“But what I really, really appreciate from the team, the roster, and all the staff is the way we start to connect together. By posting a series of confidence and momentum-building results, punctuated by a head-turning one, the co-hosts will enter a World Cup year in a much better place than they might have imagined at the close of 2024. That was, I think, when the reality touched.”Yet dispiriting friendly losses to Turkey and Switzerland in early June made things look desperately bleak for the World Cup. “I felt like we had a group of guys [at the Gold Cup] that really connected on a deeper level,” Berhalter told TNT on Tuesday. Guys have each other’s backs.”Around this time, the USMNT finally and fully became Pochettino’s team.
