US men's team shaken by weak home backing ahead of World Cup, HBO filmmaker says

LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — Most national football sides gain an edge when a major tournament comes to their own soil. For the United States, that pattern often runs the other way.

At last year's Gold Cup final, the Americans fell in a Houston venue where Mexico supporters filled most of the seats. In the semi-final at St Louis, Missouri, Guatemala's light-blue colours dominated the stands. Comparable turnouts marked the Copa America the US staged a year before.

Rand Getlin, a documentary maker who spoke to AFP, said that gap weighs heavily on players facing intense expectations as co-hosts of this summer's World Cup. "It devastates them. It hurts them. It makes them sad. They're disappointed in themselves for not giving fans more to cheer for," said Getlin, who spent the past four years embedded with the US team for an HBO series. "They're like, 'I want to go out and I want to do something spectacular with this men's national team at the World Cup, so we can change the way the sport is viewed in this country forever,'" he explained.

Getlin's five-part docuseries carries the title "U.S. Against the World." It follows several US stars, including Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie, from modest upbringings in a country once cool on football to breakthrough careers at Europe's leading clubs. The programme also covers Gregg Berhalter's dismissal and Mauricio Pochettino's appointment as head coach fewer than two years before the World Cup.

Pochettino, the Argentine who previously led Tottenham Hotspur, drew a sharp line between the passion of Guatemala's travelling support and the quieter US crowd. "That is the connection that we would like to see in the World Cup. That connection that makes you fly," said following the Gold Cup clash. "To see (Guatemala), how they fight, how the fans behave, that is an important thing that we need to learn in this country," he added.