How a ‘naive’ Mauricio Pochettino’s lowest moments turned the USMNT into World Cup darlings

T ears welled in Mauricio Pochettino’s eyes. His US team had just lost the 2025 Gold Cup final in a hard-fought match to determine the regional crown. To make matters worse they had been beaten by Mexico, their arch-rivals. Were they tears of sadness, of frustration at the result? Perhaps in part. But as Pochettino explained this week, these were also tears of empathy for his players. They had just played a tournament final. In Houston, one of the largest metro areas in the United States. And yet, the crowd was hostile, visibly and vocally in favor of their rival. At past stops, such scenes would have been unfathomable; as if Tottenham’s stadium were filled almost entirely with Arsenal shirts on derby day. One year out from the World Cup , Pochettino had received a reality check not just about how far his program had to go to make a World Cup run, but also the unique and at times disadvantageous position his players occupied in their home country’s sporting landscape. “Being honest, maybe we didn’t feel or see [how] difficult the process [would be] … We were so naive,” Pochettino said this week. “We misjudged the situation. It was worse than we really believed. … When we arrived here, we received a big bang, punch, and we were knocked out for a while. We said: ‘What the fuck?’” The “punch” he referred to actually came months before the Gold Cup heartbreaker, the first of three setbacks that have shaped the path of this US team. And yet those setbacks led them here. …