HARRISON, N.J. — In the wake of the U.S. men’s soccer team’s latest ugly loss, this time a 2-0 defeat to South Korea on Saturday, manager Mauricio Pochettino was happy.

He insisted he was pleased with the style of his side’s performance and even said at one point, “Overall, I think we were better than South Korea.” Never mind that most of the moments when the U.S. did play well came late in the second half, when it not only trailed but had changed formation after a raft of substitutes.

This was not what fans or the media wanted to hear. Nor did it match those outsiders’ eye tests, which especially were flunked by debutant centerback Tristan Blackmon — and by Christian Pulisic, the team’s biggest star.

“We conceded in a way that we should not concede,” Pochettino did admit at one point. “We were so passive in providing the space to score.”

Then he quickly brought the sunshine back, coincidentally just as the day’s second rainstorm arrived at the stadium.

“I am so pleased, if I put the result aside,” he said. “I am so pleased in the way that we are evolving from the Gold Cup [to] today, with different players, different rosters than the Gold Cup, but also players that start to understand what we expect from them. I think the attitude was great.”

Alas, attitude alone doesn’t score goals, nor keep them out against opponents like South Korea’s superstar forward Son Heung-Min. He scored the opener by dusting Blackmon, and Lee Dong-Gyeong scored the second as Blackmon stood frozen.

But it’s also true that, as sometimes happens with Pochettino, the most important thing he said wasn’t the most sensational.

His own history lesson

He was asked at what point he feels the results need to matter, not just the style or testing new players. He had a firm answer ready.

“We need to start to win when the World Cup starts,” he said. “Too many examples of teams that win during [prior] years and then arrive at the World Cup, and they don’t arrive in the best condition.”

Pochettino cited his own experience when he played for Argentina. From the end of the 1999 Copa América until the 2002 World Cup, the national team he played for went 20-2-5, including a 17-game unbeaten run from August 2000 through the last World Cup warmup game. The nation was jubilant as a team led by legends Gabriel Batistuta and Juan Sebastián Verón headed off to South Korea and Japan that summer.

What happened when they arrived? A 1-0 win over Nigeria, a 1-0 loss to archrival England, a 1-1 tie with Sweden and the first group-stage elimination from a World Cup in 40 years. Pochettino played every minute of those games, then played just once more for Argentina.

Coincidentally, at that same World Cup, the team that had finished dead last at the previous edition in 1998 arrived having lost its last game before arriving, one of four defeats to high-profile opponents in preparatory friendlies. And in the one game against a big opponent it did win, just under a month before the tournament started, it lost a starting defensive midfielder to a torn ACL.

The United States went on to make the quarterfinals.

That is indeed the counterargument to the public desire to win now. And there is no question, even for people who just want to feel good watching this team, that how it is when it arrives at next year’s World Cup indeed matters far more than right now.

But right now is not pretty, and that bears saying, too.

The players’ perspective

“I love the feeling of winning, so I would like to win games before the World Cup,” stalwart midfielder Tyler Adams said. “But I understand his thought process, and we talked about it in there [the locker room]. You could still have good performances and not necessarily get the result. But, yeah, I think at a certain time it’s important to have some results.”

Veteran centerback Tim Ream, whom Pochettino regularly picks as captain, concurred.

“Yeah, we want to win every game; yes, we’re disappointed when we lose,” he said. “But at the end of the day, the end goal is to win games in the World Cup. So that’s what we’re going to focus on while also continuing to to push the team forward and everybody forward and trying to make sure that we’re clicking and firing on all cylinders as we get closer and closer.”

Here’s something else that bears saying. Because the U.S. is a cohost of this World Cup, it’s been obvious for a long time that the team would only play friendlies while the rest of the world is playing qualifiers — games with real stakes.

Pochettino and U.S. Soccer’s staff could have scheduled a bunch of lesser teams for more easily-winnable games. Instead, they’ve built a seriously strong schedule: South Korea and Japan this month, Ecuador and Australia next month, and Paraguay (at Subaru Park) and Uruguay in November. All six teams are going to the World Cup, and all but Paraguay are in the top 25 of FIFA’s global rankings.

March will bring another opportunity, especially as teams start to scout U.S. cities for potential base camp sites.

“We want to challenge, and we want to play against teams like Korea, Japan — good teams,” Pochettino said. “We don’t want to go and play against teams that maybe are below us. … Maybe we are going to struggle to get the results at the moment, but I think we are going to learn more. And then the most important result is, we need to get the result in the World Cup.”

‘We have to believe’

Would the vibes be different if the U.S. was beating bad teams? You don’t have to be from Philadelphia — home of the thrill of victory and the agony of reading about it the next day — to know there would be complaints about not playing good teams.

“We’re a little short on some things, and we’re stuck with needing time so all those players can reach their peak,” Pochettino said. “The important thing we have to have is that at the start of the World Cup, we have all the best players we think should be on the roster in top condition.”

Does he really have that time, with nine months and seven games left before the World Cup squad is set? He thinks so, and asked fans to trust him.

“Hay que creer,” he said in his native Spanish, which roughly translates to: We have to believe.

Pochettino didn’t mean to channel America’s most famous fictional soccer coach, Ted Lasso, but it was hard to not notice. Will the mantra work for the nation’s most famous real soccer coach?

This time, the suspense isn’t helping.

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