USMNT ramp up “intensity” as Mauricio Pochettino era kicks off

That message is not lost on the player pool.

“When a coach or a manager comes in, they have to understand players as people as well. They have to to manage the travel, the minutes played, the teams that guys are playing against, and try to marry all those things into one solid group, and put personalities and people together,” said Ream on Tuesday. “If that’s a mixture, if it’s more European guys than MLS guys, if it’s sprinkling MLS guys in, I think it’s one of those that it’s going to be up to the manager to obviously figure out how to get the best out of all of us. How do each player’s strengths match with the guys that are on the field at any one time?

“I don’t necessarily know that that one group of players has an advantage over the others. You still have to be playing and working hard at your club, and then come in here and work just as hard, if not harder, to do it right in front of his eyes, to be a part of his plan.”

The road to the USMNT’s new future begins, poetically enough, against the team that brought an abrupt end to Gregg Berhalter’s tenure with their upset win in the group stage of the 2024 Copa América. Pochettino said revenge isn’t a primary theme of this latest meeting, with so many other elements of the changeover to process first.

Over the years the former Tottenham, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea boss has earned a reputation for attack-minded, aesthetically pleasing soccer, and he envisions his USMNT being assertive and ball-dominant in philosophical terms. Yet he also mirrors the best teams of his homeland, whose colors he wore 20 times during his playing days, in his determination to blend style with tenacity in pursuit of success.

“The priority always in soccer is to win, and sometimes we need to be clever. Sometimes when we cannot play [out of the back], then we can play a long pass,” he said. “People sometimes say, ‘No, that is my philosophy, my idea, and I am going to die with my idea.’ No, I want to live, because life is amazing. I want to be clever, and I want to win. I don’t want to die.

“Sometimes we need to find a different way to put our players in a comfortable zone, not in an uncomfortable zone that reduces the confidence to play. We have a massive challenge ahead, and all that concept and idea is to translate, that is in the way to find the best way to compete, to be competitive. All the teams that win…