Coming off a clunky 2-1 loss to Turkey over the weekend, the USMNT entered its final pre-Gold Cup tuneup against Switzerland in desperate need of some progress — if not a positive result, then at least some reason to believe the program was headed in the right direction just a year out from hosting the 2026 World Cup.
Instead, it delivered precisely the opposite. Not a single thing went right for the Americans in a 4-0 loss that marks a new low in the still-nascent Mauricio Pochettino era. It's not just that the U.S. found itself on the wrong end of a lopsided scoreline; it was down by four goals within the first 36 minutes, not even bothering to put forth a full effort on home soil.
Yes, the Swiss entered the night as clear favorites. And yes, it's worth noting that Pochettino was without many of the players who figure to make up his starting XI come World Cup time: Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah both declined to join the team for this most recent batch of friendlies, while Weston McKennie, Gio Reyna and Tim Weah are all preparing for the upcoming Club World Cup and Tyler Adams, Antonee Robinson, Ricardo Pepi and Sergino Dest are battling injury.
But Switzerland also didn't have all of its top players. And more to the point, what's wrong with the USMNT right now goes well beyond the talent on the pitch; this is a question of identity, of cohesion, and nothing about what happened tonight leads you to believe the product will be better once the first team shows up.
Switzerland loss shows the USMNT's strategy has failed
For starters, the fact that the U.S. was so short-handed during this friendly window is part of the problem. The European club schedule is one hell of a grind, but Pochettino didn't bother hiding his disappoint that Pulisic (and, to a lesser extent, Musah) opted not to report to camp. And it's hard to blame him: After all, how many years into this supposed golden generation do we have to get for the USMNT's European talent to start delivering on some of its considerable hype?
The U.S. has made clear that its priority is to develop its best players in Europe, to make sure that they face the very best competition from a young age. Which is all well and good, at least in theory. In practice, though, it's created a culture in which most of those players feel disconnected from the program — and that was more than evident on Tuesday night, when the Americans simply got outworked for much of the match.
The flip side to that development choice is that the Americans who stay and play domestically in MLS wind up dying on the vine. And so we wind up with the worst of both worlds: Those good enough to play in Europe seemingly can't be bothered to care, while those who play in the U.S. simply don't have the talent to compete on this sort of stage.
Maybe this is an overreaction based on a few bad performances without our best players, and Pochettino certainly deserves more time and a better hand than he's been dealt so far. Right now, this loss sure feels like tacit admission that the USMNT's overall strategy for the last decade has been a failure. The U.S. used to be clearly outmanned on the international stage, but their spirit was never, ever in question. That feels preferable to what we're seeing right now.