Portugal Sends the USMNT Home From Atlanta With More Questions Than Answers
Better, But Still Not Good Enough
Three days after the 5-2 disaster against Belgium, Mauricio Pochettino made ten changes to his starting lineup and sent his team back out onto the Mercedes-Benz Stadium turf to face sixth-ranked Portugal. The United States was more organized. Matt Freese replaced Matt Turner in goal and was excellent, making multiple saves that kept the score from getting away. The defensive shape was more coherent. Christian Pulisic was deployed as a false nine rather than a wide attacker. And for 37 minutes, the match was level.
Then Francisco Trincão received a Bruno Fernandes backheel through the American backline and finished clinically for the opening goal. The United States spent the rest of the match trying to claw back and never could. João Félix added a second in the 59th minute after a perfectly taken left-footed strike that Freese had no chance on. Final score: Portugal 2, United States 0. The USMNT finished the March window 0-2, outscored 7-2 by two European nations, and headed home with a long list of questions and two months to answer them.
The Pulisic False Nine Experiment
Pochettino’s decision to play Pulisic as a false nine was one of the most discussed tactical choices of the March window. The idea was sound: Pulisic’s intelligence and movement between lines can create problems for defenses, and playing him centrally removes the marking pressure that comes with his usual wide role. The execution was more complicated. Pulisic had two genuine scoring opportunities and failed to convert both, continuing a goal drought for the national team dating back to November 2024.
Pulisic was characteristically honest afterward. He acknowledged the missed chances, took responsibility for the results, and insisted that the team was closer to the level it needed to be than the scorelines suggested. “We caused the teams a lot of problems,” he said. “It’s just the same story, but I feel we’re really close.” The core of that statement — that the USMNT is creating situations but not converting them — has been the defining tension of the entire Pochettino era.
Freese Makes His Case
The clearest positive from the Portugal match was Matt Freese. Starting in place of Turner after the Belgium performance, Freese was decisive in a way that made the goalkeeper conversation genuinely interesting. He was beaten twice — once by a pure quality play from Trincão and once by Félix’s corner-finding left foot — but his overall performance was notably composed. His reading of the game, his handling of crosses, and his communication with the defense all looked sharper than what Turner had shown three days earlier. The debate is no longer theoretical.
The Broader March Assessment
The USMNT was outscored 22-6 during their eight-match losing streak against European opponents heading into this window. Belgium and Portugal extended it to ten losses against European nations since 2021. Jürgen Klinsmann, who coached the 2014 World Cup team that drew with Portugal and lost to Belgium in the round of 16, was among the voices urging perspective. The March window was always designed to test the team against top-class opposition, not to produce confidence. The concern isn’t losing to Belgium and Portugal. The concern is whether the structural problems those matches exposed can be corrected in the time remaining.
Why This Matters for the USMNT Going Forward
The March window closed with a significant amount of work still to do. The goalkeeper decision is genuinely open. The defensive shape in the second half of difficult matches is a documented problem. And Pulisic’s form in front of goal at the national team level needs to turn around before June. Two more friendlies remain — Senegal on May 31 and Germany on June 6 — before the World Cup begins on June 12. The Portugal loss is not a death sentence. It’s a set of problems that Pochettino has roughly eight weeks to solve. His record suggests he’ll have answers. The World Cup is when we’ll find out if those answers are right.