{"id":9085,"date":"2026-03-28T23:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T23:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/9085\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T23:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T23:15:09","slug":"grading-usmnt-coach-mauricio-pochettino-after-5-2-loss-to-belgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/9085\/","title":{"rendered":"Grading USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino after 5-2 loss to Belgium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros of The Cooligans give USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino a grade after the United States 5-2 loss to Belgium. Check out the full conversation on the \u201cThe Cooligans\u201d podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, or wherever you listen.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Video Transcript<\/p>\n

L- let’s, let’s give Pochettino a grade.<\/p>\n

P- please in the chat, go for it, let us know what you think, h- how he did.<\/p>\n

You want to give a letter grade- I- or you wanna give a score?<\/p>\n

I’ll let you decide.<\/p>\n

Like a play- like players.<\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

Let’s have a one to 10.<\/p>\n

Overall or just this game?<\/p>\n

Oh, th- just this game, just this game.<\/p>\n

Just this game, I’m gonna say it was a 7.5.<\/p>\n

7?<\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

The reason it gets a seven is because I think the first 30 minutes was so impressive against a team like Belgium.<\/p>\n

I was like, man, he really got this team put together.<\/p>\n

After that, it collapsed.<\/p>\n

We did get a goal back.<\/p>\n

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I don’t really care so much about that, but he made a lot of changes and at that point he’s just trying stuff.<\/p>\n

He just wants to see what these players can do.<\/p>\n

It’s, but so- If anyone can be a game changer okay.<\/p>\n

I, I d- I agree that that’s what he did, but the I, I didn’t enjoy the, I, I felt like I saw d- drastically less effort and heart in that, in especially that, the beginning of that second half, those first, I don’t know, 30 minutes of that second half.<\/p>\n

so I’m gonna, I’m gonna go with like, I’m gonna go with 4.8 because- Damn I did not love- Is that half of mine?<\/p>\n

I’m gonna go with, the, just the fact that I, I, like I mentioned earlier, like, I didn’t love the body language.<\/p>\n

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I didn’t love the- What, do you work for L’Equipe?<\/p>\n

This 4.8 is tough.<\/p>\n

Yeah, but seven is cr- what, 7.5 you said?<\/p>\n

Five, but you could’ve said five.<\/p>\n

Way too high.<\/p>\n

You could’ve said six.<\/p>\n

Bro, I’m just, I, I, I’m, I’m I wanna throw in the four in there just to show I’m s- Damn I mean business, okay?<\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

I’m the tough one.<\/p>\n

Okay.<\/p>\n

The, it, it, it- Someone said, “Alexis is smoking crack.”<\/p>\n

You see?<\/p>\n

There must be c- crack in this studio.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how it got in here.<\/p>\n

Damn.<\/p>\n

yeah.<\/p>\n

Th- this is a, Oh, Ben Skolnick said, “Alexis is using the Dave Portnoy pizza scale of scoring.”<\/p>\n

How dare you disrespect him like that?<\/p>\n

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That’s a- How dare you?<\/p>\n

Ben- That’s the one way to offend Alexis, I promise.<\/p>\n

I j- I just, very quickly, Ben Skolnick did say something, and this is important.<\/p>\n

“Fun fact, the last win Blangola had in international competition was Belaguay.”<\/p>\n

Which is I mean- Shout out we all remember, it was iconic.<\/p>\n

Salud all my Blangolans out there, yo.<\/p>\n

You gotta be a, a Cooligans OG- Yeah to know about Blangola.<\/p>\n

You gotta listen to some old episodes, join the Patreon, do whatever you gotta do.<\/p>\n

so- Pete Morton said, “The Cooligans may have to start a urinalysis program.”<\/p>\n

I think, I don’t think, I don’t, I don’t wanna, maybe 7.6 is a little bit too much.<\/p>\n

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4.8’s way too harsh.<\/p>\n

I don’t think it was good, but you gotta give credit to the first 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

I don’t love, and somebody said this, I forget who, so I apologize, for forgetting who, but they said, “Tim Weah right back is not the Tim Weah I wanna see.”<\/p>\n

And as much as I have confidence that Tim Weah could play that role if he was asked to be a right wing back, asking him to be a right back, you need that wing part, bro.<\/p>\n

This is too much.<\/p>\n

I think it’s just too much for him, not to say that he doesn’t have the skill set to do it.<\/p>\n

It’s just not the best version of Tim Weah we’re gonna get.<\/p>\n

Close<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros of The Cooligans give USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino a grade after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6249,6251,7,6250,6254,4525,4529,6252],"class_list":{"0":"post-9085","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-belgium","8":"tag-alexis-guerreros","9":"tag-apple-podcasts","10":"tag-belgium","11":"tag-christian-polanco","12":"tag-head-coach","13":"tag-mauricio-pochettino","14":"tag-usmnt","15":"tag-youtube"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116309349024821919","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}