Mauricio Pochettino's USMNT project got off to a strong start this week in Texas. Fresh from long flights from Europe, with tired minds and bodies, the players went through “tough” training sessions; Tuesday's match was “one of the longer ones we've had with the national team,” said veteran defender Tim Ream.
Of course, they also started with the “basics”, with basic movements, with introductory meetings. “The most important (thing),” Pochettino said last week, “is that we need to establish some principles, some concepts” – rather than “spend two, three hours talking about tactics.”
However, there is hope that ultimately these principles and concepts will ignite the US men's national team; this Pochettino, the greatest and most expensive coach in the history of the program, will revolutionize this.
And if that happens, the revolution will likely take shape in the three most important seconds in football – those after its players lose the ball.
It's hard to know exactly how Pochettino plans to transform the USMNT. While his name conjures up visions of the bold, relentless press he brought to Southampton and Tottenham, he has often tailored his tactics to suit his staff – particularly at his last two stops, PSG and Chelsea. He has mastered the press. He often improved attack shapes. In fact, some of his “positional play” and formations may remind fans of what they saw under previous American coach Gregg Berhalter.
However, it will likely be different if you go on the defensive. “This is the phase where you lose the ball, we will be very, very, very demanding,” Pochettino said last week.
In this critical phase of the sport, a team essentially has two options: retreat into a defensive shape or dive into a swarm, hunting for the ball and trying to win it back. Berhalter looked for a middle ground between both extremes. Pochettino sounds like he doesn't want to compromise.
“When we lose the ball,” the new coach said, “we have to desperately try to get it back as quickly as possible.”
This is called back pressure – and a more aggressive approach to football in general – could define USMNT Pochettino.
Pochettino's starting point: Berhalter's ball
But before we dive into Poch Ball, let's take a step back and define Berhalter's USMNT – which has evolved over time.
It began with the ideal expressed desire to “use the ball to disorganize the opponent and create a goal-scoring opportunity.” However, it seemed as time went on that the team's goal in possession changed to a more defensive one. The priority was “defensive rest” – positioning players while in possession to protect against opposing counter-attacks. When asked about the team's tactical identity on the eve of the 2024 Copa América, Berhalter replied in part: “I know one thing for sure: our greatest success will come from our ability to limit high-quality goal-scoring opportunities from our opponents. “
And in many ways, he did it. In three group matches at the 2022 World Cup, the USMNT has not conceded any goals in open play. At the Copa América, where matches were played 11v11, the rivals were equally strong. Against Mexico, in the World Cup qualifiers and the last two Nations League Finals, the USMNT kept four clean sheets in a row.
A relatively cautious and rigid approach protected and eliminated the weaknesses of the central defender. But it came with compromises. Solidity came at the expense of an attack on liquidity and riskiness. And this is what happened: Berhalter's Fall. The United States has struggled to consistently create high-quality opportunities of its own, especially in the core areas.
The million-dollar question was, and still is: Was it a tactical failure? Or maybe player failure?
Or, more likely, was it a debatable but sensible choice that Berhalter made based on the players available to him? His most dynamic players – Christian Pulisic, Tim Weah, Sergiño Dest, Antonee Robinson – played from wide distances. His defensive midfielder, Tyler Adams, was much better at clearing up mistakes and suppressing counter-attacks than with progressive passes. His best central playmaker, Gio Reyna, was often unavailable due to injury.
Berhalter has therefore strayed from his ideals, something many club coaches coming to international football realize they must do. He became more pragmatic, adapting game plans opponent by opponent. “When you look at the top, best teams in the world,” Berhalter said in June, “I think that's what they do best: adapt.”
The question now is whether Pochettino will reach a similar conclusion.
Filozofia Pochettino
Parts of Pochettino's philosophy are not much different from the one Berhalter outlined almost six years ago. Playing the ball “is the main goal,” Pochettino said. He and his staff “love to dominate games and obviously have the ball… because I think that's the best way, first of all, to defend; and secondly, because… the way we want to win is to play closer to the opponent's goal.”
So he implores his teams to build attacks from the back.
If the opponent is pressing high, they don't want massive long balls to avoid pressing; wants his midfielders and strikers to “move around, give teammates options and good angles”, as he said last month; wants the player on the ball to accept some risk and find appropriate options.
And he wants them to play forward, deliberately, moving as a unit to position themselves in the opponent's half and tilting the field.
Last week on a Zoom call with reporters, Pochettino highlighted all of this – the attacking phase – as one of the “two phases of the game you have to control”. The second was the previously mentioned defensive transition phase. Both are, of course, very interconnected. Your attacking shape is your defensive transitional shape. Your priorities and strategies around the ball influence what you can do when you lose it.
That's why Pochettino, like Berhalter – and like Pep Guardiola – prefers a somewhat stiff attack. If players stay in position in a well-organized structure, they will be better prepared to react when offense suddenly becomes defense.
At this crucial transitional moment, the team that lost the ball is usually the most vulnerable because its players were positioned to attack rather than defend. However, there is a consequence: the team that wins the ball is usually ill-prepared to attack or maintain possession of the ball because its players were positioned to block passing lanes and reduce space, rather than securing passing lanes and creating space.
Coaches are therefore faced with a choice between limiting the weaknesses of their own team and, on the other hand, completing the weak structure of the opponent. Historically, Pochettino's teams have attacked. They tried to win the ball back within three seconds of losing it and maintain position in the attacking half of the field.
They also pressed furiously in non-transition phases. Relying on rigorous training schedules, Pochettino's 2013–14 Southampton team ran more runs than any other team in the history of the English Premier League. His early Tottenham teams were similarly confrontational, attacking opposing defenders and goalkeepers. In his 2017 book, Pochettino described the ideal: “I want my teams to provoke a controlled disturbance, to create the kind of movement that alarms the opposition.”
However, at PSG he often failed to achieve this. An effective press requires 11 coordinated, efficient and committed players. Instead, Pochettino had Neymar, Kylian Mbappé and an aging Lionel Messi. So he used their strengths.
A few years later at Chelsea, in line with broader tactical trends, his players were pressing, but not as aggressively as at Tottenham. At times they also sat in the middle of the block and focused on pushing opponents to the sideline, blocking off passing lanes and central spaces.
So it's unclear how aggressive his USMNT will be without the ball. For the most part, American players can apply pressure – a trait that Berhalter has chosen to some extent. However, time is short – but it is necessary for players to synchronize and fully integrate.
Pochettino brings flexibility and intensity to the USMNT
When it comes to the finer details – the shapes and patterns that bring philosophies to life – Pochettino will certainly be flexible.
Last week he said his starting points would be a 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 – the same basic formations Berhalter used – but these simplified formations don't tell us much.
Berhalter's USMNT alternated between roughly two attacking shapes – 3-2-2-3 and 2-3-2-3 – depending on the opponent and his own midfield structure; and between two defensive forms – 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 – depending on the opponent and his preferred line of confrontation.
Pochettino will certainly also take turns. At Chelsea, he played with different setups throughout the 2023–24 season. At PSG, he adjusted the squad depending on the availability of players. His best Tottenham team spent part of the 2016-17 season in a 3-4-2-1 formation, with three centre-backs, but that was mainly because he fit the staff – Eric Dier was perfect in the center of the back three, while Kyle Walker and Danny Rose were excellent as wing-backs. The following season, with Walker gone and Rose injured or falling out of favor, Pochettino returned to a 4-2-3-1 formation to sign all four of his attacking stars – Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen and Son Heung-min – together on the pitch.
In short, he is not a stubborn idealist. He has vision and ideals, but “we have to see the players, feel them, see all the qualities,” he said last month. “We are very flexible.”
And his first camp probably led to that goal. More than half of his likely starters for 2026 – Dest, Adams, Reyna, Weah, Folarin Balogun, Chris Richards and Cameron Carter-Vickers – are absent through injury. Pochettino will have to work and adapt to whatever international football throws at him.
He will also have to convey that vision over several days, during about 10 training camps, most of which will be short, between now and the 2026 World Cup. So there is no time to waste. That work is ongoing ahead of Pochettino's first match, Saturday's friendly against Panama (9 p.m. ET, TNT).
His “overall message,” said striker Josh Sargent, was clear: “Whatever we do, whether with or against the ball, he wants it to be intense. If we lose the ball, we get it back immediately. This is big news so far.”
