Breaking the curse: What Mauricio Pochettino must learn from the USMNT's failed second cycles of previous managers

When Berhalter was hired, he inherited a USMNT that was effectively broken. Fresh off the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, he was tasked with rebuilding the program and ensuring the same disaster wouldn’t happen again in 2022.

He did exactly that. Berhalter ushered in a new generation of stars and empowered them to take ownership of the USMNT’s culture. He turned a young group with potential into a genuine team, one that returned to the World Cup and performed admirably in Qatar. The draw against England, in particular, showed that this group could compete with anyone on its day. What the USMNT lacked in experience, it made up for in togetherness. That was the culture Berhalter built.

Then came the challenge of resetting it. Rehired for the 2026 cycle despite the infamous Gio Reyna controversy, Berhalter returned to largely the same core and the same methods. What was intended to provide continuity instead bred complacency, and that complacency was exposed at the 2024 Copa America. Bad luck played a role, but Berhalter’s fatal flaw was a common one in international soccer: an inability to recognize when it was time to shake things up.

For Pochettino, the lesson is clear: Don’t be afraid to do exactly that. Feelings will be hurt, and moving on from trusted players will be difficult. At the highest level, though, coaches must be ruthless. Players need to be reminded that nothing is given and everything is earned. Once someone stops earning his place, Pochettino must be willing to look elsewhere, whether temporarily or permanently.

From the start, Klinsmann was a big-picture guy. That was what U.S. Soccer liked about him. He arrived with ideas about changing more than just the USMNT; he wanted to reshape American soccer culture, too. He pushed players to test themselves in Europe, battled with MLS and clashed with some of the USMNT’s biggest stars.

We never got to see whether Klinsmann’s broader vision would take hold because the team’s immediate problems cost him his job. After the USMNT stumbled to begin the final round of 2018 World Cup qualifying, U.S. Soccer turned to Bruce Arena in the hope that a new coach could steer the team away from the iceberg. That, of course, didn’t happen.

Klinsmann’s big flaw was that, for as grandiose as his goals were, there was never really a concrete way to execute them. And then, on the actual day the soccer was played, the details were almost secondary to the ideas. The tactics weren’t good enough, and the man management didn’t work. That’s why it all crumbled.

The good news is that the USMNT doesn’t have to worry about Pochettino’s abilities on the tactical side. Unlike Klinsmann, he’s a proven tactician on the highest levels of the European game. What might be worth worrying about, though, is the bigger picture. For the 2026 cycle, Pochettino was hired to just steer a ship to its destination. Now, he’s being asked to plan a voyage, chart a course, change the crew and, ultimately, guide it to somewhere it’s never been. The goals of this cycle are very different than the last one.

Pochettino will need to balance that better than Klinsmann. Yes, it’s important to have big ideas and to bring in changes, but they can’t be so sweeping that the manager loses track of the team that’s in front of him. Ultimately, Pochettino has to coach the team he has while still doing all of the other tasks that come with building and rebuilding American soccer. It’s a lot of responsibility, and it seems Pochettino is eager to take it on, but it’s never easy to juggle.

Bob Bradley was on the sideline for two of the USMNT’s most famous results: the Confederations Cup win over Spain and the famous 2010 World Cup win over Algeria. Yet the game that sealed his fate was a Gold Cup final loss. Why?

Part of it was that U.S. Soccer was ready to go in another direction with Klinsmann and that that loss to Mexico was a natural turning point. The other is that results, particularly in games against rivals, do matter.

During Pochettino’s first stint, there was a mix of perceptions. On one hand, results mattered, and friendlies weren't considered just friendlies. On the other, everything was working towards the World Cup, and preparation was prioritized over performance. As a result, there were a bunch of losses put onto Pochettino’s resume, most notably at the CONCACAF Nations League and in the Gold Cup final against Mexico.

Despite all he had done in the prior cycle, Bradley wasn’t immune to the mood souring after a bad Gold Cup result. Pochettino won’t be either. Bradley lost each of his final three games against Mexico, and he lost two of them in Gold Cup finals by multiple goals. For Pochettino, the fact is that there is no immediate World Cup to prepare for, which makes every game matter both a little bit less but also a little bit more.

Particularly after the manner of the USMNT’s World Cup exit, there is pressure on Pochettino to make sure he gets the results right, particularly early in this cycle. It’ll be vital for him to show that the real USMNT is the one that played the first four games of the tournament, not the last one.

To this day, no USMNT coach has matched Arena’s performance with the 2002 World Cup team. It was no surprise, then, that U.S. Soccer brought him back for 2006 with the hopes of building on that quarterfinal run.

It didn’t happen that way. The U.S. fell flat on their face that summer, finishing dead last in their group as they suffered an embarrassing exit. So what went wrong?

The main thing is that many of the stars that carried the team in 2002, players like Claudio Reyna, Eddie Pope and Brian McBride, were past their prime. Clint Dempsey and Oguchi Onyewu, meanwhile, weren't quite ready to lead because they hadn’t been fully integrated into the plan. And then there's Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley, both 24 and in the first stages of their primes, who were meant to be the men bridging the gap, but neither had the performance the USMNT needed. Ultimately, the U.S. team was caught between generations, and the one coming up on the heels of the 2002 team wasn’t ready in time for 2006.

The same can be said about Arena’s later USMNT stint. When he took over the 2018 cycle team in a panic, it was a team that totally lacked an in-their-prime generation. Stars like Dempsey, Michael Bradley, Tim Howard and Jozy Altidore were on their way out, while Christian Pulisic was a teenager with the world on his shoulders. There simply wasn’t enough in the middle, which is why the U.S. crashed out so viciously.

So what can Pochettino learn? It’s that you can’t always rely on what’s next to be as good as what came before, at least not on a World Cup schedule. Yes, there are some talented young up-and-comers like Cavan Sullivan and Mathis Albert on the way up, but a player’s schedule doesn’t always line up with a World Cup. Much of that, unfortunately, is out of a coach’s hands. All they can do is the best they can with the cards they are dealt. 

We don’t yet know what cards Pochettino will be dealt, but it will be important that he does what he can to prepare to play them. The good news is that it seems like there is more fresh talent than ever before, but that doesn’t guarantee much of anything. Pochettino will have to give young players the chances they’ll need, but don’t rush them along if they won’t be ready.

Pochettino will also have to juggle the fact that the group considered to be the Golden Generation may start aging out, but he’ll still have to maximize what he can from that group’s last cycle together. It’s a balancing act, and one that becomes tricky once it gets narrowed down to a one-summer run that doesn’t always come at the perfect time for a player pool.

So, generally, what’s the mindset here? What is the big picture idea that Pochettino needs to cling to to avoid second-cycle syndrome? Mainly, it’s a mentality: Pochettino isn’t building off of 2026; he’s building for 2030, no more and no less.

It’s easy to get lost in the things that went well last time out. It’s also easy to get mesmerized by the promise of how well things can go years from now. The hard part is often assessing what’s right in front of you. You can’t fight yesterday or tomorrow’s battles; you have to survive the present.

That’s harder in a second cycle, where you lose the benefit of the doubt and the feeling of being the shiny new toy. The excitement of Pochettino’s rehire doesn’t match the excitement of his hire, naturally, because it is no longer new. That means that, if something does go wrong, the public’s attention will be captured by the promise of something different. Pochettino’s big challenge is making sure that never happens.

How does he do it? He does it by taking control of the player pool and striking the balance between ruthlessness and care. He does it by setting a new tone and creating new challenges for a group in need of a refresh. And, most importantly, he does it by winning, both now and throughout the cycle.

It seems simple, yes, and almost condescending to say “ just win”, but it is true. Winning cures all problems or, at the very least, keeps the door closed on problems just waiting to pop up. Ultimately, a second cycle is defined by results and, for Pochettino to get them, there are no shortage of lessons he can learn from those who came before.