"Do you think, coach, that we can win?" That's what Donald Trump asked Mauricio Pochettino ahead of the 2026 World Cup draw in Washington, D.C. in December. And Pochettino, speaking on Gary Neville's Stick To Football podcast, didn't flinch.
"Why not? Why not?"
It's the kind of answer that sounds like a dodge until you hear the argument behind it. Pochettino pointed to Morocco reaching the semi-finals in Qatar and South Korea doing the same in 2002 — two sides no one seriously backed to go deep, both defying the form book on home soil or close to it. His point isn't that the U.S. will win. It's that dismissing them is lazy.
What the U.S. actually brings to the table
The Americans are ranked 16th in the world — not a contender on paper, but not a pushover either. They've reached the round of 16 in each of their last three World Cup appearances: 2010, 2014, and 2022. That's a floor, not a ceiling, and Pochettino will know that a team hosting the tournament with a full fanbase behind them is a different animal to a team playing away from home.
Co-hosting with Canada and Mexico also means the U.S. will play their group games in front of enormous home crowds. That matters. Ask France in 1998. Ask Germany in 2006. The crowd doesn't score goals, but it shifts momentum in ways that accumulate over 90 minutes.
Still, "why not" is a belief statement, not a tactical blueprint. The U.S. has never been past the quarter-finals — a run they managed back in 2002. To reach, let alone win, a tournament in 2026 would require dismantling sides like Brazil, France, or England along the way. Outright World Cup odds reflect exactly that gap.
Pochettino clearly has the confidence. Whether he has the squad to back it up is a question the next 14 months will start to answer.
