Pochettino's Focus on Winning Group Despite Turkiye Loss
Mauricio Pochettino walked into the press room having just lost 3-2 to Turkiye – and looked like a man who’d been told nothing had gone right.
In his mind, the night had delivered something significant. The United States had already won the group. The job, as he saw it, was done.
Yet the questions rolled in about momentum lost, warning signs, and stumbles on the way into the World Cup knockout rounds. No congratulations. No acknowledgement of the bigger picture.
“The mood is like we [are going] home tonight and Turkey is staying,” he snapped. “I need to [remind] you and everyone that we won the group. Sorry guys, we won.”
That was the line. The Argentina-born coach, steeped in the pressure cookers of Chelsea, Tottenham and Paris, was not in the mood to indulge what he considered small thinking.
Group winners, not party crashers
Pochettino had said before the game he wanted another victory, a clean sweep through the group. On paper, his team selection told a different story.
Nine changes from the XI that beat Australia. A side full of reserves. A night for rhythm and minutes, not risk. Christian Pulisic returned from a calf issue, the AC Milan star getting valuable time after missing the Australia match and coming off at half-time in the win over Paraguay.
If the USMNT had found a way past Turkiye for a third straight win, it would have been a slice of history – the first American team to win all three group matches at a World Cup. That narrative didn’t move Pochettino.
“Making history is winning the World Cup,” he said. “It’s not winning three matches only within the World Cup. I don’t really understand. It’s a little bit petty if you will — you’re thinking a little too small. You’re telling me you could make history — what does it mean to win three matches if you lose the next one?”
The message was blunt: don’t dress up a perfect group stage as an achievement if it ends in a last-16 exit.
A warning from Germany, a boost from Pulisic
Pochettino pointed across the tournament to underline his stance. Germany, he noted, had rolled out many of their regulars earlier in the day and still fallen to a desperate Ecuador side. No guarantees, no safety in continuity.
He framed the Turkiye defeat as a calculated risk and, in some ways, a controlled exercise. The United States, he argued, had “handled the situation well”, rotating heavily, managing minutes and, crucially, getting Pulisic back on the pitch before the knockout rounds.
The performance may not have soothed anxious supporters, but the coach’s gaze is fixed on the only prize he believes counts.
“Making history,” as he defines it, starts now.
Arnold’s Iraq hammered, future clouded
On the other side of the tournament, another familiar figure faced a far harsher scoreline and a far more uncertain tomorrow.
Graham Arnold’s Iraq were thrashed 5-0 by Senegal, a brutal end to a World Cup campaign that had always looked like an uphill climb in a group with France and Norway.
The turning point, in Arnold’s eyes, came early. Rebin Sulaka’s red card in the 13th minute, with Iraq already trailing 1-0, left them chasing shadows.
Arnold didn’t sugarcoat it, calling it a “stupid red card” and laying bare the damage done by his own side.
“I told the players after the match that we conceded 11 goals at this World Cup, and nine came from our own individual mistakes. We have to learn from that,” he said. “The early red card was mentally tough on the players. Against a team like Senegal, mistakes are always punished.”
By the second half, Iraq were out of legs and out of hope. Arnold admitted he rotated with one eye on experience, giving more players the chance to feel a World Cup, and accepted responsibility for that decision as the scoreline blew out.
This was still a campaign built on an achievement of its own. Iraq had been the last team to qualify, forced through an intercontinental playoff to reach a first World Cup in 40 years. For that, Arnold insisted, there should be pride.
“Everyone in Iraq should be proud of the fact that we made it here and we performed very well in two out of the three games,” he said in Toronto.
His contract, he revealed on the eve of the Senegal match, expires at the end of the tournament. A reunion with the Socceroos at next year’s Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia looms in the group stage, but only if he stays on.
“I’ve just asked them to leave it until after World Cup, then we can have a chat then,” Arnold said.
Qualification delivered him a platform. The manner of the exit leaves a question: will he still be the man on the touchline when Iraq walk out in Asia?
Panama scrap in training – and their coach loves it
Panama, already eliminated, brought a different kind of edge to the day.
With a final group game against England in New Jersey on the horizon and nothing tangible left to play for, tempers flared between Cecilio Waterman and Jose Luis Rodriguez in training.
Some coaches would panic at the sight of teammates clashing. Thomas Christiansen welcomed it.
“What happened today in training, this is a normal situation,” said the Danish-born former Spain international. “I would’ve liked to see these situations more often, that means the team is alive. They are willing to do a good effort... to be in the first XI for the game.
If this happens another time, it’s a good sign that they are alive.
Panama’s World Cup record is bleak: five games, five defeats, including a 6-1 hammering by England in 2018. This edition has brought back-to-back 1-0 losses to Ghana and Croatia in Group L.
Yet Christiansen, in charge since 2020 and out of contract after the competition, sees the England match as a chance to leave a mark.
“Now we have the last game against England, a good way to finish a World Cup if it goes our way,” he said. “I think we have made changes from the last time they faced Panama eight years ago, but we need to show it tomorrow.
“It will be a tough one but I’m thinking that the team will be able to compete and do a good game.”
For Panama, a single point would rewrite their World Cup history. For Christiansen, it could be the final word of his tenure.
France win big as Deschamps grieves
France cruised to a 4-1 win over Norway, but their head coach was thousands of kilometres away.
Didier Deschamps missed the match after returning home for his mother’s funeral, leaving his staff to oversee a comfortable victory on the pitch and a complicated situation off it.
The French squad had planned to wear black armbands in tribute to Deschamps’s mother. The French Football Federation later confirmed to The Athletic that FIFA denied the request.
Confusion also swirled around a pre-match minute’s silence. It had initially been briefed that it would be held in honour of Deschamps’s mother. The FFF then clarified that the silence was instead for the victims of the Venezuelan earthquake.
FIFA have been contacted by media but are yet to respond.
France, even without their coach on the touchline, delivered a statement scoreline. The emotion behind it, and the unanswered questions over FIFA’s stance, will linger long after the final whistle.
