LAGUNA NIGUEL, CA — The wall behind Mauricio Pochettino’s desk in his office at the U.S. men’s national team hotel is covered in motivational phrases.
“If I dream of touching the moon, maybe I can get close to it. If I only dream of getting close, I’ll stay on earth.”
“The talent has brought us here but it is the heart, effort and unity that will make us unforgettable.”
“Believe Work Compete”
“Everything represents our journey from day one until today,” Pochettino said during a roundtable with a small group of reporters on Tuesday, June 23, two days before the USMNT wraps up the World Cup group stage against Turkey.
And what a journey it’s been.
USMNT off to best start in almost 100 years
If you are new to the USMNT, or have paid only fleeting attention since the last World Cup in Qatar, what the Americans have done in the first two weeks of the tournament is probably about what you expected with a high-profile coach like Pochettino.
They won their group for the first time since 2010, and their two wins are their most in the group stage since 1930. They’ve already scored six goals, one shy of their record for the entire World Cup. They’ve got fans singing John Denver.
Easy as Pochettino and his staff – and with Pochettino, it is always a collective effort – are making it seem, it’s been anything but.
“Maybe we didn’t feel or saw how difficult was going to be the process. We were so naïve when we signed the contract,” he said. “We misjudged the situation. It was worse than we really believed.”
Bigger challenge than anticipated
No country, or club, switches coaches because things are going well. Especially not when the World Cup is less than two years away. A World Cup you are hosting, for only the second time.
Pochettino will not speak ill of predecessor Gregg Berhalter, but one look at the results tells the story.
This is the “golden generation” of the USMNT, with an abundance of world-class talent in players like Christian Pulisic, Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie, Folarin Balogun and Sergino Dest. But the Americans were stagnating, showing no sign they were going to close the gap on the rest of the world anytime soon.
When Pochettino and his staff arrived, they expected players would feel the same sense of urgency as they did. The World Cup, their World Cup, was right around the corner.
The reality was different.
“We don’t say that we have better standard, better culture, better habit. We came with different things and we wanted to make the things how we really feel, and that is always a process to change,” Pochettino said.
“If you have the habit to every morning to go (somewhere) and someone say, ‘No, you cannot go there,’ you are going to fight because it was your comfort zone and you say, ‘No, I want my comfort zone.'”
Cultural shifts take time
Pochettino was a longtime club manager before he came to the USMNT. Making cultural changes with a club team is different, because you’re with the players for nine months out of the year. The USMNT gathers every six to eight weeks, and the longest stretch they’re together is at a World Cup.
On top of that, Pochettino was trying to figure out who his players were, what strengths they had, where they needed to add depth.
Pochettino’s résumé speaks for itself: he’s won roughly 50% of the games he’s managed, and he’s made every team he’s gone to better. Most of his staff has been with him for years, if not decades, and they have found a system that works. Training sessions are intense, and talent will only get you so far.
“Football rewards work,” Pochettino said.
That the USMNT would get “punched in the nose,” as Pochettino puts it, at some point during the transition process was inevitable. It happened in March 2025, when the USMNT lost to Panama in the Nations League semifinals.
It was the first of four consecutive losses.
“That was good crash,” Pochettino said. “When we detect all the problems, we go for the solution and … we knew that the solution will arrive. The object is to challenge people. We challenge the organization, we challenge players, we challenge everyone.
“That was the process (so) that now is not a coincidence.”
Pochettino has won league titles and taken a team to the Champions League final. He had options when U.S. Soccer came calling. But part of the appeal of this job was the cultural shift, not only for a team but an entire country.
About a year after he was hired, Pochettino went to the Texas-Ohio State football game. Looking around the stadium filled with 100,000-plus rabid fans, he imagined the U.S. men drawing a crowd like that. Of soccer being center stage like it is in Europe and South America.
“My question was why not? If the fans are very passionate, why not with us? With soccer?” Pochettino said.
“To help, to evolve in a very good direction, the sport that we really love … why not be here, be part of something that can create a legacy?” he added. “For me, that is the most important legacy, the connection between the national team and the fans.”
That idea of why not eventually evolved into why not us?
Why not us?
It was something Pochettino said at a meeting in November 2025, and it’s become something of a mantra for the USMNT.
“If we believe we can, we can do it. If we work hard, we can do. If we change our mindset, we can do,” Pochettino said. “And that is why not us, no?”
Even in the weeks leading up to the World Cup, no one knew quite what to expect from this team. It had talent, of course. But it had been soundly beaten by Belgium and Portugal to start the year. It barely got by Senegal and then lost to Germany in the send-off games.
When the USMNT got to the World Cup, however, it hit the gas. Paraguay and Australia might not be the caliber of France or Argentina, but they are solid teams and the USMNT dominated both.
Pochettino likened this “sudden turnaround” to gardening. You plant a seed and, for a time, nothing happens. Then, one day, there is a tree.
“It’s difficult to analyze the process,” Pochettino said. “The process was a process that was necessary, necessary to change, to really change things and to go in the good direction, no?
“Always the orientation was to make them better and to give the possibility, the platform, for them to perform.”
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: On the USMNT and World Cup, Mauricio Pochettino is leaving his mark
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