The temptation to depict Mauricio Pochettino as a real-life Ted Lasso was irresistible.
U.S. Soccer certainly couldn’t resist. It had posters made up before the Argentine’s first game in charge of the men’s national team that had his face and the word “believe” printed across it. The American Outlaws fan group couldn’t help themselves, either, hanging a banner behind one of the goals in Austin’s Q2 Stadium that depicted Pochettino in another obvious nod to Lasso iconography.
Sure, Pochettino does have a certain upbeat, Lasso-esque energy about him. Spend a little time around him, and you’ll be struck by his perennial sunniness. Great head of hair, too, like Jason Sudeikis. And Pochettino, like the character Sudeikis plays, seems like a keen cultivator of team chemistry.
But the Lasso comparison ultimately, and obviously, falls flat: Pochettino may be a fish out of water in the United States, but the USMNT’s new coach is the ultimate insider—a Football Man of impeccable pedigree. He was Diego Maradona’s roommate when they played together for Newell’s; a recent manager of Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Kylian Mbappé; and a seasoned navigator of Europe’s biggest clubs. He was recruited at great expense for being one of the more accomplished and admired managers in the business, to sprinkle his insider magic dust over a program still working its way in from the outside.
That process got underway, albeit unevenly, in Pochettino’s first two games in charge over the past few days.
On Saturday, the U.S. marked Pochettino’s debut with a convincing 2-0 victory over Panama, avenging the ugly 10-man loss to the same opponent in June, which had consigned the Americans to a group-stage elimination in the Copa Americá. After a disastrous performance at that tournament, which led to the dismissal of former head coach Gregg Berhalter, this was an encouraging start for a still pretty young American team that’s been labeled as a golden generation but has started to face hard questions about its true potential.
Then again, on Tuesday, the Yanks were largely dominated by Mexico in a 2-0 defeat, the first loss to El Tri in five years, although it could have been far worse than what the score line showed. The big caveat here is that the Americans turned up in Guadalajara missing a starting lineup’s worth of injured regulars, including tone setters like Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams, Sergiño Dest, Tim Weah, and Folarin Balogun. Losses to an archrival sting, but the circumstances mitigate the defeat. On balance, there was much to be encouraged by in Pochettino’s first week on the job. If nothing else, the Americans have rediscovered their zest and zeal after a dispiriting run of feckless performances.
There really isn’t anything particularly complicated or revolutionary that Pochettino has done with the team thus far. How could he, after just one training camp? Stylistically, the Americans didn’t look all that different from the way Berhalter set up his team before he was fired. Panama manager Thomas Christiansen, for his part, didn’t notice any real evolution between the fateful match on June 27 and on Saturday. “Really, I didn’t feel [there were] too many changes,” he said.
The difference lay elsewhere.
Whereas Jürgen Klinsmann, the last superstar coach the USMNT hired to great fanfare, went to great lengths to push his players out of their comfort zone, Pochettino would sooner keep them in it. “He’s been speaking about confidence all week,” said veteran defender Tim Ream, who captained the U.S. during this camp. “The feeling in the locker room, even before the game, guys felt confident in what we were going to do. He wants to have guys play the way they are comfortable playing and being confident going forward with the ball.”
Quick example: AC Milan midfielder Yunus Musah hasn’t been playing much for his club so far this season—just 150 minutes over the first nine games. Pochettino determined that the 21-year-old was in need of self-assurance. So he posted Musah on the right flank against Panama and Mexico, out of position, but in a spot where he didn’t have much responsibility to win the ball back and was free to run at his opponents and express himself. Against Panama, Musah repaid his new coach with his first international goal in his 41st appearance for the Americans.
It all coalesces into a kind of back-to-basics simplicity emphasizing old virtues like running like hell, which the Americans had sort of forgotten about. “We need to evolve like a team in our mentality, in our attitude, in our arrogance, in the way we need to compete,” Pochettino said ahead of the Mexico match.
He has reignited a team that had stagnated. He has done this partly with his mere presence, as anyone else might have. Less than two years out from the 2026 World Cup on home soil, the players are all too aware that there are jobs to be claimed or reclaimed under a new coach. But Pochettino has also rejuvenated the team by resisting the temptation to tear everything down and start over.
“From the beginning, [it’s important] not to create too much chaos,” Pochettino announced when he explained his first roster, which looked awfully similar to a Berhalter squad. Pochettino was referring to tactics, but he might as well have been talking about his overall approach. Pochettino has, for now, kept most of the staff that was in place under Berhalter—the performance coaches, sports scientists, analysts, and so on.
“I think the U.S. national team had a great period with Gregg Berhalter, with a lot of excitement, and we have to recognize all that he has done,” Pochettino said. There were sound foundations to build on. Even if the former coach’s results had started to slip, the closeness Berhalter curated in his team has endured under his successor.
“It’s the same culture in a lot of ways,” said goalkeeper Matt Turner. “We have a lot of guys that have been around for a while now.”
“We had a stretch of tough results, and I guess a change was needed—that’s what we got,” added Pulisic. “That’s not to say the bond between the guys has changed in any way. We’re all still really close off the field and on the field. We’re not too worried about that. Now we have a bit of change.”
Pochettino is a protégé of soccer savant Marcelo Bielsa, perhaps the most influential coach of his generation and the master of a nonnegotiable, high-octane style, so it is broadly assumed that he works just as dogmatically. But that hasn’t been true for some time now, if it ever was. Pochettino’s been in the game long enough—and sufficiently hardened by tricky (and short-lived) stints at Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea—to know that it does no good to impose ideology on an inhospitable reality. This is especially true in the international game, which doesn’t offer the time needed to inculcate an intricate system. “I am a coach, we are a coaching staff, who love to dominate the games,” Pochettino explained. “But we need to work like a team, like a team that wins important titles. It’s not only to play nice football; it’s to be competitive.”
He understands full well that the quickest way to fail at the national team level is to demand that players do things they cannot. “We are going to try to respect our philosophy, but the priority in soccer is to win,” he explained. “Sometimes we need to be clever. It’s about making a decision benefiting the team. We don’t make decisions because of the philosophy or the idea. People sometimes say, ‘That’s my philosophy, and I’m going to die with my idea.’ No, I want to live. Because life is amazing. I want to be clever, and I want to win. I don’t want to die.”
But to some principles, Pochettino will hold fast. His new players spoke of some of the longest and most grueling practice sessions of their national team careers—which in Ream’s case encompasses 14 years and nine permanent and interim head coaches. The coaching staff wants practices to mirror the intensity of games, even at the international level, where most of the training time is conventionally spent on active recovery due to the demands of long travel and an onslaught of club games. And there have been lots of one-on-one meetings. This is the Pochettino tonic: hard work and long, ongoing conversations. “They need to be happy,” Pochettino said. “They need to enjoy the way they will be in the camp. It’s our responsibility to create a very nice environment. The players need to be excited when they’re going to the next camp.”
In the stadium just before the Panama game kicked off, the announcement of Pochettino’s name after the lineup introduction drew the loudest cheer. Following the win, after hugging every staff member and player he could find, he strode over to the American Outlaws, who chanted his name. He smiled, clapped along, and then hyped them up encouragingly.
Pochettino is on a charm offensive, savvy enough to know that a big chunk of the job of preparing the United States for the World Cup isn’t a tactical reboot but a hearts and minds campaign.
“I think we have amazing players,” he said, “but the most important thing is the need to believe.” OK, maybe he’s at least a little Ted Lasso.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a regular contributor on soccer to The Ringer. The Long Game, his book on the United States men’s national team, will be published by Viking Books ahead of the 2026 World Cup. He teaches at Marist College.
