INGLEWOOD, Calif. — In the moments following the U.S. men’s national team’s loss in Sunday’s Concacaf Nations League third-place game to Canada, a defeat that capped perhaps the program’s lowest week since the epic failure to qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, a slew of former USMNT greats blasted the team’s performance, effort and heart.
“You would hope that they would get up for this game, there’d be more pride to try to get things back on track and get this fan base behind them,” Clint Dempsey said on the CBS broadcast.
“If you aren’t going to show up and actually give a s!%* about playing for your national team, decline the invite,” Landon Donovan, the team’s co-all-time top scorer along with Dempsey, wrote on social media.
“This is rock bottom post World Cup,” FOX Sports’ Stuart Holden chimed in.
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For die-hard U.S. supporters, the scariest part of this Nations League debacle is that this isn’t nearly as bad as things can get. As demoralizing as these losses to Panama and Canada this month, a similar failure at the 2026 World Cup at home would be nothing less than catastrophic.
And it must be said: after witnessing how poor the Americans were in a tournament they had won the first three editions of before the wheels fell off this year, there is little reason to believe that next year’s co-hosts can make a deep World Cup run that captures the imagination of the country’s public and takes the sport to the next level stateside — a mandate long identified by the players themselves.
“The journey that we’re on is growing the sport in America,” Tyler Adams said after Sunday’s wholly deserved 2-1 loss to the Canadians.
“We need to make a bigger effort and be a team people can get behind and support. Whether it’s through passion, whether it’s through an amazing style of play, whether it’s through winning games and scoring amazing goals, whatever it is. But winning breeds that optimism.”
Winning has been in short supply since the U.S. eked by Iran to qualify for the knockout stage of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where they were outclassed in a lopsided loss to the Netherlands in the round of 16. Sure, the Americans beat the worst Mexican team in recent memory in the next two Nations Leagues events. But they also got embarrassed by Germany in a late 2023 friendly in Connecticut, then made the wrong kind of history at last summer’s Copa América by becoming the first tourney host ever to be eliminated in group play.
The Copa humiliation led to Gregg Berhalter’s firing and the hiring of Mauricio Pochettino, regarded as one of the best coaches in the global game after successful stints with some of Europe’s leading clubs.
Now, a mere six months into Pochettino’s tenure, the Argentine could be forgiven for wondering what he got himself into. And U.S. fans, understandably, are questioning whether Pochettino is capable of fixing it.
“I don’t want that the people feel pessimistic,” Pochettino, who has never previously coached at the international level, said post-match on Sunday. “Disappointed? Disappointed, we are all. And the fans need to feel the disappointment that we didn’t win. But I’m not going to allow [them] to feel pessimistic, because I think we have good players. They are going to find a way to perform. And for sure we are going to compete in a different way and get different results than Tuesday and today.”
Pochettino also called for patience.
“I am very optimistic and positive guy, even being angry and really upset and really disappointed, I want to find the positive things that we can take from these two games,” he said.
“I prefer to that happen today and not in one year.”
He now has more than two months before the USMNT reconvenes for training camp in Chicago ahead of the Gold Cup. That competition takes on an outsize importance on the back of the Nations League. Anything other than a title, and the panic within the fanbase will only intensify. However they accomplish it, the U.S. players desperately needs to rediscover their mojo. The biggest and most important World Cup of their lifetimes will be here in the blink of an eye. Screw up that opportunity, and Pochettino and especially his players will take it to their graves.
The clock is ticking.
Doug McIntyre is a soccer writer for FOX Sports who has covered the United States men’s and women’s national teams at FIFA World Cups on five continents. Follow him at @ByDougMcIntyre.
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