USMNT's Chris Richards Details ‘Overly American' Approach to World Cup
The United States men’s national team fielded the best performance of any USMNT at a World Cup when they destroyed Paraguay 4-1 in their 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup opener on June 12.
One week later, the USMNT got an impressive 2-0 result over Australia, but with a totally different tactical approach than how they beat Paraguay - underscoring that this team has the depth and talent to go further than any USMNT has gone before at the World Cup.
Mauricio Pochettino is the maestro of it all, and his players are pulling back the curtain on the tone Pochettino has set behind closed doors.
Last week, midfielder Sebastian Berhalter told reporters, “We’re American. We don’t take [expletive]. That’s something he really drilled into us.”
Defender Chris Richards took it one step further while appearing on “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” on Monday.
“One thing that we’ve kind of embraced as a squad recently is that we need to be overly American,” Richards said. “We need and we want to show the world what it is to be American. We’re gonna go out there, and we’re gonna give 150%, especially playing on home soil. This is something that we want to be able to not just do for ourselves, but also do for the next generation.”
“For us, we’re going out there, we want to give people performances to be happy about and be excited about, but also, we understand that this is a chance for us to get some silverware,” Richards continued. “We’re going into these games, and we’re suffocating people. We’re making sure that we’re leaving in hard tackles, whatever the case is, but also we’re outplaying people.”
Richards, in particular, is outplaying everyone.
The Crystal Palace star has completed 175 of 179 (97.8%) of his passes, per OptaJoe, which is the second-best accuracy of any player on record in his first two World Cup appearances since 1966. The back line has been identified as the weak spot of this USMNT, so it’s not hyperbole to say Richards is the biggest X-factor moving forward.
The USMNT has already won Group D and await a third-place group finisher in the knockout stage.
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This story was originally published June 22, 2026 at 5:38 PM.