New York (AFP) – New United States national team coach Mauricio Pochettino says his squad need to set themselves the highest goal possible — to win the World Cup. The Argentine, a former Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Paris Saint-Germain coach, was unveiled to the media on Friday after signing his deal this week. The USA is co-hosting the 2026 World Cup with Mexico and Canada and Pochettino said he believes the target should galvanise the players.
“We need to believe we can win. Not win just a game, but to win the World Cup. We want players to arrive on day one thinking big,” he said. The USA’s best finish in a modern World Cup was a run to the quarter-finals in South Korea and Japan in 2002. The country finished third in the inaugural tournament in 1930. “Believe for me is a word that is so powerful. You can have enormous talent, but in football, you need to believe. Believe that all is possible. If we find a way to believe all together, then we can achieve what we want,” he added.
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Pochettino said his team should draw inspiration from the US women’s team which recently won Olympic gold under English coach Emma Hayes, who Pochettino knows from his time at Chelsea. “One of the most important things we need to aspire to is the women’s team. We have Emma, for me, the best coach in the world. They have won everything in the history and we need to match that,” he said. The US Soccer Federation turned to Pochettino after sacking coach Gregg Berhalter following a poor showing in June’s Copa America. With no qualifiers for the host nation, the only competitive games for the USA will come in CONCACAF’s regional Nations League and Gold Cup tournament.
– ‘New philosophy’ –
The coach, who most recently worked at Chelsea, has less than two years to turn around the fortunes of a team which has won just one of their last seven games but he believes that he can do it. “I think everyone thinks that there is no time to prepare and arrive in condition (to win) at the World Cup. I am on the opposite side, believe there is enough time,” he said. “We can’t use this as an excuse, I don’t want to create an excuse of the players to say, ‘we don’t have time to buy the new idea, the new philosophy.'”
He said he wanted to build a team that played attractive and attacking football and was sure his players would be ready to change. “I think the players are so intelligent and so talented and they can, I think, play in a different way. We have time and we need to believe in really big things,” he added.
Pochettino also made clear he would have a completely open mind towards team selection. “To every single player that is around the world, we are going to try to pay attention. They have the door open… if they perform we are going to be there watching,” he said. The 52-year-old former Argentina international defender said that the job appealed to him, among other reasons, because it was a different challenge. “As a staff we’ve had a lot of experience as coaches already in different clubs. This is a challenge that takes us out of our comfort zone, not only to achieve things together but to refresh ourselves in a soccer that for us was always attractive from afar,” he said.
His first task will be to select a squad for two friendly matches in October. Pochettino’s first game is against Panama, who beat the USA in the Copa America, in Austin on October 12 before taking on arch-rivals Mexico in Guadalajara three days later.
© 2024 AFP
