US coach Pochettino says World Cup group games ‘like finals’

Mauricio Pochettino said on Friday that the United States will be looking no further than the World Cup group stages after being given a draw that has raised hopes of a deep run in the tournament.

US coach Pochettino was in attendance in Washington to see his team land in a Group D which will see them play Paraguay, Australia and an as yet undetermined European qualifier.

Pochettino’s men will go into the tournament buoyed by the knowledge that they have scored recent wins over two of their first round opponents, beating Paraguay 2-1 last month and Australia by the same score in October.

But while US television pundits such as Alexi Lalas talked bullishly of reaching the semi-finals, Pochettino said that there will be no chance of complacency.

Instead, he plans to drill his team into thinking that every group game is a World Cup final ahead of their opener with Paraguay in Los Angeles on June 12.

“If you are Argentina and you are maybe today the best team and you are the last winner of the World Cup, maybe you think about after the group stage,” Pochettino said.

“But with the USA, our first game is the final of the World Cup. And the second needs to be the final of the World Cup. That is the mentality, the mindset that we want to build.”

Pochettino added that the recent wins over Paraguay and Australia would also count for little by the time of the tournament.

“It’s still six months, things can change,” he said. “It’s a good reference for us, but also for them. I don’t believe it will be a good advantage or a disadvantage.”

Pochettino, meanwhile, revealed that he was drawing inspiration from the 2004 film “Miracle” which dramatised the story of the United States’ shock 1980 Olympic ice hockey gold medal-winning campaign, where a largely unheralded team upset the mighty Soviet Union.

Pochettino suggested that he would aim to build a World Cup squad using the philosophy of 1980 US hockey coach Herb Brooks, who says in the film: “We don’t need the best players, we need the right players.”

“That is what we want to provide to this national team — the right players to build a powerful team with the possibility to fight with any team in the world,” Pochettino said.