Mauricio Pochettino’s USMNT project started with intensity in Texas this week. Fresh from long flights from Europe, with tired minds and bodies, the players endured ‘tough’ training sessions; Tuesday was “one of the longer ones we’ve had with the national team,” veteran defenseman Tim Ream said.
Of course, they also started with the ‘basic principles’, with rudimentary movements, with introductory meetings. “The most important thing [thing]’, Pochettino said last week, ‘is that we need to establish a few principles and a few concepts’ – rather than spending ‘two, three hours talking about tactics’.
The hope, however, is that these principles and concepts will ultimately light the U.S. Men’s National Team on fire; that Pochettino, the most prominent and expensive coach in program history, will revolutionize it.
And if he does, the revolution will likely take shape in the three most impactful seconds in football: the one after his players lose the ball.
It’s difficult to know exactly how Pochettino wants to transform the USMNT. While his name conjures up visions of the courageous, ruthless press he brought to Southampton and Tottenham, he has regularly adapted his tactics to suit his personnel – especially at his last two stops, PSG and Chelsea. He controlled the press. He has often adapted attacking shapes. Some of his ‘positional play’ and formations might even remind fans of what they saw under former US coach Gregg Berhalter.
Where he will likely be different is in defensive transition. “It is the phase where you lose the ball, where we will be very, very demanding,” Pochettino said last week.
At this critical stage of the sport, a team essentially has two options: retreat to its defensive shape, or swarm, chase the ball and try to win it back. Berhalter sought a middle ground between the two extremes. Pochettino sounds like he doesn’t want to make any compromises.
“If we lose the ball,” said the new boss, “we have to desperately try to recover [it] as quickly as possible.”
This so-called counter-pressure – and, in general, a more aggressive approach to football – could define Pochettino’s USMNT.
Pochettino’s starting point: Berhalter Ball
But before we delve into Poch Ball, let’s rewind and define Berhalter’s USMNT – which has evolved over time.
It started with an ideal, a stated desire to ‘use the ball to disorganize the opponent and create scoring opportunities’. However, the team’s goal of possession seemed to become more of a defensive one over time. They prioritized ‘halftime defence’ – the positioning of players, while in possession of the ball, to protect against opponent counter-attacks. When asked about the team’s tactical identity on the eve of the 2024 Copa América, Berhalter said in part: “One thing I know for sure is that most of our success will come from being able to limit our opponents’ high-quality scoring opportunities. ”
And in many ways he achieved that. In three group matches at the 2022 World Cup, the USMNT conceded zero goals from open play. At the Copa América, when the games were 11-on-11, they were also solid. Against Mexico, the USMNT kept four clean sheets in a row during the World Cup qualifiers and the past two Nations League finals.
The relatively cautious, rigid approach shielded and negated the centre-back’s weaknesses. But it came with tradeoffs. Solidity came at the expense of attacking fluidity and adventurousness. And this became Berhalter’s downfall. The US struggled to consistently create high-quality chances of its own, especially in central areas.
The million dollar question was and is: was that a tactical failure? Or a player error?
Or, more likely, was this all a questionable but reasonable choice that Berhalter made based on the players he had at his disposal? His most dynamic – Christian Pulisic, Tim Weah, Sergiño Dest, Antonee Robinson – played in wide areas. His defensive midfielder, Tyler Adams, was much better at clearing mistakes and suppressing counters than he was at progressive passing. His best central playmaker, Gio Reyna, was often unavailable due to injury.
So Berhalter strayed from his ideals – as many club coaches coming to international football realize they must do. He became more pragmatic and tailored game plans, opponent by opponent. “If you look at the top teams in the world,” Berhalter said in June, “I think that’s what they do best: adapt.”
The question now is whether Pochettino will come to similar conclusions.
Pochettino’s philosophy
Some of Pochettino’s philosophy is not much different from the one Berhalter outlined almost six years ago. Playing with the ball “is the main goal,” Pochettino said. He and his staff “love to dominate games, and of course to have possession of the ball… because I think that’s the best way to defend first and foremost; and secondly, because… the way we want to win is by playing closer to the opponent’s goal.’
That’s why he implores his teams to build attacks from the back.
When an opponent presses high, he doesn’t want random long balls to avoid the press; he wants his midfielders and forwards to “move, give options and good angles to your teammate,” as he said last month; he wants the player on the ball to accept some risk and find those options.
And he wants them to play forward deliberately, moving as a unit to establish themselves in the opponent’s half and tilt the pitch.
During a Zoom call with reporters last week, Pochettino emphasized everything, the attacking phase, as one of “two phases of the game that you have to master.” The other was the aforementioned defensive transition phase. And the two are of course strongly connected. Your attacking form is your defensive transition form. Your priorities and strategies with the ball affect what you can do if you lose the ball.
That’s why Pochettino, like Berhalter – and no different than Pep Guardiola – has preferred a somewhat rigid attack. When players stick to positions within a well-organized structure, they are better prepared to respond when attack suddenly becomes defense.
At that crucial moment of transition, the team that lost the ball is usually the most vulnerable because the players were in position to attack, not defend. But there is a corollary: the team that won the ball is typically ill-equipped to attack or maintain possession – because the players were positioned to block passing lanes and compress space, rather than offering passing lanes and to create space.
Coaches are therefore faced with the choice between limiting their own team’s vulnerability or, on the other hand, attacking the opponent’s poor structure. And historically, Pochettino’s teams have made a leap. They have tried to win the ball back within three seconds of losing and maintain a foothold in the attacking half of the pitch.
They have also worked voraciously in non-transitional phases. Thanks to strict fitness regimes, Pochettino’s Southampton squad performed better than any other team in the history of the English Premier League in 2013/2014. His early Tottenham teams were similarly confrontational, chasing down opposition defenders and goalkeepers. In his 2017 book, Pochettino described the ideal: “I want my teams to provoke controlled disorder, to create so much movement that it unsettles the opposition.”
However, he was often unable to pursue that at PSG. An effective press requires eleven coordinated, fit and committed players. Pochettino instead had Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and an aging Lionel Messi. So he played to their strengths.
A few years later, at Chelsea, and in line with wider tactical trends, his players pressed on, but not nearly as aggressively as at Tottenham. They also sometimes sat in a central block and focused on forcing opponents to the touchline, blocking passing lanes and central spaces.
So it’s unclear how aggressive his USMNT will be without the ball. For the most part, the American players are able to push forward – a trait that Berhalter ultimately chose to adopt to some extent. But time is scarce, yet necessary to get the players in sync and fully on board.
Pochettino brings flexibility and intensity to USMNT
When it comes to the finer details – the shapes and patterns that will bring philosophies to life – Pochettino will certainly be pliable.
He said last week that his starting points will be a 4-2-3-1 and a 4-3-3 – the same basic formations Berhalter used – but those simplified formations don’t tell us much.
Berhalter’s USMNT alternated roughly between two attacking shapes – a 3-2-2-3 and 2-3-2-3 – depending on the opponent and their own midfield structure; and between two defensive shapes – a 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 – depending on the opponent and their preferred confrontation line.
Pochettino will certainly alternate as well. At Chelsea he played with different line-ups during the 2023/24 season. At PSG he adapted based on player availability. His best Tottenham team spent part of the 2016-17 season in a 3-4-2-1 base, with three centre-backs, but that is largely because it suited the personnel. Eric Dier was perfect for the middle of the back three, while Kyle Walker and Danny Rose were excellent as full-backs. The following season, with Walker gone and Rose injured or out of favour, Pochettino returned to a 4-2-3-1 to play all four of his attacking stars – Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen and Son Heung-min – to get hold of. together on the field.
Long story short: he is not a stubborn idealologist. He has a vision and ideals, but “we have to see the players, feel the players, see all the characteristics,” he said last month. “We are very flexible.”
And his first camp probably drove home at that point. 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 with and adapt to everything international football has to throw at him.
He will also have to convey the vision for a few days at a time, in about ten training camps, most of them short, between now and the 2026 World Cup. So there is no time to waste. That work is underway ahead of Pochettino’s first match, a friendly on Saturday against Panama (9 p.m. ET, TNT).
And his “overall message,” forward Josh Sargent said, was clear: “Everything we do, whether it’s with the ball or against the ball, he wants it to be intense. If we lose the ball, we get it back straight away. That has been a big message so far.”
