00:00How is the U.S. looking? Because I feel like, you know, a lot of it I see on social media, it seems like the players kind of hate each other and they hated the last coach.
00:10And I don't know if they like the new coach and the old guys hate the young guys. Like, what the hell is going on with U.S. soccer?
00:17Yeah, it's been a very dramatic four years, really, or three years since the last World Cup with everything that happened coming out of Qatar.
00:23The controversy between one of the players, Gio Reyna, and the former coach, Greg Berhalter, and their families, respectively, who go back to childhood.
00:31Greg Berhalter and Gio Reyna's father, Claudio Reyna, grew up together, played youth soccer together, played on the U.S. national team at a World Cup together.
00:37The mothers went to UNC and played together. So that was its own messy drama.
00:41And it sort of obviously influenced the team and impacted the team.
00:45And the results kind of went down pretty quickly, especially in 2024 when the U.S. lost in the Copa America.
00:51That led to Greg Berhalter being fired and Mauricio Pochettino being hired.
00:55And what's interesting is the first thing he diagnosed, Pochettino, who's a very prominent, very famous coach in soccer,
01:02kind of considered a coup that the U.S. would be able to even hire Mauricio Pochettino.
01:07He's coached PSG, Messi, and Neymar, and Mbappe at PSG, coached Chelsea, coached Spurs to a Champions League final.
01:13You know, he came in and he said, everyone's talking about these guys, these young players, as a golden generation,
01:18as this team that can do something different.
01:20And he needed to basically pull them back down to reality, that there's a complacency that's set in.
01:25These players have kind of taken for granted that they're going to be called into the national team,
01:29that their jobs are secured.
01:30And what I credit him with is he essentially manufactured competition in a pool where there was a big disparity
01:38in terms of the level of talent between those golden generation, quote-unquote, players
01:42and sort of the domestic pool that plays here in MLS.
01:45But he's found players that can really contribute.
01:47I'll give an example, Alex Freeman, who had only played something like a half a season
01:53of top division pro soccer, the son of Antonio Freeman.
01:57And Pochettino brings him in, gives him his debut on the national team.
02:01And Alex Freeman is looking like a player who has a chance to start a game at a World Cup
02:05now, coming out of kind of nowhere because Pochettino gave him a chance.
02:09So, you know, those types of players are really making an impact now.
02:13And I think it's changed the trajectory of this team.
02:15And I think there's now starting to be some real optimism coming off of the 5-1 win over Uruguay last month
02:21that this team is starting to get into form now.
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