Tim Weah says the U.S. men are trying to look and feel different at the 2026 World Cup, with Mauricio Pochettino pushing a South American edge the squad has not always shown. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Weah said it is “nice being on the other end and being the aggressor a bit” as the Americans prepare to open Group D against Paraguay.
That search for a harder edge lands now because the United States is days from its first World Cup match of the cycle, with Paraguay set for Friday night in Inglewood, Calif., at 9 p.m. EDT on Fox and Telemundo and streaming on Peacock and Tubi. It is the kind of opening the Americans have spent years trying to make count, at home, in front of their own crowd, in a tournament that will bring 74 matches and a bigger field than the one they have known before.
Weah’s comments fit a wider message from the team’s core. The United States has reached the World Cup quarterfinals only once since the inaugural 1930 tournament, when it finished third, and it has fallen in the Round of 16 in its last three appearances. The team even missed the 2018 tournament altogether, a reminder that the program’s ceiling and its floor have both been hard to pin down. Under Gregg Berhalter, the Americans scored three goals and allowed four at the 2022 World Cup, a modest return for a group that has spent years talking about lifting its standards.
Pochettino, hired in September 2024, two months after Berhalter left, has already tried to shift the tone. After a 2-1 friendly loss to Germany in Chicago, he said culture eats strategy for breakfast, a line that matched the mood Weah described on Wednesday. The U.S. have been 14-10-2 under the Argentine coach, and the question hanging over all of this is not whether the team sounds more forceful now, but whether that force shows up when the matches start counting.
Friday against Paraguay is the first test of that idea, with Australia and Turkey still to come in group play. The Americans do not need a slogan in Inglewood. They need a result that makes the new tone look less like a talking point and more like the start of something bigger.
