SANTA CLARA, Calif.— When Mauricio Pochettino was hired to coach the U.S.
men’s national soccer team in 2024, he took over a team that had never been a serious contender.Undaunted, Pochettino, a 54-year-old Argentine, conjured up a motto he hoped would boost confidence ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
He began repeating the phrase to players, the public and even President Donald Trump: Why not us?Limited time: Save 25% on NBC News subscriptionGet exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading.Why not the U.S.men is a question being asked more than ever before.
Coming off what is considered the team’s best performance in the tournament’s group stage in recent memory, the U.S.men enter the knockout stage Wednesday surrounded by optimism that the team could be ready for its breakout moment — something that hasn’t been the case since the World Cup started nearly a century ago.
Thanks to its massive talent base, top facilities and resources for coaching and training, the U.S.has regularly produced world-class teams and athletes in multiple sports.
All the while, however, men’s soccer has remained a stubborn exception.Part of the problem, many inside soccer say, is that asking why the U.S.
lags behind South America and European powerhouses is likely to elicit a different answer depending on whom you ask.A sampling: The country is too vast to accurately scout, the cost of youth soccer too high, the state of the national team’s talent development pipeline too broken, all thanks to too many competing interests.
“The challenges remain the same as even 40, 50 years ago,” said Luis Robles, the general manager of sporting operations for MLS Next.“How do you take a country the size of the United States, identify players, develop players, bring them under one roof with a funnel towards professional teams, a funnel towards national teams? It’s a big challenge, but it’s a worthwhile challenge.”What is universally agreed upon is that things mus...