I just find the mindset of "swinging his dick around to establish himself as the man" as absolutely cancerous if it is accompanied by "it's not fair to criticize me at all". It's a nuclear disaster level of a bad combination. JK will always be a chickenshit, and I find it little surprise that the stout core (very underestimated) of that early 2010s era US team collapsed in the following years. If Pochettino does this in 2026, then my expectations for the team skyrocket just like with Klinsmann in 2014.
Yes, if it becomes some kind of power struggle that really doesn't relate to play ... then I agree with you. The coach is the one in charge but they shouldn't be creating issues with players for personal reasons or power reasons. I think the issue becomes if a player actually doesn't step up and compete at the required level. At that point, it's not about power, it's about what's best for the team. And someone who's not committed can drag the whole team down. I'm not really seeing anything ego here. There's been no naming of players, nothing specific. If someone has actually been kept home for this reason, we actually don't know it. He, Pulisic and the media all contributed to dumbness this summer, but Christian was called in and played with no one making a big deal out of it. I dunno. I have yet to see any real evidence anyone has been exiled.
To bring this back to Pochettino - the result ultimately remains to be seen. I do think a win was critical against Japan*. For one, I personally hadn't been impressed by the US's results in 2025 at all, as suggested by my posts in this thread. But more importantly, Pochettino needed a good result or two if he wanted to set the standard in the locker room from a position of strength. *I don't care about who Japan rolled out, as it sure seemed like the US continued to control the match even after Japan put in some heavyweights in the second half.
Sorry no idea what that means but given that his ex wife claims they had sex 4 times every single night while they were married I don't think there were any migraines happening. Pippen made the NBA all defensive team 8 years in a row and Phil said the greatest all around player in the NBA! Nice try!
He was so distinct and unusual as a coach, he has no tree at least in terms of method that I've seen, and its kind of telling that noone is quite sure what the scale of his accomplishments were, how they should be interpreted, in terms of LA and Chicago. So interesting.
That is a odd post. I did not bring in the basketball reference another poster did. Perhaps you should ask what does Pippen have to do with Bruce Arena's comments about LD?
I thought we established long ago that when it comes to national teams, the Iron Chef method was better than the “designing a menu” method. It’s the manager’s job to craft an approach that puts our most talented players on the pitch, and puts them in positions in which their talents can benefit the team. It is the very definition of a job requiring maximum flexibility in terms of tactics, strategy and personality management. Just because a lot of club coaches who take national team jobs don’t get that, or take a long time to get it, doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.
And also performed at a very high level in a sport that is very specialized without really breaking through as a superstar for a long period of time. It's not one-to-one, and no one would say Donovan had the same exact mental issues... but it's miles, miles closer as a comparison than the likes of Lewa and Pippen.
I don't see it personally. Landon Donovan enjoyed his choices and not only performed very well on the biggest stage, but won titles and succeeded when he played in Europe a second time. He is arguably the greatest American player of all time. Ricky Williams was overweight when he started his professional career, was at the mercy of his disorders and probably hated playing football. He harmed his career financially and by using drugs. Doesn't work at all for me.
There is really no analogue for the Gold Cup or MLS cup for NFL players, but if there were Ricky Williams would have been very capable of winning those too. Because sometimes "winning titles" isn't winning titles. Williams also performed very well on the highest stage (if that's what we're calling Everton)... at least, for a time. Just like Donovan. It's not one to one, and not meant to be, but again it's much closer than the other two comparisons.
Poch and Klinsmann are very similar in their approach as far as an emphasis on extreme intensity training, grit, "nasty", and tactical freedom on offense. They both gravitate to inytense mentality players and believe that soccer is a players game which is decided by brilliant players. Poch has already shown that his definition of a good player may not match many US fan's perspective.
All the comparisons are equally bad. Ricky Williams had top tier talent that was derailed by lack of devotion to his craft amongst other things. Landon did not have that level of talent and arguably achieved his ceiling through competitive fire and being happy where he was. He was understandably burned out after playing tons and achieving a lot.
Comparing Donovan to one of the very best strikers of the last 30 years and one of the still best 100 players in NBA history is much more "bad" than comparing him to Ricky Williams. Regardless, as much as I like these exercises I personally am done derailing. Reasonable people can disagree, and these are weird comparisons to start with.
@schrutebuck seems like a reasonable poster to me and I took his comment to mean that LD to the US was the equivalent of Lewa in importance to Germany, not that he was as good. And the point in the context of this thread is that some players get a lot of love from fans and can (in theory) harm the egos of coaches. See Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy, Mathis and Arena, LD Klinnsmann. Players of course were blameless in those examples.
https://www.foxsports.com/stories/soccer/world-cup-2026-usmnt-lessons-pochettino-september-window Some good stuff here on Pochettino’s first year on the job.
I don't remember these things specifically being reported: Weston was clearly not 100%, but this element is new to me. And again, did we know that Pulisic asked to go home? I guess I kind of knew it, but I suspected it was more of a Milan thing. Still could be. And while I think we could come down on this based on what he said, again, was it every reported this directly? And then we find out later in the article that Pulisic had his agent tell US Soccer he was skipping the GC. I think we rightfully give Pochettino crap for not communicating, but I'm beginning the understand the frustration here. The article also mentions specifically that US Soccer didn't even ask Dortmund to release Reyna for the Gold Cup, so that puts some fuel on the fire there. The narrative that Doug McIntyre paints -- with facts but perhaps a bit too much certainty and assumptions -- is that Poch is very clear on who his best players are but perhaps some of the issues were bigger than we even see.