Mauricio Pochettino had his World Cup starting lineup decided before March. That's not a sign of stubbornness — it's a sign of a manager who actually knows what he has. Two days into USMNT camp in Atlanta, and the picture is already clearer than most expected.
The XI is set — and Pulisic is in it
"If I am honest, yes," Pochettino said when asked whether he knows his first XI for the opener against Paraguay. "The only thing that can change is watching them in training, but I don't think so." When pressed on how long he'd had it in mind: "Before March."
Christian Pulisic is part of that picture despite a rough stretch — no goals in 2025 for club or country, and AC Milan finishing outside the Champions League places. None of that appears to be rattling Pochettino.
"He didn't score in the last, I don't know, six months, but he is going to score in the World Cup," the manager said. "I really trust that." Whether Pulisic delivers on that faith is arguably the single biggest performance question hanging over the USMNT's tournament. His anytime scorer odds will attract attention, but the underlying numbers from his club season make that a genuine gamble rather than a safe play.
One holding midfielder is enough — apparently
The midfield depth debate has been loud since the squad was announced. Pochettino's answer is simple: he only needs one holding midfielder at a time, and he has options. Tyler Adams, Cristian Roldan, and Sebastian Berhalter are all capable of filling that role. Beyond them, Weston McKennie, Malik Tillman, and Gio Reyna can all operate centrally if needed.
"We don't need another holding midfielder," Pochettino said. "We need to be good and to have more possession than the opponent. That is the idea."
Tillman backed that up. "I've played there before. I'm quite confident playing there as well." Adams added that the squad's flexibility in the middle of the park is a genuine strength, not a talking point designed to paper over gaps.
It's a reasonable system on paper. The risk is that one injury to Adams — still working his way back from a string of physical setbacks — would suddenly make that flexibility feel a lot more theoretical.
Reyna is over it, and fair enough
Gio Reyna was sitting in a car with his wife, driving around because they were too nervous to go home, when his World Cup call came. He's been riding that high since. He played meaningful minutes for Borussia Mönchengladbach at the end of the season, he feels fit, and he has a wife, a dog named Melo, and a World Cup on home soil to look forward to.
The 2022 saga — the limited minutes, the reported attitude issues, the Berhalter fallout — keeps coming up in press conferences. Reyna's patience with it is wearing thin, and honestly, that's understandable.
"It's obviously a little bit tiring at this point," he said. "It more confuses me when I get asked the question. It's four years removed, and I think everyone is so far removed from that, so it's hard for me to even think about that."
He's one of 13 returning players from that squad. If the experience sharpened him, the results will show it. If it didn't, no amount of media management changes that.
Meanwhile, Folarin Balogun — still getting his ear flicked by McKennie on the flight down to Atlanta — summed up the squad's chemistry about as well as anyone could: "I'm still reserved, and Weston's still bothering me." Some things don't change. For a team trying to hold it together under World Cup pressure on home soil, that kind of continuity might actually matter.
