The one who has bathed in self-reflected glory for what his staff predict will be ‘the largest sporting event in the history of mankind’ passed up the chance to be present at his country’s long-awaited opening night here.
President Donald J Trump, perhaps more chastened than he admits by booing of him at the New York Knicks’ NBA Finals game against San Antonio Spurs on Monday night, will not watch the US team face Paraguay.
It really takes something to keep a host nation’s leader away. Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff both braved the notorious unpredictability of football crowds to be at the open matches of their own country’s host tournaments and suffered varying degrees of embarrassment because of it.
But the backdrop to the US’s World Cup is more rancorous than perhaps any other in the tournament’s history and though the USMNT’s opening night, in this nation’s 250th anniversary year, seemed such a glorious opportunity, Trump will instead busy himself with a UFC event planned for Sunday on the White House lawn, to mark his own 80th birthday.
Here on the US west coast, that decision has been greeted with monumental relief. Not only because of the immense inconvenience the vast Trump security operation brings fans, but because of the image of the US as an inhospitable host nation, which his administration is seen as having projected in the past five days.
Fans outside Madison Square Garden in New York protest against Donald Trump at game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday
An order that the Iranian team – dumped from a Californian base and forced to take one in Mexico instead – jet in and out of Los Angeles and Seattle within the space of a day for each of their three group games is embarrassing to many. ‘They’ve qualified. They are part of the festival. Let us respect them,’ said Randall, a taxi driver reflecting the view of many who want this tournament – established by Jules Rimet to make football a vessel of peace after World War One – to be a time for hostility and mutual suspicion to briefly cease.
But it is the refusal by Trump’s America to allow in Somalian World Cup referee Omar Artan which is widely seen as the truly excruciating act. At the LA Memorial Coliseum, commissioned and dedicated in 1923 in remembrance of the veterans of the Great War and now central to the city’s World Cup fan events, proud American patriots declared on Thursday night that the USA should do better than this.
‘What message does this send to the world?’ said a young mother with child in tow. ‘The world is looking on and we act out to look like the bad guys. How will those who look on this respect us? Won’t they despise us?’ Artan has returned home to a hero’s welcome in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, while UEFA announced that he will referee their Super Cup final, a decision which put them on the moral high ground.
Amid the controversy and suspicion, most find themselves giving thanks for coach Mauricio Pochettino, in the ways they had never imagined.
Donald Trump will not be attending USA’s opener against Paraguay, unlike leaders at previous World Cups
Though his team’s results in the friendlies leading up to Friday’s opener against Paraguay have been mixed – a very poor fourth-place finish at the 2025 Concacaf Nations League and friendly defeats to Belgium and Portugal by a 7-2 aggregate in March, though home wins against Switzerland, Turkey and South Korea – his public pronouncements have revealed him to be a very good man for the red hot group atmospheres his side will find here and in Seattle.
He provided a blunt assessment of American soccer talent after those defeats. Belgium and Portugal have players among the world’s top 100, he said. ‘I think we don’t.’
Yet despite the co-hosts having only one World Cup knock-out victory behind them and being expected to reach the quarter-finals, Pochettino leavens realism with optimism. ‘Why not us? Why not us? Why not us?’ he has said. ‘We need to really believe that we can be there. We need to dream.’
The US have evolved from their Christian Pulisic dependency into a side with more players than ever before at top European clubs: Weston McKennie at Juventus, striker Folarin Balogun at Monaco and PSG wing-back/forward Tim Weah, son of the Liberian great, George. Pochettino also has them well drilled on shifting their positions when in and out of possession, though his man management is more significant.
The 70,000-capacity Los Angeles Stadium will host USA’s opening game
A willingness to risk the opprobrium of Christian Pulisic by denying him the chance to pick and choose games at one stage last year – ‘Players need to listen and stick with our plan. They cannot dictate the plan. I am the head coach, not a mannequin,’ – reflected a necessary force of personality for this potentially pivotal moment in the story of US soccer.
There is a robustness behind dashes of sentiment. This week, he expressed his displeasure with the rehydration breaks which are a part of this tournament’s games. He has provoked a national debate by arguing that the solution to America finally conquering this sport is not creating more soccer schools, but spaces for the children to play. ‘What I didn’t learn from my teachers and coaches is what I learned from my friends when I played with them,’ Pochettino said.
At the Coliseum, it was hard to find Americans who didn’t feel the Argentinian is the man the USMNT require for potential turbulence of a finely-balanced group also including Australia and Turkey.
‘I like the way he’s handled Pulisic,’ said one fan. ‘Pulisic’s World Cup will shape our World Cup and I think he’ll respect the coach for straight-talking,’ observed another. ‘I guess you’d say the expectations are crazy and he knows what elite soccer looks like. He’s sat in those changing rooms. He has seen all the madness.’
Mauricio Pochettino has earned respect in the USA with his no-nonsense approach
Madness which this week saw Pochettino being interviewed by Grover, of Sesame Street, who put it to him that the best possible food motivation for the players would be chocolate cake.
The former Tottenham and Paris Saint-Germain head coach appeared mildly amused by his bright blue puppet interlocuter but pivoted to a different kind of energy driving the team. ‘I think (our) massive inspiration is to make proud our fans, our families, the people that we love.’
His eloquence feels like an antidote to the daily utterances of president who has turned geopolitical conflict into the white noise of the reality TV show, though Pochettino also observes that there is a time for the talking to stop.
‘Now is the moment that they need prepare in an emotional and mental way,’ he said of his team. ‘”I think now they don’t need an external motivation or an inspirational speech. I think everyone knows how to be ready.’
