FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. – Three days after serving as the spark for an attack-minded U.S. men's national team in a 3-2 friendly win over Senegal, Sergino Dest said his forward-thinking tendencies were an important function, but not the bulk of his role for the World Cup co-hosts.
"I think that I'm playing as a wingback and not as a winger, to be honest," he said Wednesday, minutes before Tim Ream shook his head and said something else entirely.
"Serg is a right winger," the USMNT's World Cup captain said. "In fact, we went over video and in some moments he was playing like a wingback but really should have been higher."
Ream's comments matched the eye test from Sunday's game, one in which the USMNT embraced a full-throttled attacking approach from start to finish. It is not exactly a surprise that Dest played more like an attacker than a defender, nor that head coach Mauricio Pochettino would want him to – the role complements the player's natural skillset, while this has been Pochettino's stylistic preference for the entirety of his coaching career. The game against Senegal was different for a handful of reasons, though. Pochettino's U.S. team have rarely been able to keep intensity levels high for the duration of a 90-minute match and perhaps more importantly, the USMNT are not historically an offense-focused team – nor have they brought the entertainment levels that match the approach.
It all came together on Sunday, though, 18 long months after Pochettino took charge of his first game. The embrace of his well-documented intense approach has been slow, not necessarily out of resistance, but because, Ream said, there is no shortcut to building the habits Pochettino and his staff demanded out of their players.
"There was a lot of learning. There was definitely a learning curve with what they were asking," Ream said. "They're asking for this intensity, right? And this aggression but then they're also asking us to learn their movements and their flexibility and their fluidity and it was hard to get those two to match up … Now you're mashing those two things, right? You can play with the intensity. With the fluidity and flexibility, you have to think. You have to use your brain and it was tough. I think in those early moments, to use your brain while physically, you were killing yourself because you wanted to be able to be a part of that group that is physically able to do it."
It all seemed to come off naturally for the USMNT against Senegal, even as Pochettino made 10 halftime changes and essentially asked an entirely new group to pick up from what their teammates had left off. That included Dest's role, the wide player in some ways the main character in a dominant first half. He would dart down the flank and essentially kick off a multipronged press from the U.S. team, rattling a rotated Senegal back line that conceded two goals in 20 minutes.
Ricardo Pepi ➡️ Christian Pulisic ➡️ Sergiño Dest USMNT take the lead over Senegal 💥 pic.twitter.com/aAW4bVV6Hi
— B/R Football (@brfootball) May 31, 2026
Pochettino's embrace of Dest's offensive capabilities, arguably his greatest attribute on the pitch, marks a tacit understanding that the USMNT's best players are their attack-minded ones. A quick glance at their roster reveals as much – he will have three in-form strikers to work with in Folarin Balogun, Ricardo Pepi and Haji Wright, while Christian Pulisic is back to his scoring ways after a standout showing against Senegal. Pochettino's reimagining of the U.S. team, though, is also the latest example of the coach's longstanding belief that there's a role for defenders to play in the process.
"You have a whole pitch, so sometimes when we start too high with the build-up or whatever," Dest said, "it's a waste because you can still use the part in behind to create space for somebody else in the field, and that's what I'm trying to do sometimes. If I can go low, try to create space for other ones."
Dest's relationship with Alex Freeman, who played right center back (or right back, depending on the Dest winger question) on Sunday but is more naturally a wingback type, exemplified Pochettino's approach.
"I think we have a good combination on the right side, he said. "I like to play with him as well. He's strong, he's tall, he's fast and a good defender and also we can switch sometimes so that makes it even better if I'm on that side because I can also go low and just change with him so it's harder for opponents to defend us because we're more dynamic."
Even if Dest and Ream disagree about the former's true responsibilities, the fact that Dest's role is not clearly defined is a feature of Pochettino's set-up rather than a bug.
"Sometimes we're defending in a four, building in a three, fluid movement," Ream said. "If they're playing [as] a fullback and they end up inside then someone needs to fill their position. It's so movement-based to unbalance teams.
"Depending on who's looking at it and when you're looking at it, it's going to look different at all points. We've worked on it so much that when we're all in the correct structure and the right positions, it looks easy and it's not. There's a lot of fluidity to it and you have to be focused and aware and know where your guys are going or where they're going to end up without really looking. I think we all saw as a right wing what Serg is capable of and other than the goal, [he] had some incredible moments in that game so it's good to have the flexibility with a lot of guys. I think that's part of having an expanded roster that you can bring guys who have so much more flexibility and can play multiple positions and that's going to be good for us going forward."
There are layers of dynamism to how Pochettino's teams play, the unique blend of tasks finally becoming habitual for a U.S. team hoping to impress on home soil in nine days' time.
"Now you're seeing guys who are physically in top, top condition and able to do it, and then they don't have to think about the movements," Ream said. "It just becomes automatic so I think we're at a point now where everybody feels good physically and everybody's not hands on their knees, like, 'Oh my gosh, this is a lot,' and that translates into, guys are just – I wouldn't say, on autopilot but guys know what's being required of them structurally and tactically and they have the physical ability to do all that and those two things have obviously come on over the past 12 months and put us in a really, really great position."
It was an ambitious plan from Pochettino, considering the cadence of international soccer – teams often meet for 10 days at a time weeks or months apart, doing what they can not to waste valuable time. Many of Pochettino's counterparts defer to a more pragmatic approach – ex-Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp once said France's 2018 World Cup-winning team defended like Burnley, the English side with a reputation for playing ultra defensively. It is the only way Pochettino has coached a team, though, and makes the U.S. team an intriguing stylistic competitor at a World Cup that may not have as many teams that plan to entertain like this one.
"Yes, there will be mistakes and sometimes we make the wrong decisions but it's about the collective reaction afterwards," Ream said. "Sometimes you make a decision that looks good in the moment and teams are able to jump on some of those but a lot of it is just communication … You can't sit there and say, 'I don't want to play that pass because I'm afraid that something's going to happen.' You have to try things in this game or else nothing's going to happen and it's just all going to look boring and safe."
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