{"id":725011,"date":"2026-06-25T11:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T11:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/725011\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T11:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T11:17:08","slug":"why-mauricio-pochettino-calls-this-midfielder-the-perfect-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/725011\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Mauricio Pochettino calls this midfielder the &#8216;perfect player&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"6F4TKJFMZNEMLM2HX5MB5KRLLU\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">IRVINE, Calif. \u2014 Cristian Roldan is not the face of the U.S. men\u2019s national team, not the midfielder around whom Mauricio Pochettino builds his best lineup, not the player casual fans tune in to see.<\/p>\n<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"LEMQXDPU4RCATMLKSO25XBMZSM\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">But on Thursday night, in a World Cup match that matters less in the standings than inside the U.S. locker room, Roldan will be exactly the kind of player Pochettino needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRVINE, Calif. \u2014 Cristian Roldan is not the face of the U.S. men\u2019s national team, not the midfielder&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-725011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}