The people who run the U.S. Soccer Federation have played the cards they had, and hit the flush—a new coach that fans won't hate with their customary Pavlovian zeal.
Now comes the trap door: Who's to blame next?
In coming to terms with former Espanyol, Southampton, Tottenham, PSG, and Chelsea coach Mauricio Pochettino to run the men's national team as it approaches the 2026 World Cup, U.S. Soccer technical director Matt Crocker has been as good as his word about money being almost no object. Replacing Gregg Berhalter as the scapegoat du jour was that big a job. Nobody has a number yet on the amount it will cost to bring Pochettino into the fold, but it is safe to assume that it will be at least thrice what Berhalter was paid to catch strays, and that Pochettino will have to be everything he promises to rise to the stature of U.S. women's coach Emma Hayes.
Why Pochettino took this job can probably be reduced to the first item. Crocker needed a big name both to appease the angry villagers and steer them towards the view that would most thoroughly absolve him—that is, towards seeing Berhalter as the raison d'etre for the team’s every failure. No one is really arguing that the USMNT isn’t a towering dungshow whose self-valuation far exceeds its ability to cover its collective arse; everyone agrees that it is. Crocker’s gambit is about shifting the blame for that, and he has been hard at work there, and was even willing to be laughed at for his idea of schmoozing Jurgen Klopp and his inspiring teeth in hopes of convincing him to leave Liverpool for... this? At least Crocker will be credited for not settling upon MLS coaches like Steve Cherundolo (LA Galaxy) or Wilfried Nancy (Columbus), who were not qualified based on the one goal Crocker set for himself: get a big name internationally so that people will stop kicking his dog.
The highway before Pochettino is clear enough, given that he can assemble his team without fretting over qualifying for the World Cup because the 2026 event is being held in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. He overcame what should be a dim view of American soccer entrepreneurs after being dragged at Chelsea and through the Todd Boehly Ownership Experience, and had clearly wearied of waiting for the English FA to commit to him as the replacement for Gareth Southgate.
In other words, Pochettino kind of settled, and Crocker definitely overachieved. Money can do that.
The immediate benefit Pochettino will provide the team is a forward-facing style that presumably will please people who thought Berhalter was too defensive, although that wasn't really the base of the complaints. The itch-scratching component of the hire is that Pochettino will be less conciliatory to a group of satisfied players whom it was believed by other critics had treated Berhalter as a Christmas welcome mat upon which to scrape the snow from their boots.
In that way, this seems a decent fit, but only if you believe that Berhalter really is the sole reason the U.S. never did anything with an allegedly golden generation that looks a lot more like bauxite, and which melts—and, in international competition, has indeed melted—at slightly higher than room temperature. The argument here is that all these Americans currently playing in Europe is proof that this program can swim with the sharks. This runs at odds with the countervailing theory that Triple-A baseball teams get players called up to the big leagues all the time without the Lehigh Valley IronPigs somehow becoming the Philadelphia Phillies.
Either way, the clock is ticking on Crocker, and it will no longer be considered a coaching failure if the U.S. follows its Copa America debacle with a similar flameout in two years. For that, we may have to settle on the Three Truer Outcomes that genuinely haunt the USMNT:
- The Organization. Hiring Pochettino is the first part. Letting him run the operation his way is the second, and that is still to be played out in public. He was undone at Chelsea by the bungling of his ownership, which needed only two years to sign a hundred players for a billion euros. He is unlikely to tolerate much interference this time by a group of folks with reactive ideas who have mostly defended the status quo because that particular quo is their personal status.
- The Players. We have been oversold on this group, like the last group, and the one before that. While American players are better, so are those of most of the other soccer powers. You getting better doesn't preclude your superiors getting better simultaneously, and after the Copa stinkout there is reason to consider the possibility that maybe the full side isn't better in the only way that counts, which is being better than the other teams you're playing.
- The Expectations. Fans are a predictably horrible barometer of anything other than being guided by the last thing they saw, and as any Minnesota Vikings fan will tell you, nothing depresses quite like hope. American soccer fans want their European and Latin compatriots to view them as equals, but the team they support is very clearly not that, and wishing/yelling/tavern-shouting does not make it so. Pochettino's first job outside his coaching brief will be to make sure the fan base understands this, and that will entail undoing much of the smug self-satisfaction that surrounded this last side and its fans. We're betting that part won't happen.
But why worry about 2026 when it's still 2024? Pochettino hasn't even signed the papers yet, and will spend most of his time for the foreseeable future in Europe watching the American exports to see how they fit the style he will insist they play. It will be a long time before we have to re-examine why this team doesn't make people happy, and Pochettino's name and presence should cover that particular conundrum for the time being. If money really does equal results, the USMNT got better. Of course, if it were that simple, they could have just given Berhalter a raise two years ago.
