{"id":759559,"date":"2026-06-25T14:59:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/759559\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T14:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:59:12","slug":"world-cup-2026-do-scotland-deserve-to-go-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/759559\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Do Scotland deserve to go through?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Pochettino has transformed a nationpublished at 14:15 BST<\/p>\n

14:15 BST<\/p>\n

Turkey v USA (Fri, 03:00 BST)<\/p>\n

\"\"Gary Rose
BBC Sport journalist in Los Angeles<\/p>\n

\"MaurcioImage source, Getty Images<\/p>\n

In the minutes after the USA’s 2-0 win against Australia in their second Group D match in Seattle last week, Mauricio Pochettino had to pause during a pitchside interview as the American fans loudly serenaded him.<\/p>\n

Before the tournament, there seemed an uncertainty of feeling towards the Argentine coach, particularly as his commitment to the national team only went to the end of this World Cup.<\/p>\n

But with the USA’s win over Australia following a 4-1 victory over Paraguay, he now seems to have near-universal backing, having built a team mixing exciting young talent with established performers in Europe’s top leagues – one who look capable of upsetting the odds in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Pochettino has brought belief and aggression, having worked hard to shed the mentality that the USA are World Cup underdogs.<\/p>\n

On the walls inside the 54-year-old’s makeshift office at the team’s hotel are the words “why not us?” along with other quotes such as “believe, work, compete” and “now is our time!”<\/p>\n

That mindset is clear in the players and in their two games so far they have played with swagger.<\/p>\n

“I think he brings that South American spirit that we’ve been missing,” USA forward Tim Weah said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve always been the good guys, so now it’s kind of nice being on the other end and being the aggressor a bit. It’s fun. Coach Poch is an amazing coach.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How Pochettino has transformed a nationpublished at 14:15 BST 14:15 BST Turkey v USA (Fri, 03:00 BST) Gary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-759559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}