Tom Bogert

There were criticisms about either favoritism or it wasn't a competitive enough environment.

But what he did was built a locker room, built a team culture.

And then he got fired because that got stale.

And Marisa Pochettino has taken over a star head coach, somebody who has not managed an international level.

He's had some slip ups along the way to get here.

But his whole thing was, OK, yeah, you guys are all brothers now.

I don't care.

Everybody needs to fight and compete for their spot every single day in training, because even if you win it today, you got to go ahead and win it tomorrow.

So it's a lot of different versions of this team and a lot of things that are coming together.

But in terms of the locker room, the players themselves would say this is a brotherhood and we are as close as ever.

So if we're going to do real recency bias, it does feel better after they beat Senegal 3-2 in a friendly.

There was a lot of really good attacking patterns.

And for me, that was the biggest thing.

Under Pochettino, in the calendar year of 2025, they called up 71 players.

71.

71.

I don't understand.

I think that's too many.

I get that you're trying to get the lay of the land and understand the pool and give a lot of people chances.

And again, it's designed insecurity by this coaching staff that you can never feel comfortable that you have your spot.