Even taking into account the long list of big names absent from the United States men’s national team’s Gold Cup roster, there’s enough talent around that the Yanks shouldn’t look as poor as they did in conceding four first-half goals in a 4-0 home friendly loss to Switzerland at Geodis Park in Nashville on Tuesday.
They did just that, though, and the showing was bad enough that a first-ever Gold Cup group stage exit doesn’t seem impossible right now.
Yes, really. The Yanks’ poor 2023 Gold Cup saw them bow out in the semifinals after squeaking past Canada in penalties during the quarterfinals. These things happen at the Gold Cup, a tournament the Yanks generally treat like an “also” with weakened and/or young rosters. But this edition was set to be different, where a not-quite full-powered but still-inspired team uses a last pre-World Cup opportunity to make a run in a tourney.
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This USMNT roster is extremely shallow, and that’s where Mauricio Pochettino deserves his fair share of shade. The ex-Tottenham Hotspur coach entered the summer knowing he wouldn’t have Christian Pulisic, Antonee Robinson, Yunus Musah, Weston McKennie, Timothy Weah, Ricardo Pepi, and Giovanni Reyna. He then saw Folarin Balogun and Sergino Dest depart from camp before Tyler Adams became unavailable for Tuesday.
Pochettino bet that a veteran set of center backs and midfielders would do enough to offset fullbacks with very little experience and a heaping helping of youth — a stage USMNT fans felt they’d passed as the aforementioned group got cap after cap under Gregg Berhalter, who made sure his key players and the next-in-line got the reps they needed to grow into proper national teamers.
The depth has been so disappointing over these two friendlies that it begs whether changes are somehow an option prior to the group stage despite the final roster’s submission last week. Pochettino left Cameron Carter-Vickers, Josh Sargent, Joe Scally, Tanner Tessmann, and others off his final list. Those could prove awful decisions.
Now they’ll have to beat out two of Trinidad and Tobago, Saudi Arabia, and Haiti to reach the knockout rounds of this month’s Gold Cup. It really shouldn’t be an issue, but suddenly it feels simply improbable instead of nearly impossible. Yes, Saudi Arabia have recently drawn Japan and Australia and took a point off Argentina at the last World Cup, but T&T is no longer anywhere near the peak of their powers and Haiti should, quite frankly, be outclassed by even this U.S. squad.
The USMNT’s A-team has looked entitled at times, especially given their record over the past few years. Here are their non-CONCACAF wins going back to the start of the 2022 World Cup, a tournament they reached by virtue of goal differential over Costa Rica:
- Iran (WC2022)
- Uzbekistan
- Oman
- Ghana
- Bolivia
- Venezuela
That’s it. Throw in the firing of your coach and you’d think there would be more bygone-era underdog hunger than superpower swagger.
But that’s a problem for another day because this summer’s team — however you’d like to grade it — looked way out of its depth against the Swiss. The old fad that was worrying the U.S. could underachieve when hosting a World Cup is nothing like the new hotness that is worrying the U.S. could flop when hosting a continental tournament that it’s won seven times including a near-perfect run in 2021.
A team can have a good World Cup even with a poor run-up, sure, but it’s incumbent upon the Yanks to not waste their chance to deliver a memorable tournament on home soil. That’s surely one of the reasons they swung big with Pochettino. The perfect storm is still there — an elite set of USMNT talents playing as the underdogs they are while being pushed by periphery players all the way could yield a perception-altering summer in this country and around the world.
Yet right now it’s the Gold Cup, and hopes seem to ride on Tillman, Luna, and Cardoso staying healthy while running up name-making performances during big in-form minutes in front of a some veteran center backs and goalkeeper Matt Turner. It can work, but it almost certainly won’t be the Gold Cup-dominating run envisioned just months ago. And now it’s also not even an extreme likelihood that Pochettino’s men will get to the semis.
It’s time for Pochettino to flex his tactical acumen, get a feel-good win over Trinidad and Tobago, and ease the tension while ending a four-game losing skid. Surely that’s not asking too much. Yet at the moment, you can’t guarantee they won’t show up thinking their jerseys are enough to beat a hungry team who’d like nothing more than the upset them at home. After all, a team that couldn’t show up at the opening whistle nor draw a full house for a so-called ‘send-off game’ to a tournament taking place inside your country can’t feel they’ve earned favorite status. And let’s face it — they aren’t favorites anyway.
