The China Mail - Poch backing US to come good at World Cup after Nations woe

After an abject CONCACAF Nations League semi-final loss to Panama on Thursday, Pochettino had called on his team to show greater urgency and take more risks in Sunday's third place game against Canada.

But those pleas appeared to have fallen on deaf ears judging by another lackluster display from Pochettino's side, who failed to take a single shot -- on or off target -- in the opening half-hour at SoFi Stadium.

It marked another dispiriting performance from the 2026 World Cup co-hosts, who will return to the same venue on June 12 next year for their opening game of the tournament.

Pochettino, who was appointed last year after the ill-fated second reign of Gregg Berhalter, is confident that by then his side will be in much better shape.

"There's a lot of examples in different years of teams that were building to play in a World Cup that were not good until they arrived at the World Cup," Pochettino said.

"So I want to send a message to the fans 'Don't be pessimistic, don't get bad feelings'. It can happen. But the main objective is the World Cup," the Argentine added.

- No pessimism -

"It's always painful when you lose, but we need to accept it. But I don't want people to feel pessimistic. We are all disappointed that we didn't win but I'm not going to allow us to feel pessimistic because I think we have good players.

"We are going to find a way to perform and for sure we are going to compete and we are going to get different results from those that we got from Thursday and today."

Pochettino acknowledged though that failure to improve over the next year of building towards the World Cup would be a cause for concern.

"If we are in this situation, in one year's time, for sure, I will tell you, 'Houston, we have a problem. S.O.S.," Pochettino said.

"But you will see in one year if we are talking about that, we will have a big problem. Because it will mean that we were not capable of discovering and designing a better strategy to provide the team with the capacity to play in a different way.

"I think we have time. I prefer that what happened today, happened today and not in one year's time."

United States skipper Christian Pulisic said that "some things need to change" following Sunday's loss.

"Obviously disappointed. We've gotta come back from this, we're not at our best at the moment," Pulisic said.

"All we can do now is go back and be the best example we can be at our clubs... and when we come back of course, some things need to change and we need to improve.

"We're gonna look back and see what that is. I don't have all the answers at the moment."

M.Chau--ThChM