What's going on with USMNT? Plus: Players to watch at Club World Cup

New York Times

a day ago

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Hello! Mauricio Pochettino was sold the American dream. His USMNT are having a nightmare. We're trying to get our heads around it.
🥵 Poch feels the heat
🏀 NBA, NFL bids for EPL club
📡 The Club World Cup Radar
👀 Totti's long-range belter
'I'm the guilty one here,' said Mauricio Pochettino, which made a change from apportioning blame to the players around him. Nothing has epitomised the awkward coupling between the USMNT and their new head coach quite like him digging out his squad at regular intervals.
But Pochettino's mea culpa after Tuesday's 4-0 mauling by Switzerland was a variation on a recurring theme: that his collaboration with the U.S. has started badly, or taken longer than it should have done to take off. Don't forget, this was supposed to be U.S. Soccer getting serious and making the national team all they could be at the 2026 World Cup. It paid big to pluck Poch from the uppermost club coaching bracket.
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So what's going on? Some mitigation before anything else. Pochettino's pool of players for the past week of friendlies has been weaker than normal. Certain mainstays such as Christian Pulisic and Sergino Dest are resting, and fringe names were rotated in on Tuesday. The fitness of his squad has been so temperamental he must think a clean bill of health is something that only happens for other coaches.
His record over 10 games, though, is concerning: five wins and five defeats, with four of those losses in his past four matches. He fumbled the fixtures which really mattered, at the Concacaf Nations League, and he'll be bailing water if the confederation's Gold Cup — starting this Sunday — goes wrong, too. It took a mere six months for USMNT godfather Bruce Arena to imply that the Argentine was a poor choice.
The Athletic's Paul Tenorio made me chuckle when he wrote in yesterday's TAFC: 'The honeymoon is over and a marriage counsellor is on retainer.' The trouble is that when you watch Poch's side, it's not easy to spot a fluent style forming, or dependable patterns of play. To wit: they Americans are no more potent than they were on the day Gregg Berhalter was fired last July.
Just to branch off on a tangent for a second: across international football as a whole, we might be seeing evidence that switching from club jobs to a national team's technical area is trickier than it sounds. The crossover is in vogue, but how wise a ploy is it? England are furrowing Thomas Tuchel's brow. Germany have been ordinary under Julian Nagelsmann. Carlo Ancelotti isn't a sure-fire cure for Brazil's mediocrity.
In reality, international coaching offers little scope to implement a detailed, tactical plan over a finite period. Training sessions are too few. Perhaps that's why associations went through a phase of banking on pragmatic types already working for them in another position, often coaching an age-group team; England did it with Gareth Southgate, Spain with Luis de la Fuente and Argentina with Lionel Scaloni.
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There's an added complication for Pochettino, and one which is largely out of his control. The USMNT is not awash with world-class talent. Pulisic is as close as it gets but it surely says something that the cream of the crop in European club football aren't spending to sign him. It's concerning — if not surprising — that fatigue will see him sit out the Gold Cup entirely.
The U.S. roster has its limits. That much is obvious. As Paul writes, the requisite depth is not there. But they should be, and have to be, better than this. 'If you want to criticise me, go ahead,' Pochettino said on Tuesday, and that grumbling could mount internally as well as externally at this rate. Because the World Cup is huge, it's predominantly on home soil next time, it's arriving soon and it will be many, many years before it comes around again.
Somewhere in the not-so-distant future, FIFA will announce ticket prices for next year's World Cup finals. A handful are up for grabs already — corporate bargains at $73,500 a head, for example — but general-sale costs are still being finalised.
The World Cup is a far bigger event than FIFA's Club World Cup (CWC), the revamped version of which starts in the U.S. on Saturday. But in Adam Crafton's overview of all of the things which need sorting for summer 2026, ticket sales are as intriguing as anything — because the CWC is failing to capture the imagination.
The world governing body is offering students five tickets for $20 for the first game in Miami this weekend (down from $349 shortly after the group-stage draw in December). Realistically, it wouldn't be doing that if a) punters were queuing up to be there and b) it wasn't concerned about television cameras showing stacks of empty seats. Broadcast rights to this event set DAZN back $1bn after all.
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On TV, the equivalent of two thirds of the globe's population will watch the 2026 World Cup. That audience is assured. But on the ground? It will sell better, sure, but were common sense to prevail, the take-up for the CWC should have some influence on FIFA's plans for next year. Don't hold your breath.
One of the highlights of The Athletic's coverage of any tournament is always The Radar. Published before the games begin, it's our tactical, who's-who bible.
You'll find Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe et all in today's Club World Cup breakdown but the real treats are the lesser-known profiles, like that of Auckland City's Dylan Manickum. He's a 32-year-old whose working life combines semi-pro football and, incredibly, full-time employment as an engineer.
Beyond him, look out for River Plate's 17-year-old Franco Mastantuono. The precocious midfielder broke Lionel Messi's record as the youngest debutant in a competitive match for Argentina, and he's most likely off to Real Madrid soon.
Also, a shout out to Mamelodi Sundowns goalkeeper Ronwen Williams. Last year, he was the first Africa-based 'keeper to be shortlisted for the Yashin Trophy, awarded annually to the world's best. Williams has the knack of reading penalties (below) and if Sundowns make any sort of splash, they'll likely be indebted to their main man.
It's been one of those weeks for Italy's national team; one of those weeks they have from time to time. Who can rescue them from the hole they have dug for themselves?
What about Francesco Totti, the drop-dead-gorgeous 2006 World Cup winner? He's 48 years old now but the force remains strong, as shown by him casually finishing from halfway in an old-boys' game over the weekend. In October, he talked (semi-seriously) about coming out of retirement. Let's get it on.