Some USMNT fans who wanted Pochettino are now blind to his priorities | OneFootball

In the aftermath of the United States' embarassing fourth-place finish in the Concacaf Nations League this weekend, this much became clear:

From a competitive results standpoint, Mauricio Pochettino probably does not care about the results of an annual Concacaf tournament as much as most U.S. men's national team fans.

While Pochettino clearly fielded a team that was close to the best possible from the players available, his substitution patterns also suggested he still viewed these games as a stage on which to tinker on the fringes.

And after a 1-0 loss to Panama in the semifinals on Thursday, followed by a 2-1 loss in the third-place match to Canada on Sunday, his response that at least it happened now, and not 15 months from now in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, certainly reinforced that notion.

Here's the thing to understand about hiring a manager of Pochettino's caliber: No matter how high pressure a job managing the USMNT may feel like to you, to someone of Pochettino's pedigree it will feel pretty low stress. That's just the reality when two of the five clubs on your CV are Chelsea and Tottenham Hottspur.

Relative to the day-to-day scrutiny of managing in the Premier League, or in La Liga before that, guiding the American national team may feel almost freeing, especially more than a year away from what is the true goal, which is to give a strong performance at the World Cup. And if that's Pochettino's mindset, it makes sense that his tactical decisions would seem experimental. Unlike Gregg Berhalter, who was willing even to weather an ugly inter-family scandal to keep hold of the job, Pochettino's connection to the role is far less personal.

What does Nations League actually mean?

What doesn't make sense is American fans who believed the Argentine would immediately come into the job and pile pressure upon himself and his team in games that, from a results standpoint, have relatively little to do with how the U.S. performs at the World Cup.

The Concacaf Nations League isn't even the most presitigous competition in its own region. That honor belongs to the Concacaf Gold Cup that is the region's version of the Euros or Copa America. And unlike those tournaments, the Gold Cup has relatively little cachet in the eye of casual American fans relative to a strong performance in the World Cup.

That may be understandably disconcerting for die-hard American fans, who care about the World Cup too, but also deeply desire to maintain continental bragging rights over Mexico and Canada. Using minor Concacaf events for experimentation may also not be the best way to develop a winning culture. Some would say the best way to learn how to win is to win.

But it also should be completely unsurprising for those who recall the USA's previous experiences with a manager shaped by the pressure cooker of Europe, Jurgen Klinsmann. The former German World Cup star and German World Cup manager talked repeatedly about how Concacaf competition actually counter to the program's aims of becoming an elite nation in international soccer.

There were many legitimate reasons to hire a manager with higher level experience than anyone in the current national team coaching pool. But the idea that such a manager would come in, and treat every regional competitive like a World Cup knockout phase match was pure fantasy.

And maybe it's not unreasonable to ask the USMNT to dominate relentlessly on a regional level and improve on a global level. But if that's the goal, seeking out a European pedigree like Pochettino's probably wasn't the best approach.