Mauricio Pochettino looked sullen. Occasionally, he would shake his head in despair. Mostly, he just looked on with a frown.
The United States men’s national team manager understood that there would be a lot of recriminations to go around. Following a second competitive loss in four days in the Concacaf Nations League finals, it was hard to pinpoint where, exactly, to lay the blame for a dispiriting international window for the USA.
After Panama beat the Americans with a late, smash-and-grab 1-0 win on Thursday, Canada largely outplayed the US and deserved the 2-1 victory on Sunday. The Americans had a late flurry of chances for the equalizer, sure, but their northern neighbors had produced the better chances, executed the better game plan and mustered the superior intensity in a match that got chippy only when the US remembered it was playing a rival.
Perhaps this was all a kind of geopolitical karma for US president Donald Trump’s bluster about making Canada a 51st state and reclaiming the Panama canal somehow.
For the Americans, there were concerning commonalities between the defeats at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles: disjointed lines; stray passes; a lack of precision in the final third; defensive lapses; and an evident dearth of the passion US manager Mauricio Pochettino is forever insisting on.
The more visceral absence, however, was in any measurable support for the home team, with vast swaths of empty seats in the 70,000-seat sports cathedral SoFi Stadium. Twice, the US contest felt like an undercard; the junior varsity game going on as fans trickled in for the real thing. The American Outlaws supporters’ group did their best but barely filled a section. The upshot was a muted atmosphere for a pair of games that ought to have offered an intensity attendant to the stakes – and helped prepare the US for even tougher tests to come.
There were valid explanations for the feeble support for the US in a venue that will become the closest possible thing to its home stadium for the 2026 World Cup. The bout with Panama kicked off at 4pm local time on a Thursday; the one with Canada at 3pm (albeit on a Sunday). Both of the games, and the tickets to enter them, were twinned with Mexico matches, whose fans reliably purchase up every ticket they can. Concacaf once again set its ticket prices high.
But it feels like something far larger is afoot. There was nothing stopping US fans from buying more tickets before the Mexico fans gobbled them all up, with prices plainly not an issue for El Tri’s fanbase. It feels like the fan base for the USMNT has lost interest, or has been gradually eroded.
Maybe that’s because US Soccer, too, makes it a habit to set ticket prices as high as it possibly can even for friendly matches. The result is predictable: for its 7 September friendly with Canada in Kansas City, a mere 10,000 fans showed up, leaving even a Major League Soccer venue half empty. Nearly the same occurred later in that window, with around 15,000 in an FC Cincinnati home stadium built for 10,000 more.
after newsletter promotion
Whatever the particular combination of accountable factors may be, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of momentum for this team just yet as it counts down to a second World Cup in its own country.
And that’s why these two losses felt so deflating. It wasn’t just that the soccer itself ranged from bad to underwhelming: every bit of it was disappointing, on the field and off it.
Pochettino, for his part, felt compelled to break through the fourth wall and address the fans and their mounting anxiety directly on Sunday. This is seldom a good sign, particularly when you are just six months into the job and barreling towards the World Cup you were hired to salvage. “I want to send a message to the fans: don’t be pessimistic,” Pochettino told reporters after the game. “The main objective is the World Cup”
Captain Christian Pulisic, too, acknowledged the slump the program has slipped into. “We’ve gotta come back from this,” he told Paramount+ after the game. “We’re not at our best at the moment. When we come back [for the next international window in June], some things need to change and we need to improve. Obviously, the feeling is not good right now. We need to turn it around and we can hopefully build some momentum this summer, because we really do need it.”
The US men will gather three more times before the 2026 World Cup. Once this summer for a pair of friendlies and the Concacaf Gold Cup. Again in November and next March for international windows probably filled with a pair of friendlies apiece. And then it will be time for the real thing.
The Yanks will surely play in front of packed houses for their World Cup group stage matches starting on 12 June, 2026 – two of them at the very SoFi Stadium in Inglewood where they have just lost twice, and one in Seattle – but how many of those fans will offer truly raucous, home-filed-advantage support? And how much will the US need it?
