USMNT player ratings vs Panama: Yunus Musah, Ricardo Pepi strike big, launch Mauricio Pochettino era on high note

AUSTIN, Texas - As his team ran off celebrating in the opposite corner, Mauricio Pochettino turned towards the U.S. men's national team bench clapping his hands. He and his players were understandably fired up.

The Pochettino era had finally begun - and it came with a win.

The first goal of the era came from Yunus Musah, which gave Pochettino and the USMNT a reason to both celebrate and exhale. Ricardo Pepi, meanwhile, put the exclamation point on the match, scoring in the dying moments of what ended up as a 2-0 win over Panama in Pochettino's first game with the USMNT.

“It’s always important to win,” Pochettino told TNT after recording his first victory with the U.S. after officially being named coach last month. “It was a really tough game for us. Yes, little by little building something. The object is 2026 but I think happy because (we were) solid in the performance, a very professional performance. And then competing in a very good way. Now, that’s only the first step.”

Musah's goal was, in many ways, a coach's dream sequence: high-pressing, quick passing, a pass across the box and, ultimately, a tap-in for a player in position to change the game. It was a goal that the USMNT made look easy, but one that felt so hard to come by for most of the last few months.

It was also a goal made in Milan, as Christian Pulisic teed up his club teammate to continue his recent run of dominance on both sides of the pond. And Musah gave credit to his new coach, in part, for how it all unfolded.

"I can see he knows a lot about my background," he said of Pochettino. "He knows about my academy days, playing at Valencia - everything. That's why today I played wide because he knows I used to play wide as well. So it's nice that a coach knows about me, has a lot of faith in me."

Pepi's finish in stoppage time, meanwhile, was valuable insurance. Fed by fellow substitute Haji Wright, Pepi made no mistake, furthering a supersub reputation he continues to build for club and country.

On the USMNT side, Saturday was a very different look from the one over the past few months. That was to be expected. A new coach has come in with new ideas, and that was clear from the start. The USMNT played a three-at-the-back for large stretches, keeping Musah out wide while allowing Antonee Robinson to bomb forward as the other wingback.

It didn't always work, to be fair, as players definitely showed some growing pains in this new system. Despite those rough patches, though, the USMNT emerged with a win and, perhaps just as importantly, a clean sheet.

The victory snapped a four-game winless streak on home soil for the USMNT, dating back to the Copa America. It also avenged a 2-1 loss to Panama in the group stage of the Copa, a disappointing defeat that ultimately put the wheels in place for a Copa crash, the firing of then-coach Gregg Berhalter and the eventual hiring of Pochettino.

And now the Pochettino era is underway. The start wasn't perfect, but it was progress. Onto the next one, in Mexico Tuesday night. And Pochettino is already thinking about that rivalry match.

"To try to compete in our best way, improving in the whole evolution of the ideas and the concepts that we believe will be important to compete at this level," he said of the objective against Mexico. "Now we need to recover the players that maybe didn’t play today - maybe have the opportunity to play. It’s a great opportunity also to see the players perform, competing."

GOAL rates the USMNT's players against Panama from Q2 Stadium.