USA-Belgium Is The World Cup Game Mauricio Pochettino Was Hired To Win

SEATTLE STADIUM — Through more than 20 years covering the U.S. men’s national team in countries across the globe, I have never seen an American squad play with the ferocity that Mauricio Pochettino’s version has at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. I’ve never seen so much quality, so much depth, never seen attackers who can beat elite defenders off the dribble the way Christian Pulisic and Sergiño Dest have consistently this summer. The USA has never had a scorer as efficient and well-rounded as Folarin Balogun who, as the whole world now knows, is now eligible to play in Monday’s pivotal round of 16 match against Belgium (8 p.m. ET on FOX and FOX One). It has never had players at their respective positions like box-to-box midfielder Weston McKennie or left back Antonee "Jedi" Robinson. I’ve never witnessed mainstream America get behind this squad like it has over the last four weeks, not even in 2002, when a Brooklyn-born lacrosse coach named Bruce Arena somehow led a team that had finished dead last at the World Cup four years prior within a whisker of the semifinals. With three wins and nine goals in four games heading into Monday’s contest, there is no doubt: This is the best the U.S. has ever played in a World Cup. And none of it will matter if Pochettino’s side can’t win this next one, too. Soccer’s quadrennial bonanza is the ultimate results business. With a victory in Monday’s match, Pochettino will never have to buy a glass of wine in this country again. If he loses, it wouldn’t be a mere disappointment. It would make Pochettino — who has repeatedly said that his goal is to leave a legacy behind whenever he moves on — the architect of a very public failure on home soil. The stakes are that binary, as much as the 54-year-old Argentine tried to downplay at his pre-match press conference Sunday. "I think the players are responsible to create the legacy," he said. "I am a small part, because in the end, it’s the players that are creating the emotional relationship with the fans." Maybe. But Pochettino arrived with a reputation as a truly all-world coach, a man who had succeeded at the highest levels of the European club game. The expectations here are therefore elevated, especially given all the Americans have already accomplished this summer. Monday will be the sixth round of 16 game the USA has played since 1990. The Americans were eliminated at this same stage four years ago, and in 2014, and in 2010 — and none of those games were played in America, much less America’s best soccer city. Sure, the hope is that the millions of new USA fans who have been created since that World Cup opening 4-1 win over Paraguay on June 12 will stick around no matter the outcome on Monday. Pochettino believes they will. "Tomorrow, win or not win," Pochettino said, "the legacy is already there." But America loves winners. The U.S. men will never get a more favorable first-round draw than they got at this World Cup, and they will never have a better opportunity to advance to the last eight than they have here in Seattle. Part of the reason soccer began exploding from coast-to-coast over the last three decades was the men’s national team’s obvious potential. I remember coming home from little league baseball practice one day in 1993 to find my Scottish father, with a smile on his face and a beer in his hand, watching the U.S. close out a 2-0 victory over England. That 2002 team upset title dark-horse Portugal in its opener. Just in the last 15 years alone, the Americans beat Italy in Genoa, Germany in Cologne and the Netherlands in Amsterdam. Hell, seven months after missing the cut for the 2018 World Cup, the worst U.S. team in modern history held eventual champs France to a 1-1 tie in Lyon. Pochettino lost his first six games against European nations, finally breaking that streak last week against tiny Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hardly a world-beater, with all due respect to the Golden Lillies. Now the former Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea manager’s mandate — his responsibility — is to beat an aging Belgium side and advance to the quarters. Losing in the round of 16, again, this time in a 70,000-seat venue filled overwhelmingly with their own supporters, in front of what will surely be the most watched soccer game in U.S. history, can’t be waved away as acceptable. Not for a coach with Pochettino’s résumé, not for a guy who is getting paid at least four times what his predecessor, Gregg Berhalter, earned in bowing out to the Dutch at the same stage at Qatar 2022. Jürgen Klinsmann’s 2014 squad took Belgium to extra time in the round of 16 before succumbing. Bob Bradley did the same in 2010, losing to Ghana after winning a group that included England. And while Arena’s U.S. didn’t survive group play in 2006, that quarterfinal run 24 years ago in Korea/Japan remains the Americans’ best showing since the inaugural World Cup in 1930. None of those coaches had the advantage of playing at home. Any excuse Pochettino might have had not to beat the Red Devils evaporated on Monday, when FIFA controversially ruled that the red card Balogun received against the Bosnians would not rule him out vs. the Belgians. The status quo won’t cut it — not this year, with this coach, with this team, in this moment. This is the game that Pochettino was hired to win.