Feels like Poch was vacationing...until this Fall (with a brief rally during the GC) To be fair, he's pretty much seemingly settled on his group of players now.
Ecstatic. Two straight great performances, and tonight was, as mentioned elsewhere, I think their best performance since, well, probably Brazi in that friendly 16 months ago, the June '23 window, and the draw with England in November of '22. Fantastic performance. I've got HOPE. Now they just need to stay healthy.
IMO our best 2 players are Jedi and Puli, and we got a result with just a few minutes from them, and also Dest didn’t play. What made the latter a big deal is that his replacement, Weah, was probably our worst player. Point being, the new tactics really, really uplifted our weaker players. That’s good coaching l
It just seems like after a year of evaluating the pool and experimenting with tactics..........................he's finally settled on a formation/tactical approach that's working for his available tools. This is kind of what we should have expected when hiring a coach with limited knowledge of our pool. Its still only been a calendar year since Poch's first match in charge. It really hasn't been that long, even though it seems like forever. All of us are going to totally forget the results at the Nations League/Gold Cup if we can now build on these last couple of games heading to WC26. And yes, its clear that talent alone isn't a criterion for selection. He came in and wasn't impressed with some aspects of the culture in terms of attitude and fight. The endless talk about Roldan or Luna or whomever versus European options misses the point.
I didn’t have the chance to watch the game live. Going to watch it tonight. Very encouraged to hear the team is looking better.
So I was one of the OG Poch skeptics but I think some of the criticism has been ridiculous. He's definitely getting to the point where his experimentation has unearthed that Dest, Richards, Jedi, Adams, McKennie, Pulisic and Balogun are lock starters, something fans have known since COVID. He's unlocking Tillman's potential, he's switched to a back 3, either he's the greatest genius in USMNT coaching history or its all going to be a damp squib.
What is tiresome about all the criticism is just how much the basic assumption is that Pochettino is an idiot despite no real evidence. We saw our best players fail at Copa. Poch was called in. After some initial treading water, we saw our best players fail in March. Poch said some things about effort. He didn't even actually NOT call in those best players for the Gold Cup -- they were at CWC or hurt or chose not to come themselves. But we did okay at the GC. Now we've have two windows where we're calling back most of the A team and finishing out trials, and we've played 5 of 6 halfs really well ... He's barely had any time. We went from Assessment to Failure to Assessing a Broader Pool / Trying to Get Players to Play Engaged to success in literally ... this is the SIXTH camp. He was never crazy. It never didn't make sense. There was no reason to think he didn't know who our very best players were -- people were just dumb thinking Josh Sargent was one of our best players. The team needed an attitude adjustment. It looks so far like it worked. There may be some casualties of that adjustment. We will see if there's even any. It will be worth it.
One of the things that is baffling to me about this fanbase is that people always seem to completely ignore how rare international breaks are. This is Pochettino's SIXTH camp (or SEVENTH, if you include January camp). He had October camp, where he met guys. He had a nice November camp, where we beat Jamaica and things were optimistic. He had January camp, but in terms of working with the A team, he got to call them in in March, where they sucked. Then over half of them were hurt, unreleased or begged off in the summer. So yeah... since last fall, he literally had a chance to work them them once until September ... and that was when it was solidified there was something wrong. On vacation? Or just a national team coach?
People wanted him to come right in and put on his Jesus sandals and walk on water . It rarely works like that.
My point is that it's exacerbated by people seemingly not acknowledging the nature of national team coaching. They are acting like he's been coach for a full year ... which he has technically ... but he's not at club. He's had anything resembling the A team in camp for like three weeks. Like, he took a week to get to know guys. Then in week 2, he realized there's a real cultural problem. He did have a real chance over summer ... but the players who seemingly have the issue didn't show. Now in week three, things seem okay. I mean, no, it's not exactly the same, but in terms of practice time, it kind of is.
I think we've been so used to the overcommunication that the minimal to no communication between windows seemed like a bad idea. But its possible that its led players to focus more on club play and improve. I'm still concerned that he will leave a potentially valuable asset off the team for bad vibes,and we arent deep enough to do that.
This is powered in large part by the hindsight of the last two games. The results prior were pretty darn poor and it wasn’t clear he had much clue about our pool or the opponents. It’s just two games - is it the coach or the players or a complicated mix of both? Probably. As many of us have said - he’s only judged by one thing - how he does in the WC. Anything else is just noise.
I'm totally okay with it. I don't think that there's a single player on this team worth keeping on if they are going to screw with the culture that had the team play with the level of intensity we saw yesterday versus March. If we go back to the the vast majority of the team playing in a malaise, we're far worse than even if we left Christian home. The difficulty here is not in comparing the impact of those two things -- it's very clear -- but rather on whether any player left home actually would kill the changed the culture, etc. It's very clear that everyone here in camp isn't an issues to Poch -- or at least, he thought they weren't. And given how they played, I don't think there's much chance of that being untrue right now. I mean really, Christian's now been back for multiple camps. He's not an issue, right? I don't know how anyone could think that's in Poch's likely outcomes here. So who are you worried about? If you say Joe Scally, we're done talking. I think we're simply too far apart in our understanding of what wins soccer matches. If you say Gio Reyna, I'd say this: a Gio Reyna that doesn't or can't work is not better than Malik Tillman or even what say, Tanner Tessman put it. He's not. We controlled the game and the defense worked for a reason. And literally the only guy I'd probably screw that up for would be like peak Messi or an elite striker. Getting the whole team to play 20% better is worth anyone one player.
Not at all. I've been saying this the whole time. It was obvious that Poch was unhappy with the performance at the Nations League. He told us this. Then literally the next camp was Gold Cup. People called him insane for ... checks notes ... not calling in Josh Sargent and Joe Scally. Hmmmm... You can check my notes; I don't think these dudes are all that good. People ranted that Poch's callups were "insane" and didn't make any sense. That he was some kind of wild card. This is based on a Gold Cup in which the vast majority of the A team was hurt, at the CWC or opted out. That is, like 80% of the guys people were REALLY mad about wasn't on Poch. But instead, we got he was insane ... ... for seeing that Josh Sargent can't create separation against better CBs. Something most every DoF could tell you in a heartbeat. I've also been saying that the level of intensity was the issue in March, and was the #1 thing to fix the whole time. What WOULD BE hindsight if I said it was guaranteed to work the whole time. I don't think it was and in FACT, I don't think that we know that it is fixed. Even if its fixed, I don't know that it sticks or that Poch is the reason. But people questioning whether Poch could fix that isn't my complaint. It's the idiotic comments about the rosters. It's so very simple and it's not hindsight. March was a disappointment; it's not insane to expand the pool after that to either find new people or put pressure on the players who did not play well/did not bring it The GC roster couldn't have been anywhere near a full A team, and it's not idiotic or weird to expand the pool in questionable areas like striker or backup fullback or CB In September, the coach literally commented that many players were in transition, that earning club minutes was most important, that people aren't guaranteed spots and that we'd likely see less experimentation (and MLS) in October ... And people still constantly freaked out and called Poch insane. This was all clear. All here. All stated. All obvious. Our fanbase panics like the cowardly best friend in a horror movie and twists everything into the most insane reasoning when logic. is. right. there.
I'm not thinking of anyone specifically really.I doubt Gio can get healthy enough to be a contributor,and Scally did something more than spinning a cart and we've been ok anyway.I think he has a tendency to vote people off the island,and I dont want that to happen between now and June.
That was a good performance against Ecuador despite not starting IMHO our best 4 players: Puli, Jedi, Adams and Dest.
I kinda just always felt that trusting the process of a guy that lead a team to the Champions League final makes sense. Still do. I’d have taken a Pochettino supposedly on vacation, over the other options we had at their sweatiest try hard. Still would.
I'm with you on Gio and Scally. On this point ... He's a coach. He has to make roster decisions. Every coach votes tons of people off the island. That's literally the job. But I've seen absolutely zero evidence that Pochettino is not calling in anyone for something not ultimately reflected on the field. And yeah, I think the lack of intensity in training was reflected on the field. I've also seen absolutely zero evidence that anyone has even been banished beyond looking for alternatives. He and Christian Pulisic had a public spat where Poch annoyed said that he's in charge ... and he was right back in. Josh Sargent got another chance. Weston McKennie is back. Tanner Tessman and Aidan Morris were supposedly gone. Mark McKenzie is back. The only guys who are gone are borderline players for one reason or another ... and they may yet get called back. What's the basis here? Is it because guys with better pedigree were missing from a couple of camps? Or that he stopped calling in some of the guys who played poorly in March weren't called in for 1-2 camps? These are honest questions -- I'm not trying to be an ass. There have to be examples or there's not a lot of evidence for the assumption. It's entirely possible that he didn't like Musah's summer excuse and he's gone forever ... but I don't know what the evidence is that that is necessarily true or that Pochettino has done that over simply saying ... "I want to see Aidan Morris" or "he's not playing as well as Tanner Tessman." The team was bad in March. It would have been insane to not look for changes.
The whole job between now and June is voting people off the island and establishing the 26-man roster. And yes, there are going to be a bunch of unhappy guys. Always are. Scally and Reyna may already be eliminated from contention for all we know.