I feel like I’ve been here before.
The United States loses a game they should have won, and we have this introspective type of moment. Where is the grit? Where is the pride? — or all the different words that we use.
This time, it was a 1-0 loss to Panama in the Concacaf Nations League semifinals, one of the scarce opportunities the U.S. and, namely, Mauricio Pochettino had to prove themselves in a competitive setting. Instead, this U.S. team came out and fell flat on their face.
There are two ways that you can look at this: You can take the long approach and say nothing really matters until the summer of 2026 and that the sky is not falling.
Or, you can look at it and say: This is unacceptable. This was a lackluster performance. This was a performance devoid of any emotion, any passion, determination and any direction. It was rudderless from top to bottom.
It wasn’t just the score, either; it was also the individual performances. This is on the players, and this is on Pochettino.
Pochettino was hired to draw that toughness out of this group, and he’s being paid a hell-of-a-lot of money to do it. And, by the way, he’s an Argentine, so he knows from being a part of that culture — as a player and a manager — that there’s a level of nastiness that even the best teams in the world play with, including Argentina. Even with the wonderful soccer that they play, they match it with ruthlessness and a nastiness.
In our effort to create better soccer players — and I’m trying so hard not to call them spoiled, coddled, tattooed millionaires — the old guy in me wants to line them up on the wall and scream at them and say “What is your problem?” You’ve been given absolutely everything, and at the very least, we should see some fight. At the very least, we should see your blood boiling at the opportunity to represent the greatest country in the world, and we didn’t see that tonight.
You might ask: How does that toughness translate to results on the field? And to that I say, it’s like the Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity: I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it. We saw it in the U.S. in the Gold Cup final against Mexico in 2021 — there was a difference in that team in Denver.
At the same time, we often do this thing with this group where we ask: Does it matter to them? Do they even care?
I think they care — if they don’t care, we might as well just pack it up and give your place to someone else in 2026.
Gold Cup is coming and, obviously, the third-place match on Sunday against a very good Canadian team. And don’t think for a second that Jesse Marsch isn’t going to want an opportunity to win. It’s a third-place game, but there’s much more meaning than there would be in normal circumstances.
My fear is this: the U.S. comes back a couple of days from now and puts in a really good performance and beats Canada, and we all sit around and go, “Hey, that was wonderful!” But why do they need a loss against Panama to come back and do that? Can you manufacture that motivation for yourself without having to go through a failure of performances the likes of which we saw?
When 2026 rolls around, you can’t afford to just give away one of those games, and when you’re not motivated when it comes to a World Cup, or a Gold Cup, or a Nations League, you have problems, and Mauricio Pochettino recognizes he has problems on his hands.
Is the sky falling? No, but that was not good enough and Pochettino’s job is to make us believe that something different is there, that something new is there, that we’re going to see something that we haven’t seen before.
Guess what my friends? We’ve seen that before, and we do not want to see that again.
Alexi Lalas is a soccer analyst for FOX Sports and host of “Alexi Lalas’ State of the Union Podcast.” He represented the USMNT at the 1994 FIFA World Cup and had a nine-year professional career. In 2006, he became the president of the LA Galaxy and helped bring David Beckham to Major League Soccer.
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