"The team feels like we still have something to prove." That's Weston McKennie, and it's the most honest thing you'll hear from a USMNT player ahead of this summer's home World Cup.
Qatar wasn't a disaster — the performances were decent, the effort was there — but going out in the Round of 16 left a taste that hasn't gone away. McKennie knows it. The whole squad knows it. And with a 48-team tournament on home soil, the expectation to finally win a knockout game for the first time since 2002 is very real.
McKennie, 27 and entering his second World Cup as a Juventus regular, insists the home pressure isn't weighing on him. "I don't really feel like it's pressure," he told FIFA. "I think it's something we're excited about more than pressure." That's either genuine confidence or the kind of mental reframing elite athletes do to stay functional. Either way, it works.
Pochettino's open-door policy is changing things
What's more interesting is what McKennie says about Mauricio Pochettino's influence since the Argentine took charge in October 2024. No guaranteed starters. No free passes based on club pedigree. "Nobody can feel like they're 100 per cent secure in their position," McKennie said. "If you want to play, you have to show why."
That's a direct shift from the Berhalter era, where the core group felt settled — sometimes too settled. Pochettino's results have been mixed: no Nations League retention, no Gold Cup, no win against a European side yet. But a more competitive internal environment is exactly the kind of structural change that pays off at a tournament, not in friendlies.
The injury situation is complicating things fast. Jonathan Klinsmann, Johnny Cardoso, and Patrick Agyemang are already out. Tanner Tessmann, Christian Pulisic, and Josh Sargent are all question marks. The USMNT's Group F draw — Paraguay, Australia, Türkiye — is manageable on paper, but squad depth will be tested earlier than anyone wanted.
More than results
McKennie also spoke about the broader mission: growing soccer in the U.S. past American football, baseball, and basketball. "We're going to have a big opportunity to change that narrative," he said. It's a genuine point — a deep run by the host nation would do more for the sport's domestic footprint than a decade of MLS marketing budgets.
Copa America 2024 was, by McKennie's own admission, "maybe not our best." The USMNT have had their upsets and their successes in the Concacaf Nations League cycle, but nothing that fully silences the doubters. This is the window. Group F gives them a path. Whether Pochettino can get them through it with a squad that's already being rewritten by injuries is the real question hanging over the whole tournament.
