Intensity Needs to Be the Identity of This USMNT
- Madison Crews
- 14 hours ago
- 5 min read
Intensity is the defining term for this USMNT.
You don’t have to look far to understand what that means. You can feel it in the moments that have come to define this group.
There’s Diego Luna, January 2025, against Costa Rica. A broken nose early in the match. He stays on the field anyway, gets it reset, keeps playing, and still finds a way to deliver an assist.
Then there’s Weston McKennie in Las Vegas, June 2023. The shirt ripped, the moment boiling over in a rivalry that never lacks edge. USA vs. Mexico, 3-0. But what most people remember about that match isn’t just the scoreline. It’s the moment when Weston pulls that ripped kit and kisses the badge.
And more recently, the chaos against Paraguay in 2025. A match that spilled over in stoppage time: shoving, benches clearing, bodies everywhere. It started as a battle for the ball and turned into something else entirely.
These aren’t just isolated incidents. They’re snapshots of identity. They show a team that, at its best, doesn’t just play the game. It feels it. A team that competes with an edge, that refuses to back down, that understands that at the international level, intensity gives the USMNT its best chance to win.
You saw it in a match like France vs. Colombia on Sunday. Colombia was down 3-0, but it wasn’t going to let a top side in France find another. In fact, it was able to pull one back to make it 3-1 by the final whistle. Mauricio Pochettino took the time to highlight this match because of the intensity: the fight to every ball, every duel, and every run. That’s the standard Mauricio Pochettino keeps pointing to.
Sometimes we confuse intensity with mentality. They go hand in hand at times, but they are different. Both can help the other grow.
“You can put whatever tactics out there, but the guys will go out there and show you if they’re going to do it. You can only go so far. I think mentality is probably the number one thing,” Chris Richards said Monday. “I think that’s something Mauricio has also stressed to us. He can put whoever out there on the pitch, but you have to go out there and perform. I think mentality is the number one thing that can get you wins.”
Mentality shows up in moments most people don’t track.
It’s the second sprint after the first one burns your lungs. It’s closing down a passing lane in the 78th minute when your legs are gone. It’s deciding to go again.
Against Belgium, the flashes were there. In stretches, the U.S. pressed, connected, created. You could see what this group can be. But then the drop came. The intensity didn’t just dip, it disappeared in moments that mattered. And that’s the difference.
As Tim Ream put it, it’s not about effort once. It’s about effort again. And again. And again.
“It’s a decision. It’s a conscious decision. It’s an overall effort. It’s not that guys don’t want to do it. I think sometimes it’s that we’ve just made one effort, and now it’s about making another one. It’s about making not just the first, but the second, the third, the fourth, and sometimes that doesn’t happen,” Ream said Monday before the Portugal match. “That’s just, again, something that is a non-negotiable, really. It’s something that we were doing really well in the fall of last year, and it’s something we have to get back to.”
That’s the non-negotiable.
And for Pochettino, this isn’t a new idea. Back in 2017, after Tottenham Hotspur’s 2-0 win over Chelsea, he said it clearly:
“If we want to fight until the end of the season for big things, for trophies, you need to keep that intensity. That is always the challenge.”
From Southampton to Tottenham, and now with the USMNT, the demand hasn’t changed. Intensity is the foundation.
Pochettino’s message cuts deeper than just running harder. It’s about habit.
You don’t arrive at a World Cup and suddenly become intense. You don’t flip a switch because the lights are brighter. If you haven’t lived that edge, if you haven’t built that identity, then when the moment comes, it won’t be there.
“I think we can’t arrive with the wrong idea of that: ‘We are so good, we are so handsome, we are so well dressed, and we are Americans.’ It is good to feel that,” Pochettino said after the loss to Belgium. “But if we want to win the World Cup, if we want to go to the next stage in the group, and we want to beat Paraguay and this type of team, do you think they are not going to fight?” “But today, I think it’s about... I was listening to some comments from different games, and always after the games when the team wins, it’s because we fight, we were aggressive, we were intense...”
There is a lot of talent within this group. There are moments where the U.S. looks like it can control games, dictate tempo, and break teams down. This is the most depth we have seen from the USMNT, but none of that survives without intensity.
Not against teams that will fight for every inch. Not against teams that treat every friendly like survival. Not against teams that don’t need reminding of what’s at stake. It’s about a decision. Every action. Every phase. Every match.
The foundation is there. The standard has been made clear by Mauricio Pochettino. The voices in the locker room, from Chris Richards to Tim Ream, understand what it takes.
If this group can turn intensity from 30-minute flashes into a full 90 minutes, then everything else starts to fall into place.
When the intensity is right, you don’t just compete. You control games. You dictate terms. You become the team others have to match.
As the USMNT enters this match against Portugal and even heads into the World Cup, there will be opponents that might have more technical talent than the U.S. But where the U.S. can win matches and make life harder is by being the most intense and hardest-working team in the tournament.
Paraguay's manager Gustavo Alfaro said postgame after that 2-1 loss back in November that they lost because they couldn't match the US in intensity.
That is how every team needs to feel after they play the US in 2026.