'Why not us?' How Mauricio Pochettino taught the U.S. to believe it could win a World Cup

9 min Click here to listen to this article Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print 0:00 0:00 1x This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred A bowl of lemons sits on a table in the conference room Mauricio Pochettino has turned into an office at the U.S. men’s soccer team’s beachfront resort in south Orange County. The citrus fruit, the coach believes, has the spiritual ability to absorb negative energy. On the corner of another table, the flame from a candle flickers. “I like candles,” says Pochettino, who believes they release therapeutic fragrances and create a calming environment. But it is the massive, blood-red mural covering the entire south side of the room that truly reveals what Pochettino believes. In the center of the wall, just behind the coach’s desk, white block letters spell out “Why Not” above a script “U.S.,” which, despite the periods, is meant to be read as “us.” Pochettino has turned the question in a mantra for a World Cup team that has answered it with two wins in as many games and has a chance to win a third match in the tournament for the first time when it meets Turkey at SoFi Stadium on Thursday. Matt Freese took steps that seemed unlikely to help him succeed as a pro soccer player, but it helped him become the U.S. starting goalkeeper. The idea came to him during a team meeting last November when he sensed his players had doubts about their upcoming World Cup run. So Pochettino turned those doubts into a question. If South Korea could come from nowhere and make the semifinals of the 2002 World Cup, and if Morocco could do the same four years ago in Qatar, why not the U.S.? “Hey, come on, guys, are you listening to me?” Pochettino said he asked the group. “We need to believe.” Before he could convince his players, however, he had to convince himself. And that might have been the hardest part. The 54-year-old Pochettino is a benevolent Svengali with a whistle; Ted Lasso with an Argentine accent. Belief isn’t so much a concept for him as it is a way of life. But when he and his coaching staff took over the U.S. team in the fall of 2024, following its disastrous performance in the Copa América, he said he inherited a demoralized, dispirited group. “We received a big bang,” Pochettino said, mimicking a punch to the face. “We were knock[ed] out for a while.” “We were so naive,” he continued. “The situation was way worse than we really believed.” Pochettino refused to change the system that has brought him success at European clubs Tottenham, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea. So he set out to change the players instead. That would take time, something he had very little of since he took over with the World Cup just 20 months away. “It’s difficult to analyze the process, you know,” Pochettino said during an informal, 40-minute discussion at his team’s Dana Point hotel, the sun setting over the ocean through the open patio doors of his office. “When you put the seed on the soil, [the] first seed, you don’t see nothing. Then you start to grow the tree. It was difficult to explain the plant because it’s not easy.” The seed Pochettino planted with the national team took time to sprout. He lost five of his first 10 games, including a disastrous four-game stretch that included Nations League losses to Panama and Canada in the spring of 2025. The team’s supporters revolted, but Pochettino rejoiced. “What happened, that was [a] good crash,” he said. “When we detect all the problems, we go for the solution. And we knew that the solution will arrive. The object is to challenge people.” U.S. men’s soccer coach Mauricio Pochettino during the second half of his team’s World Cup match vs. Paraguay at SoFi Stadium. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) Advertisement So he stayed the course. “That was the process. Now is not a coincidence,” he said of the team’s success. Pochettino has long believed that building a roster isn’t about picking the best players, but picking the right players. Players who fit his tactical approach, players who get along with one another, players who contribute to the team chemistry. For him, the human connection, human respect is as important — if not more important — than the ability to dribble through tight spaces. And those traits are particularly important in a World Cup since the team will spend every day together for six weeks or more. Although Pochettino’s team includes 13 holdovers from the 2022 World Cup roster, it also includes five players who made their national team debuts in the last 18 months. Sometimes, he concluded, it is easier to simply change the player than it is to change what the player thinks or believes. And the newbies have totally bought in. “We’re all in total belief. We’re all totally supportive and have faith in the process that he’s been ou

'Why not us?' How Mauricio Pochettino taught the U.S. to believe it could win a World Cup

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