Yahoo Sports contributors Christian Polanco and former USMNT midfielder Kyle Martino discuss new USMNT coach Mauricio Porchettino and how soon he can turn around the culture heading into the 2026 World Cup. Hear the full conversation on the “The Cooligans” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

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And that's kind of my next question about Pochettino.

I mean, what impact can he have?

How like, how quickly can he impose his philosophy?

Like, are we gonna see it in these first two matches?

Will it take a couple, a couple windows typically how Pochettino goes about his work is getting an incredible amount of time and sometimes he's taken over teams mid season, but get an incredible amount of time installing a mentality, a culture and a system through basically, you know, a boot camp, right?

You get, you get to be in preseason and, and no one's watching, no one gets to see as you spend these minutes crafting the type of squad you want and really understanding what you can get out of them.

He, he, he not only does he not have that luxury being a national team coach, he, he doesn't really have any of that time because it's only probably 20 something games that he's gonna be given before 2026 is right here.

But it's gonna be so hard because he can't use the same tactics that he uses at the club level to like leave someone out to prove a point where it's like, yeah, man, this is a cup and you know, it's more like they only have, you only have four more games.

So you're gonna see the intensity of the group go up tremendously.

The expectation is for Pochettino to come in and right away, install the requisite, I mean, absolute minimal level of competitive spirit and, and commitment to perform.

That was a given back when we won the shirt And this isn't our era against their era.

Like I, I'm just not that type of person, this era, crazy talented players love watching so many of them play, like obviously as a fan root for their success.

But there's a word and many people have tiptoed around it is this team has become soft in his um introductory press conference.

There's a, um there's a, like, I don't know, a certain level of he, he doesn't come off as an aggressive person or I'm sure he gets intense when necessary that he wouldn't be as successful as he as he is.

But there's certain, there's a, there's a paternal sort of like the way he sort of carries himself with the media that, that makes me, he just whatever this means, it just, I'm like, I feel like this guy knows what he's doing when he took over PSG, you know, you're not taking over someone that's supposed to win and is going to win, you know, like you're taking over a, a at an inflection point where this is a very talented young group that needs AAA leader to create leaders.

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