WASHINGTON — Friday’s World Cup draw couldn’t have gone much better for U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino. In a star-studded two-hour ceremony held at the Kennedy Center, Americans were grouped with Paraguay and Australia, teams they beat in the last two months, along with the winner of a European playoff featuring Turkey, Romania, Slovakia and Kosovo.
“We’ve already done the homework because it’s fresh,” Pochettino said. “We know them but they know us. The most important thing is evolution and improving in all the areas for us to be sure that, in our debut, we will be stronger than today.