USMNTs Germany friendly is final Mauricio Pochettino chance to tinker before World Cup

CHICAGO — Mauricio Pochettino has had his starters for the U.S.men’s national team’s World Cup opener in mind for a long time.“Before March,” he said last week, during a roundtable with reporters.

“But we’ll see.”The time to tinker is running out fast.The USMNT’s match against Germany on Saturday afternoon, with a sellout crowd expected at Soldier Field to send the Americans off to California, is its last before opening the World Cup six days later against Paraguay.While both teams are dealing with injuries — Chris Richards for the U.S., 18-year-old phenom midfielder Lennart Karl for Germany, while keeper Manuel Neuer is still building up and may be unavailable for Die Mannschaft — Pochettino artfully dodged the question of how he’ll approach the starting 11 for Saturday.“If you don’t play with the players that you believe need to start, say OK, maybe we don’t arrive in good condition,” Pochettino said.

“If you play and something happens, oh, why you take a risk?“Always the haters today in social media will never agree.If you play normally with the players you want, you are thinking will play with the first game in the World Cup and nothing happens, no one is going to say nothing.

They’ll say, ‘Oh, good decision.’ But if something wrong happens, they say, ‘Oh, have no clue.’ That is impossible to know.What we need to do from the beginning is to prepare in the best way.”Last weekend against Senegal, in an eventual 3-2 win, he fielded a team that looked very close, albeit with a few notable omissions, to what’s projected to be the World Cup lineup before wholesale changes at halftime.

During his time in the English Premier League, Pochettino’s last preseason lineup often resembled his opening day lineup.While Job 1 for the USMNT is to avoid any injuries Saturday, and Pochettino alluded to some players other than Richards being question marks, Job 2 is to make use of 90 minutes against a team that Pochettino said ...