U.S. men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino believes the group could be the best team in the world in the next five to 10 years, giving the program a major vote of confidence as the 2026 World Cup nears.
Pochettino, whose contract runs through next summer’s tournament, is unlikely to be in charge by the time his prediction could come to fruition, but he has taken an ambitious tone since stepping into the job in September and continues to do so ahead of the Concacaf Nations League Finals this week, which presents his first opportunity to win silverware as the U.S. head coach.
“In five or 10 years, for sure we can be No. 1 in the world,” he said in a recent interview, per ESPN. “It could be.”
He made the comment while complementing U.S. Soccer on their ongoing project to build a $200 million national training center in the Atlanta area, which is expected to open in 2026 before the World Cup. Pochettino described it as “one of the most unbelievable training centers in the world. That is going to be the base of soccer. It is the moment where people can see, soccer is going to be a serious sport because it has a home.”
Pochettino took his optimism a step further, responding to FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s comments to U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House earlier this month. Infantino told Trump that the USMNT could win next summer’s World Cup when asked by Trump and though Pochettino does not believe Infantino is qualified to answer the question, he did not exactly shoot down the idea and respond in the affirmative if he was asked by Trump himself in a White House visit he said he would be open to.
“Infantino [says], ‘Yes, U.S. can win the World Cup,’ because the president asked. We can win?” Pochettino said, per Sky Sports. “Maybe he needs to ask me directly, no? Because I don’t believe that Infantino can say three, four names of our players, no? … I will say yes … I will say yes, president. With your help, with the fans, behind, hosting the World Cup, all is possible.”
Though Pochettino’s hire signals U.S. Soccer’s ambitious plans to have a statement-making performance at next year’s World Cup, the head coach’s lofty vision for the next decade is very aspirational for an up-and-coming soccer nation.
What would it take to become the world’s best soccer team?
To become the best men’s national team in the next decade, a lot of things would have to go perfectly for the USMNT. They do have a foundation in place to be competitive for the next decade thanks to the player pool, which is considered the team’s best in its history.
This version of the USMNT meets many traditional markers of success in a way their predecessors do not, chief among them boasting a core player pool that plays almost exclusively in Europe’s top leagues. On top of that, several players are among the best players in those divisions – Christian Pulisic, for example, currently has 15 goals and seven assists for AC Milan this season while reigning U.S. Soccer Male Player of the Year Antonee Robinson is third for assists in the Premier League with 10. Several current USMNT players do not enjoy that success, though, like goalkeeper Matt Turner and midfielder Gio Reyna, who are years into a struggle for playing time at their club teams. Consistency at the club level is generally the basis for a strong national team career on an individual basis, and this is arguably the first thing that a number of USMNT players need to address.
Building an entire squad that can compete at those levels is perhaps the biggest step that the USMNT needs to take to rank amongst the world’s best teams, and the jury is still out on the current state of their depth as well as the next generation of players. The former will be tested during this month’s Concacaf Nations League games, though – while many of the presumed starters are available for selection, Pochettino will work with nine players from the MLS-focused January camp because of injuries. It still feels too early, though, to realistically predict that the USMNT will win the 2026 World Cup, though a reasonable target might be matching the 2002 run to the quarterfinals, which was the team’s greatest finish in the modern era.
As for the players that will come up through the ranks over the next 10 years, it is still too early to say how talented they are as a group, though the U.S.’ ability to follow other nations’ development paths – chiefly relying on local clubs to foster young talent – has allowed the USMNT to close the gap in recent years. How quickly they can completely close that gap, though, is unknown and would require several other factors to go their way.
What else goes into building the world’s best team?
The quality of the player pool is easily the most important factor here, especially since national teams only convene a handful of times in a given year and only for about 10 days at a time. Having talented players is not the only thing that goes into becoming the world’s best national team, though.
Coaching can play a major role, and the best managers will be able to make the sum greater than the parts. That’s true at any level – Pochettino, for instance, was hired to take a promising group of players to new heights without necessarily aiming to win the World Cup in 2026. Argentina’s Lionel Scaloni and France’s Didier Deschamps, the last two coaches to win the World Cup, have done the same with their sides – both head coaches boasted talented players at the time of their World Cup-winning runs, but managed to put together a cohesive tactical idea that allowed them to win the sport’s top prize.
Certain intangibles are also at play, though they play a much smaller role in turning a team into the world’s best.
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