COMMERCE CITY, Colo.— By some estimates, last week’s 1-1 tie with Ecuador was the best performance — if not result — that the U.S. men’s national team has had since Mauricio Pochettino took over as coach just over a year ago.
Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter. Because when it comes to these two-match tuneups for next year’s FIFA World Cup on home soil — there are only five friendly matches remaining for the USMNT before Pochettn names his 26-player roster, and just seven before the Americans open the tournament June 12 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles against an opponent to be determined at December’s draw — the second match is the one that counts.
Take last month. A dispiriting 2-0 defeat to South Korea that wasn’t as close as that score would suggest beat Japan convincingly just three days later, allowing the Americans to finish the September international window on a high.
Now they have another chance to return to their club teams feeling good. That means quickly forgetting all about Friday’s draw in Austin, Texas and focusing completely on Australia, the nails-tough World Cup-bound foe they’ll meet here on Tuesday.
“Tomorrow is going to be a different game,” Pochettino said on Monday during his pregame press conference at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. “Australia is a team [that’s] very aggressive.”
The Socceroos have high quality, too. Whereas Australia is ranked twenty fifth to the U.S.’s 16, the Aussies toppled a Canada squad that the U.S. hasn’t overwhelmed in three consecutive house video games in Montreal final Friday. No, their gamers aren’t employed by Paris Saint-Germain or AC Milan just like the Ecuadorians’. However they play laborious, and so they play collectively.
“We have to respect them,” Pochettino stated. “They are going to be one other good check, like Ecuador, for us.”
The situations will pose one other problem for the hosts. DSG Park sits a mile above sea stage. The temperature is considerably colder than it was final week in Austin, Texas. And Pochettino additionally has to maintain the massive image in thoughts; star left again Antonee “Jedi” Robinson, U.S. Soccer’s Male Athlete of 2024 Award winner who hasn’t represented his nation in any respect this calendar yr due to damage, will sit out a second straight October sport, the coach revealed on Monday.
Others would possibly merely be rested because the Argentine former PSG and Chelsea supervisor doles out alternatives to different World Cup roster hopefuls. Christian Pulisic, who was restricted to a late cameo off the bench versus Ecuador due to a swollen ankle, may additionally function from the beginning.
(Photograph by David Buono/Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Pictures)
Whoever performs absolutely will not take the prospect without any consideration. Not now, at the very least. Not anymore.
“Crucial factor within the nationwide workforce is to have competitors,” stated Cristian Roldan, a 2022 World Cup veteran who Poch summoned for the primary time final month. “That is what all of us wish to try for, as a result of now you might have a much bigger participant pool to select from.”
“He is he is created an surroundings so shortly that does not create certainty for anybody,” striker Folarin Balogun, who’s been the very best U.S. participant for 3 video games operating, stated of Pochettino.
“No one’s place is assured — he’s created that feeling all through the workforce,” Balogun added. “That is what you get when you might have a prime European coach. He is ruthless in how he goes about issues. And he needs to win.”
Beginning on Tuesday, ideally. The U.S. has emerged victorious in simply one among its final 4 video games relationship to July’s Gold Cup last. One other win may do wonders for the USMNT’s collective perception.
If there’s uncertainty all around the subject, although, there’s now a bit much less up entrance. Balogun, given his from, appears certain to begin once more in higher Denver.
“Flo has every little thing,” Roldan stated. “He can run in behind, he can play back-to-goal. He has the power to take guys on one 1v1, with hyperlink of play, along with his motion, along with his individuality. He could be the distinction. And when we’ve guys like Christian ballistic, like Malik Tillman, they make one another higher.”
For others, Tuesday’s contest could possibly be the ultimate audition for the World Cup.
“While you come into the nationwide workforce, you’ve bought to do what you may for the nation,” reserve winger Brenden Aaronson stated, “It’s about rolling up the sleeves and doing the very best you may in any scenario. After which once you get your likelihood, you must take it.”
(Photograph by John Dorton/ISI Photographs/USSF/Getty Pictures)
How the Individuals will line up is one other open query. Pochettino has began a three-man again line in every of the USMNT’s final two outings. But he instructed that issues may change once more, particularly with the Aussies taking part in type extra entrenched.
“We have to construct one thing, however they’re extra stable of their concepts,” Pochettino stated of Australia. “I do not imagine that they’re going to change the best way that they’re going to play. They appear to maintain the identical form and the best way they’re taking part in [over] the final yr.
“We wish to progress,” he added. “We wish to have this flexibility, with completely different gamers and typically completely different form or dynamics on the sector, to offer the workforce higher high quality [opposition].
“I’m blissful to face a workforce like that.”
Doug McIntyre is a soccer reporter for FOX Sports activities who has coated United States males’s and girls’s nationwide groups at FIFA World Cups on 5 continents. Comply with him @ByDougMcIntyre.
