The squad Gregg Berhalter selected for last summer’s Copa América, his final roster in charge of the US men’s national team, contained only three players from MLS.
Less than a year later, his successor Mauricio Pochettino will defend the Yanks’ Concacaf Nations League title in Southern California this weekend with a group containing nine MLS-based standouts in addition to the program’s usual core of contributors from several elite European leagues.
"An important step"
That’s a rather dramatic shift, one fueled by the coach’s decision to replace three injured Euros – Antonee ‘Jedi’ Robinson, Johnny Cardoso and Philadelphia Union academy product Auston Trusty – with MLSers Max Arfsten (Columbus Crew), Brian Gutiérrez (Chicago Fire FC) and Jack McGlynn (Houston Dynamo FC) this week.
So what gives? The Argentine manager explained his thinking in Tuesday’s matchday-2 press conference.
“The reality is that we believe that each player can have the possibility of being involved in the national team if they deserve it,” Pochettino told reporters in Spanish at SoFi Stadium, where the USMNT will face Panama (7 pm ET | Paramount+, Univision) and Canada will duel Mexico in Thursday night’s CNL semifinals doubleheader, the winners advancing to Sunday's final.
“We are going to have nine players who were [called up] in January, nine players who compete in MLS. And I think that is an important step – it’s not being populist, because I think that is not the case. The players who are coming in are not because we want to give a signal that we care about our [domestic] competition, but because they deserve it.”
Certainly, logistical considerations are at play, too. With players still arriving at the US camp from their club locales as late as Monday evening, the coaching staff already faced a very tight window in which to prepare the full squad for the biggest game of Pochettino’s tenure so far.
Late-breaking injuries shrank it that much further, making it more practical to call domestic-based replacements rather than others who’d have to jet not only across the Atlantic Ocean, but the entirety of the North American continent as well. The MLS contingent took part in the recent January camp and thus those data points are fresher in the minds of both coaches and players.
“It is a competition that does not give us a lot of time to prepare – because practically last night they finally arrived and we have the complete team. We have trained only starting from the base of recovery,” said Pochettino. “It is important to have players that already understand what we are going to do with them in these two matches and with such little time, they can be at the performance that we want.
“So when we sometimes talked about whether January was or was not important, today we are looking at new players who already know us and know how we like things, so that is a good advantage when you do not have time to work."
Evenhanded evaluation
Yet ‘Poch’ has been nothing if not consistent with his emphatic message that all eligible players have a shot to contribute regardless of their club address, and will be evaluated evenhandedly, with a particular focus on the intensity and commitment the individuals bring to representing their country.
“I think that is also part of the growth of each player in their mentality. You don't need to go outside of the United States to have the possibility of competing for your country,” he said. “This has an enormous value that will surely have a lot of benefits in the future.
“We need to understand that football is about timing, and it's about the form of the player.”
The USMNT’s ambitions for a deep run at next year’s World Cup on home soil – and Poch explicitly clarified his side will aspire not for a merely respectable run to the Round of 16 or quarterfinals, but to reach the final for the first time in program history – hinge on their ability to craft a sturdy, spirited collective that blossoms into something greater than the sum of its parts.
Thus he hinted the onus is not merely on the domestic contingent to keep pace with the Euro-based talents, but for the latter group, especially those taking part in their first camp under Pochettino like Gio Reyna and Tyler Adams, to show they too can slot into the culture he’s crafting.
That transcends game models, tactics or depth charts.
“The goal is that what we have to do now is to build a solid base of players, that can build a solid group that can lead us to compete in the best way in the World Cup,” he said. “We are in that moment of construction, where we are lucky that players who have been important in the past, it is time for them to join us and see them and see how they fit into this new dynamic that we have built since September when we started this path together.
“Yes, the strategy, the game plan [matters], but also is to build a team that cares about itself, they feel each other, and that go there and go on the pitch and fight for each other,” he added. “If you find this, I think always is easier to achieve what you want.”
