Emma Hayes and Mauricio Pochettino face different challenges with their U.S. teams

Yahoo

18-06-2025

It's less than a year out from the 2026 men's World Cup, hosted in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and there's suddenly plenty of drama happening with the U.S. men's national team that isn't about their recent form.
The back and forth between captain Christian Pulisic and head coach Mauricio Pochettino over the Milan forward's decision to sit out the Concacaf Gold Cup this summer has earned plenty of headlines and sustained a couple of weeks' worth of podcast episodes. It has been fascinating to watch from a distance via the lens of covering the U.S. women's national team.
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Having reported on the USWNT at the World Cups in France in 2019 and Australia/New Zealand in 2023, and at the Olympics in France last year, I have never seen anything like this on the women's side of the sport.
There will always be tensions between players and a head coach to varying degrees. The closest comparison I could come up with was Ali Krieger's long call-up drought before suddenly coming back into the fold for the 2019 World Cup, though it's not a perfect comparison, as public comments from either side stayed polite. Even new head coach Emma Hayes' surprising decision to leave Alex Morgan off the 2024 Olympic roster was largely covered as a pure soccer decision (and rightly so).
With the men, there are some inciting factors ramping up the heat. And the two former Chelsea colleagues, as managers of the London club's men's and women's teams during the 2023-24 season, find themselves in opposite scenarios.
An imminent World Cup being played largely on American soil, increasing workloads for players, the changing media landscape and the weight of former player voices, and even the high-profile nature of the men's head-coaching role for U.S. Soccer, are all escalating this from a single player's choice to contentious national discourse.
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On the field, the USMNT's recent form — Gold Cup opener aside — has been lackluster, and the pressure is on to not just be prepared for a home World Cup but to perform well in it.
Meanwhile, for the USWNT, 2025 has been a rare release of the pressure valve that's usually on the women's game's perennial winners. This year is a slow build into World Cup qualifiers next summer, and the team is at the start of a new cycle leading into the 2027 Women's World Cup in Brazil and 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
For the women, the pressure is to win. For the men, it feels like something much closer to avoiding embarrassment on the international stage. The long shadow of Couva and the failure to qualify for the 2018 men's World Cup still lingers, even as the player pool has largely turned over in the years since.
Playing at home in a World Cup now less than 12 months away has cranked up pressure on the USMNT program to a level they've never actually experienced before.
Workload is also a factor.
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It is not new or unique to Pulisic, to the USMNT or to men's soccer — but it does feel like players in general are beginning to reach a breaking point with the combined demands of club and international football, and are more willing to acknowledge their own need for rest as they put more and more minutes on their bodies.
There are legitimate concerns about player workload, something FIFPro, the sport's global players' union, has made a top priority, and the idea that footballers should feel enabled to take breaks for their physical or mental well-being is valid. Maybe we're just more used to these ideas on the women's side, since so much of the discussion around that branch of the game has come through the lens of players battling for better conditions, especially here in the United States.
It's not perfect yet by any stretch, but from the equal-pay fight to the NWSL abuse scandal, every person in the women's game has needed to grapple with player health and safety in a way the men's side has yet to be faced with.
After criticism over his decision to rest — including from former USMNT players such as Landon Donovan and Tim Howard — Pulisic wanted to clarify he was open to playing in two of the recent warm-up matches, but not the Gold Cup. Pochettino responded that while he understood Pulisic's line of thinking, he selected the same roster for those friendlies as the tournament itself because he considered it 'a really important competition.'
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But Pochettino's full response is where the discourse fully leapt into drama, even as he said his communication with Pulisic is 'good,' though the same as he would have with any other player.
'I don't prioritize,' the former Argentina international said. 'You say (Christian is) the best player. Yes, he's a good player, of course. But he needs to perform. Because I'm going to judge him like Diego (Luna, the attacking midfielder sitting next to him as he spoke to reporters), like another player. If he performs well and he is the best, it's normal he's going to have a place in the national team. It's not because a player (is saying), 'I want to play', 'I want this', 'I want that'.
'When I signed my contract with the federation, it said I am the head coach. I am not a mannequin.'
When Hayes did not rotate her lineups during the Olympics, a tournament known for its compressed schedule and increased demands on players (and in that case, happened mostly in the high summer temperatures of southern France), she faced questions about workload. Hayes coached her players through those three weeks by comparing the tournament to a 'pain cave', a concept used by ultramarathoners running hundreds of miles.
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'The reason I want to play the team together for as long as possible is because I want them to develop that. I want them to suffer. I want them to have that moment, because I do not believe you can win without it,' Hayes said as the USWNT advanced to the gold-medal game — and eventually took the title home.
Pochettino made a similar justification when explaining why he wanted the same roster for the Gold Cup and the two friendlies leading up to it.
'(Pulisic) contacted us with the concern about how he explained about how he was tired, that (he) was worried about different things,' Pochettino said before the Gold Cup, where his team will play up to six matches. 'It's true that he wanted to come to be involved in the two friendly games — how he said. But it's common sense for us to build a roster to come to these two friendly games (in order) to prepare for the Gold Cup, because, for us, the Gold Cup is an important tournament.'
In this clear juxtaposition between the two U.S. national teams, Hayes has actively chosen to give almost all of the team's European-based players a rest for the upcoming camp and three friendlies. Her roster, announced Wednesday, featured only one player who plays in Europe — vice-captain and now Chelsea defender Naomi Girma was included in the majority NWSL player group as she builds back from an injury in March that meant over a month on the sidelines.
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'This is the first opportunity, and the only one for them, to take a break between now and the World Cup in two years,' Hayes said, 'and player welfare and rest and recovery are also important for these players.'
Hayes said Wednesday that while the increased player load across club and country is a conversation she can be a part of, but only influence via communication with U.S. Soccer and NWSL clubs, her specific role is to work with each individual player.
'All I can control is that in 2027, there is a World Cup and this player has this number of games, this is their season window, this is the international call-ups that they might receive, this is their off-season, this is their rest period,' she said. 'Every one of them is different. My job is to educate the player.'
While Hayes viewed differences in player load between the European club game and the NWSL right now, the end goal was the same for her.
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'Our players need to develop resilience to be able to tolerate the load,' she said
That said, how she manages a player like Emily Fox, who just won the Champions League with Arsenal, is different from an older player with a history of injuries or a young debutante with the national team who's stayed healthy.
While Hayes has the luxury of two years to build to Brazil 2027, Pochettino was brought in to replace Gregg Berhalter last September. There is a difference between the demands of a major tournament and the games one year out from one. Regardless, the discussion hasn't stayed on the actual structural issue at fault because the drama has superseded it.
Maybe this was unavoidable, though, thanks to U.S. Soccer's approach to hiring.
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For both the men's and women's national teams, the federation has gone out and hired big-name coaches who create news cycles and have drawn off some of the coverage that might have otherwise gone to the players. Pochettino is already in an uncomfortable spot, due to the state of his team. Defensiveness should not be surprising.
There is a break in the clouds, at least. The USMNT got their opening win in the Gold Cup, 5-0 over Trinidad & Tobago, giving the team a chance to cut through the 'noise' of the building negativity over the past few weeks.
While a result like that always helps things smooth over, there's still plenty to be resolved (at least publicly) between Pochettino and Pulisic — and it feels like everyone will still be waiting to see how this plays out.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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