USMNT ready to reset vs. Portugal after Belgium setback | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

ATLANTA – You might not expect the head coach of the US men’s national team to compare his side’s task in Tuesday night’s international friendly vs. Portugal to key principles of weight loss and healthy lifestyle (7 pm ET | TNT, HBO Max, Telemundo).

Yet that’s exactly the rhetorical journey Mauricio Pochettino led reporters on in Monday afternoon’s matchday-1 press conference, explaining why he’s come to see Saturday’s stinging 5-2 loss to Belgium as a positive for his squad as they march ever closer to this summer’s FIFA World Cup.

The Yanks largely outplayed their guests in the first half and took a deserved lead as a result. What followed, however, was analogous to a dieter declaring premature victory after shedding a few pounds, according to Poch.

“I want to lose weight. I want. I can. ‘I want’ is only the beginning,” said the multilingual Argentine in his latest colorful conversation with the media. “But after you need to have discipline. Not the intention to eat the nice food, and everything like this … ‘I won, I won! I won!’ But then, it's nice, no? The chicken, the steak, the lasagna, the pasta.

“That for me is [why] I am so happy that happened,” he added, “because there’s still time to realize – it's still time to realize that we need to compete.”

Righting the ship

Oh wait – did we call Tuesday’s game a ‘friendly’? In another example of ‘Pochismo,’ that term has been dropped from the USMNT’s lexicon, replaced by one he believes better reflects the level of fire his players must summon before the big tournament begins.

“Listen, first and foremost, these aren't friendlies. That's something that Mauricio has made very clear to all of us. It's more of a non-official game,” said US and Charlotte FC veteran Tim Ream. “You look at [Saturday’s] result, and nobody's happy about it. There's a lot of disappointment, but you have another game right away that you can go and try to put things right and start to build that momentum.

“It's just an overall effort,” Ream added of his side’s need for relentlessness. “It's not that guys don't want to do it. I think sometimes it's, we've just made an effort, and now it's about making another one, right? It's about making not just the first, the second, the third, the fourth.

"And sometimes that doesn't happen, and that's just, again, something that is a non-negotiable, really, and it's something that we were doing really well in the fall last year, and it's something we have to get back to."

Defensive improvements

Pochettino said he was satisfied with the Yanks’ attacking fluidity and chance creation; the problem lay in their lack of sustained commitment to disrupting the Red Devils’ buildups, and not just along the back line but among all 10 field players.

He noted with approval recent remarks from Brazil’s legendary manager Carlo Ancelotti that this summer’s champion will be “not who scores the most goals, it’s who concedes fewer goals,” and urged reporters to watch Sunday’s France-Colombia match in Landover, Maryland, to get a clear image of the flow and ferocity of the world’s elite contenders.

The Argentine delved into more detail when answering a Spanish-language reporter’s question about his concerns from the Belgium setback.

“Internally,” he said in Spanish, “based on all the data analysis we conduct – and we have a large team working with and for us specifically on data analytics – one of the things that concerned us most when comparing our last two matches, Uruguay and Paraguay vs. the game against Belgium, was the lack of intensity in the ‘box-to-box’ areas.

“The numbers clearly show a decline in our capacity to be aggressive – that intensity required to win back possession and prevent the opposing team from playing the ball through the midfield. If you compare the Paraguay and Uruguay matches, our performance in this regard was cut in half; in other words, we gave the opposition far too much leeway.”

So 90 minutes of constant cohesion and aggression is expected against Portugal, the world’s fifth-best team according to the latest FIFA World Rankings, and a repository of top talent even with Cristiano Ronaldo sidelined by injury.

Richards returns

The Yanks will get a hefty boost, it seems, from the return of center back Chris Richards after a knee injury kept the FC Dallas academy product from taking part in Saturday’s match, though holding midfielder Johnny Cardoso is set to return to his club Atlético Madrid due to an unspecified muscular issue that remained “uncomfortable” for the Brazilian-American in a capped 45-minute outing against Belgium.

“There's moments here and there where you've seen that kind of toughness,” said Richards, “and sometimes, like, for example, the other day, we maybe let in a few, I guess, soft goals. So I think something we can bring to it is just this toughness. I think when attackers fear you, it makes your game a little bit easier.

“We don't have that much time left, but I know that when we're able to play in these high-level games, when you're able to get good performances and good results against high-level teams, I think it definitely gives you confidence.”

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