Mauricio Pochettino called for optimism after the United States lost 2-1 to Canada in the CONCACAF Nations League third/fourth place playoff in Inglewood on Sunday, Afrosport reports.
The defeat followed the shock semi-final 1-0 loss to Panama on Thursday, making it their worst finish after winning the first three editions of the Nations League.
It has put pressure on Pochettino, who has been tasked with leading the North American giants at the 2026 FIFA World Cup on home soil along with neighbours Canada and Mexico.
The Argentine tactician is however confident his team will be in better shape for the Mundial.
“There’s a lot of examples in different years of teams that were building to play in a World Cup that were not good until they arrived at the World Cup,” the former Tottenham Hotspur manager said.
“So, I want to send a message to the fans – ‘Don’t be pessimistic, don’t get bad feelings’. It can happen. But the main objective is the World Cup.
“It’s always painful when you lose, but we need to accept it. But I don’t want people to feel pessimistic. We are all disappointed that we didn’t win but I’m not going to allow us to feel pessimistic because I think we have good players.
“We are going to find a way to perform and for sure we are going to compete and we are going to get different results from those that we got from the semi-final and final.”
Canada
United States
Game Highlights pic.twitter.com/lEIWLGYFrD
— Concacaf Nations League (@CNationsLeague) March 24, 2025
Pochettino however acknowledged that it is natural the Nations League results would be a cause for concern.
“If we are in this situation, in one year’s time, for sure, I will tell you, ‘Houston, we have a problem. S.O.S.,” he said.
“But you will see in one year if we are talking about that, we will have a big problem. Because it will mean that we were not capable of discovering and designing a better strategy to provide the team with the capacity to play in a different way.
“I think we have time. I prefer that what happened [in the final], happened and not in one year’s time.”
The US would next be in action in international friendlies against Turkey and Switzerland in June.
