The USMNT is soft. Can Mauricio Pochettino toughen them up before the 2026 World Cup?

I feel like I've been here before.

The United States loses a game they should have won, and we have this introspective type of moment. Where is the grit? Where is the pride? — or all the different words that we use.

This time, it was a 1-0 loss to Panama in the Concacaf Nations League semifinals, one of the scarce opportunities the U.S. and, namely, Mauricio Pochettino had to prove themselves in a competitive setting. Instead, this U.S. team came out and fell flat on their face.

There are two ways that you can look at this: You can take the long approach and say nothing really matters until the summer of 2026 and that the sky is not falling.

Or, you can look at it and say: This is unacceptable. This was a lackluster performance. This was a performance devoid of any emotion, any passion, determination and any direction. It was rudderless from top to bottom.

It wasn't just the score, either; it was also the individual performances. This is on the players, and this is on Pochettino.

Pochettino was hired to draw that toughness out of this group, and he's being paid a hell-of-a-lot of money to do it. And, by the way, he's an Argentine, so he knows from being a part of that culture — as a player and a manager — that there's a level of nastiness that even the best teams in the world play with, including Argentina. Even with the wonderful soccer that they play, they match it with ruthlessness and a nastiness.

In our effort to create better soccer players — and I'm trying so hard not to call them spoiled, coddled, tattooed millionaires — the old guy in me wants to line them up on the wall and scream at them and say "What is your problem?" You've been given absolutely everything, and at the very least, we should see some fight. At