform for them.”
Pochettino said they ‘need to assess the players every day’ and stress accountability and proper mentality.
And despite a poor Copa America and a pair of disappointing friendlies in September, Pochettino will build on the good.
“We are always positive — we have very talented players,” Pochettino said. “Of course the confidence is a little bit low after the Copa America but we are going to recover. We have good professionals. We are going to work to create the right patterns to recover the confidence and start to perform together. It’s a very good generation of players/ Football is a collective sport but we we have to show we play like a collective on the pitch. We have to work on that.”
