Four weeks of togetherness built the USMNT Mauricio Pochettino always intended to deliver

"He was a game changer. He was very demanding, but in the right way," Pochettino's Spurs goalkeeper Hugo Lloris told ESPN. "He wanted us to play with intensity. We used to train so hard so then games would feel easier. We would press so much, recovering the ball so high to attack straight away."

That kind of training pays dividends in the world of club soccer, where coaches and players have the benefit of working together each day—but it loses its luster on the quick-moving international circuit. Eight days simply isn't enough to bring a disparate group of players up to Pochettino's required fitness level, and while he can encourage them to train in certain ways while they're away from the national team, he does so with the knowledge that the demands of their clubs will always come first.

The USMNT players agree that Pochettino's methods are the key to their success at this tournament. 

"The coach has brought in here to give us structure, foundation and identity, and I think you're seeing that," striker Folarin Balogun said. "I thought the press against Australia was really aggressive, was really good. We forced them to go long ,which allowed us to have opportunities and dominate possession. That's credit to the coach."

Rest where it counts

This extended World Cup camp has given Pochettino time to coach, but crucially, it's also given overworked players time to rest. The expanded tournament size gives teams six to seven days between competitive fixtures. Traditional national team sprints (and traditional World Cups) only allow for three to four days of rest between matches.

"I absolutely love it," Tyler Adams said of the change. "Your body feels it, obviously, a little bit more coming in from the end of a season and into a World Cup where there's so much emotion, so much adrenaline, all these things. So yeah, it's nice."

Adams wasn't alone in that opinion.

"You're able to actually game plan games, whereas in Qatar, you weren't really able to do that," agreed Brenden Aaronson. "I think that's the biggest part of it. And I think that's going to help us throughout this time."

Time and rest—it's the simplest formula of all, but it's the formula that's turning the USMNT into a World Cup dark horse.

The USMNT will close out its group stage against Turkiye on Thursday, Jun. 23 in Inglewood, CA having already secured the top spot in Group D.

All quotations obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.