MAURICIO'S AMERICA GETS VERY AMBITIOUS

Pochettino has the pressure of his USA hosting next year’s World Cup and Trump asking if they can win it

- JOHN CROSS

FORMER Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino is already under pressure from the most powerful man on the planet.

United States president Donald Trump met FIFA supremo Gianni Infantino in the Oval Office earlier this month (right) and immediately asked: “Can America win the World Cup next year?”

The stakes are clearly a lot higher for the boss of the American national team than they were during his days as Spurs and Chelsea gaffer, as he readily acknowledges. Pochettino laughed: “I was listening to a conversation between Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino. The President asked: ‘Can we win the World Cup?’ And Gianni said yes. But I was disappointed with this answer. He should have said: ‘You need to ask your great coach, Pochettino, because he will give a better opinion.’

“The pressure is going to be there because we are a host nation. And it's a country where the mentality is about winning. You know in sport, in everything that Americans are involved in, they want to win. That is the culture. Of course there's going to be pressure but a welcome pressure. It means that we are going to feel the adrenaline we need to feel.”