- Mauricio Pochettino won in his U.S. men’s soccer team coaching debut in an international friendly against Panama.
- Pochettino understands he’ll need to work fast if he wants the team to make an impact at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
- Pochettino embraces a player-centric coaching philosophy that he tries to adapt to the team’s needs.
If there was any doubt about whether the U.S. men’s soccer team was under new management, it faded Saturday when fans arriving at Q2 Stadium for Mauricio Pochettino’s first game as coach were handed a poster bearing his face, the same face that stared out from a red banner behind the south goal.
“It was a massive shock for me,” said Pochettino, U.S. Soccer’s $6-million man, who also received a rousing ovation and welcome from a nearly sold-out crowd.
For much of the game that followed, however, Pochettino’s team played very much like the one that won just once in its final five matches under his predecessor, Gregg Berhalter. This time it did just enough to win, getting a goal from Yunus Musah four minutes into the second half and another from Ricardo Pepi four minutes into stoppage time to beat Panama 2-0.
It remains to be seen if Mauricio Pochettino can guide the U.S. men’s national soccer team to new heights, but his debut as coach resulted in victory.
So while the arrival of a coach who has enjoyed success in three of Europe’s top five leagues has inspired hope and energy — to say nothing of posters and banners — it must be tempered with the knowledge that change doesn’t happen overnight. It certainly didn’t happen Saturday.
“I didn’t feel too many changes,” Panamanian coach Thomas Christiansen said. “He will need time to adapt his ideas to the team.”
Time, however, is short. The World Cup is returning to the U.S. in less than two years and Pochettino reportedly is being paid $6 million — nearly double the record for an American soccer coach — to make the team competitive for that tournament. The win over Panama, he said, was “the first step to start to grow and be better.”
Pochettino took the job a month ago and said the goal of his first camp, which ended with Tuesday night’s friendly against Mexico in Guadalajara, was to introduce himself and his staff to the players and to begin to implement a style of play. That’s why the coach scheduled individual meetings with each player and used training sessions to establish “a few principles, a few concepts.”
New U.S. soccer coach Mauricio Pochettino has led sharper and more intense workouts ahead of his first match Saturday in Austin.
“We want to put our stamp on the team,” he said in a news conference that moved seamlessly from English to Spanish and back again.
Against Panama the new coach went with a new look, opening with a 4-2-3-1 formation that featured 22-year-old midfielders Gianluca Busio and Aiden Morris as a double pivot. And for the first 20 minutes it worked, with the U.S. dominating possession and creating three dangerous chances, yet failing to put a shot on goal.
But, Pochettino added, he won’t be a slave to any one approach. If his players can’t adapt to him, he’ll try to adapt to them.
“People sometimes say ‘That’s my philosophy, my idea and I’m going to die with my idea,’<TH>” he said. “No, I want to live. I want to be clever. Sometimes we need to find a different way to put our players in a comfortable zone.
“If a player doesn’t have the conditions to do something, why would you force him? It’s about creating the dynamic, the possibility.”
That adaptation is likely to remain a work in progress, especially since Pochettino is missing more than half his probable starters — defenders Sergiño Dest, Chris Richards and Cameron Carter-Vickers, midfielder Tyler Adams, forwards Tim Weah and Folarin Balogun and attacker Gio Reyna — who were left off this month’s roster because of injuries.
Christian Pulisic was present, however, and the new coach went out of his way to lavish praise on the AC Milan forward, calling him “one of the best offensive players in the world.”
Pulisic, who assisted on the first goal Saturday, returned the compliment, saying he enjoyed his first week with the new staff.
“The training has been real intense and good,” said Pulisic, whose five goals rank third in Serie A. “A lot of work and a long time on the pitch to kind of show how we want to play and get some ideas across.”
One idea Pochettino has emphasized since taking over the team is confidence. Captain Tim Ream said Saturday that message has gotten through.
“He’s been speaking about confidence all week,” Ream said. “When he tells guys to go and be themselves, you know it’s a sign that he has confidence in you.
“Knowing the caliber of manager that he is, the caliber of players that he’s that he’s managed, for him to come in and give guys that license to be themselves, it allows guys to express themselves more and more and more. And be confident doing that.”
U.S. men’s soccer coach Mauricio Pochettino says he is focused on gradually implementing changes while delivering a fun style of play for fans.
Another theme is to believe, a term Pochettino repeatedly used in his introductory news conference last month.
“‘Believe’ for me is a word that is so powerful,” he said then. “In football you need to believe that all is possible. We need to really believe in big things. Believe that we can win not only a game, we can win the World Cup. We want players that show up and think big.”
“The potential is there. The talent is there,” he added. “It’s only to create the best platform for them to express themselves.”
It’s a theme he returned to last week when he again talked about the challenge of preparing for the fast-approaching World Cup, one that has the potential to change the sport’s trajectory in the U.S.
“That is our responsibility. It is a massive, massive responsibility,” Pochettino said. “We need to build that confidence and trust that we can arrive in two years and be really competitive and feel proud about a sport that maybe wasn’t born here, but starts to belong here.”
The countdown clock for that mission already is ticking. And Saturday’s win over Panama was a positive first step.
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the Corner of the Galaxy podcast.
