Clint Dempsey on USMNT's Upcoming Match Against Australia: The Deuce, Presented by Allstate 06/17/26

0:00For nearly two decades, almost as long as Tim Ream has been in the US Men's National Team, Allstate has backed the growth of this game in every corner of this great footballing nation. From grassroots pitches to the biggest stages, they've been here, believing in it, protecting its future, because supporting soccer, it's not just about match days. And that's why Allstate offers affordable coverage at personalised rates, so you can spend less time worrying and more time watching. Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. Visit allstate.com or call a local agent today. Allstate, you're in good hands.

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2:48we're charging towards the united states ecstatic showdown with australia world cup game two electric boogaloo and we're still giddy from the sheer euphoria of that 4-1 win over paraguay u.s men's national team blowing up in a scale only known to spacex stock options Friday's game cannot come quick enough but the Aussies they're spicy and joining me to preview all is a man who's been there done that the best assassin the all-time leading goal scorer for your U.S. men's national team back for the juice presented by Allstate it's a majestic king Clint Dempsey. What's up Raj how you doing brother?

3:27Oh we're in it Clint we are we are in it to win it We're in. It's a winner, brother. You know what? That has never been truer. And we're going to break it all down in this episode of The Juice, made possible by our friends at Allstate. So proud to be teaming up with a brand that's so committed to growing the game we adore. Clint, what a difference a week makes. Everyone in America feels like they're suddenly buzzing about the men's football team. A week ago, not a lot of people cared. And now the vibes are so high. every single christian policy cad during the hydration break just hits a little bit harder a little brighter a little louder um ultimately it feels so good right now that's how this game is and that's why i love it um if you're going through a bad spell it just takes one game one goal to get you back on track so and we've been waiting for this for so long right and talking about the preparation and how it's going to go and what was our confidence levels going in and And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

4:28It matters how you do on the biggest stage. And when they got that opportunity, what a performance they put in against Paraguay, the way they pressed them, the number of stars that stepped up and played, and the way in which they played was truly impressive. And that's what kind of galvanized this fan base behind them, right, becoming that 12th man and really looking forward to going to Seattle, you know, and they're going to represent their march to the madness, the passion that the Pacific Northwest has. So I can't wait to go there, experience that. And I know it's going to be a tough game versus Australia, but I'm excited to watch and see how this chess match plays out.

5:04I'm in Seattle now and the town is buzzing. I love living in this America. Full of tweets like this from Catholic Enger, who tweeted, co-worker just tried to schedule a meeting for Friday, 3 p.m. Eastern time, the exact moment the U.S. and Australia kick off. are reported him to human resources. That's the America we all want to live in, right, Clint? Yes, sir. I mean, that's what it's all about, right? That's what the World Cup is. I mean, where the world stops still for the game. And if you want the game to grow, you look to other countries that do the same and look no further than, for example, Brazil.

5:42You know when a game is on, nobody's working. Everybody's tuned in, watching it on their TV sets, listened to on the radio or at the stadium trying to watch the game. So if you want to be a soccer nation, that's what you got to do. Or if you just want to be a nation of day drinkers who have an excuse to cut work. Either way, just get stuck in. Let's break this down. Starting with the big issue, Christian Pulisic soared against Paraguay, hurt them at will, and then limped off at halftime. With a niggle, let's just say, he got a kick in the calf. He's trained separately from the rest of the crew in Irving.

6:18but he is expected according to every briefing to be ready for Friday. Can you give us a sense of how concerned we should be that he's training away from everybody and what that actually means? Because Tyler Adams said yesterday, quote, everyone, let's relax. And I'm like, Tyler, how am I meant to be relaxed about this, man? Yeah, I mean, if you watch the game and you see the sideline reporting, I think it was Jenny Taft that had said that he pointed to his family, said that he was good, said that he was fine. So that was good to hear those type of things. But going back to what you're saying in regards to training on your own, normally that means it's a little bit more than what you would think in the sense of, look, if you were really close to being back into training, you'd be training as a neutral.

7:04You wouldn't really necessarily be on your own. That's kind of what I'm reading into what I'm hearing from this situation. Maybe they're just being cautious. Maybe he's being really professional. Know that he's fit enough and just need to make sure that he's 100 % for the game. Don't want to risk taking anything. But normally, the closer you are to full fitness, you're at least back in with the team and being a neutral. So hopefully that changes in the next day or so because we're running out of time before the game. But I think he'll be ready to go. I'm not going to be too worried. I'm not going to try to read too much into it and hope that we'll have all our best players out there.

7:39Going to channel the Clint Dempsey spirit, not the Roger Bennett negativity. Mauricio Pochettino, though, he will remember we played Australia in a friendly last October. Yes, we won 2-1, but Australia really singled out Christian Pulisic. They gave him a really good kicking. It was Jason Guerrier gave him such a slap that Christian had to leave the game. I think the hamstring injury subsequently kept him out for a couple of weeks on the club level. What do you do in those situations? We've got a tender calf. They're going to target him. It's what they do. It's how they play part of the game. It's kind of one of those moments that you wish that football had the NHL hockey enforcer tradition.

8:19I mean, look, you're going to play the game how you always play. You're always going to have contact. And if you're a good player, you're going to get kicked. I mean, watch Doku, how he played in the last game and how many times he was being tackled against Egypt. So it's just part of the game. You just have to pick and choose your moments, when to be on the ball, when to kind of give it and get it back. But I'm not worried. I think he'll be ready to go. And look, it's just part of the game. Sebastian Berhalter today was asked about it directly and asked, what's Mauricio Pochettino's message pen in a game where a team are going to get physical?

8:58And he said, we're American. We don't take crap. It's something he's really drilled into us. I bet you like that. I don't matter where you're from. If someone's going to step to you, if you've got something about yourself, you're going to step back, right? And if you get knocked down, if there's something about you, you're going to get back up and keep going. So, look, I'm proud of where I'm from, but I think there's a lot of people who are passionate about where they're from. And I think it's more of a mentality thing of are you going to stand 10 toes down or not? And the way I grew up, you don't get respect unless you have a little bit more about yourself and have that fight, have a little bite back reaction.

9:36when you get knocked down, get up. I mean, it's the only way that you're going to survive is to have that type of mentality. Amen, Clint Dempsey. Let's talk about Flo Baligan, the sudden star who's born. A striker who scores real goals confidently, two against Paraguay. I'm really interested to know what you think will be going through his head right now because his goals were so emphatic. You've scored goals in the World Cup, Clint, three of them, 06, 010, 014. first American to accomplish that feat on the men's side. How will Balogun be feeling? Will he feel invincible? Well, what's the afterglow like?

10:13Or will there be a pressure on psychologically in his head because he feels, God, I've got to go again? No, I think he'll be on cloud nine. I mean, this is what you want, to step up in big occasions. And he's already done that. No matter what, you can't say that he hasn't shown up for this World Cup. I think the real thing for him is to stay hungry, right? to get more, to add more goals, and really put his stamp on this World Cup. He's been able to score two like I did in 2014. I hope he goes on to score even more. And my message is to stay hungry, keep doing what you're doing. And when we talked about strikers and who you would choose, Bolligan's always been the man that I picked because of his ability to create goals for himself, for others, with both feet, get on the end of things.

11:02I just think he's flying right now and long may it continue. And a large part of that is also his club form and how well he played at Monaco this year. You know, when bands have a hit debut album and then everyone talks about how there's a difficult second album when the spotlight's on them, can they perform again? Does that happen at all? That you're mentally surging in one game and then you have this huge period of time off between games and you just start to, it transforms into pressure to do it again. knowing that your opponent, in this case Australia, are going to have all that gold tape on you.

11:35Yeah, I mean, it's going to be difficult trying to break down Australia and the way in which they played against Turkey. It was truly impressive, the fight that they had, the togetherness that they had, and also their ability and speed to break on the counter and be so effective with the chance that they had. But, you know, if you're balling, it's just stay hungry, keep being dangerous and getting your chances and try to keep feeding off of that good vibe, that wave that you're riding now of getting two goals now in the World Cup and going on to really set your mark and separate yourself from other American players that have been in this competition or to the top stars that are out there for other countries because this is a great place to, if you want to play for a huge club, you have a big tournament, nothing against Monaco, but maybe a bigger move is on the horizon.

12:25Who is to say? But yeah, I'm looking forward to see how they deal with that test of playing against Australia and be interesting to see when they're in a low block, the ideas that we come up with to break them down. Yeah, I'm going to pick up on Australia in a minute because I agree with you. I think they are going to be quite an opponent for us tactically to really try and think our way through. But I'm also interested in the mental side of this game, the mental focus. The four-world win against Paraguay, it was euphoric. It was like such a relief, such a release. But before I get to the question, just give us a baseline.

13:02Just describe, Clint, you've lived it. How boring can a World Cup camp be? You know, 26 guys living together, some pretty different personalities. It's kind of like Love Island, but with just one gender. You've got the stress of the outside world. You've got the training, a lot of boredom, a lot of hours that need to be killed. um you know a little bit of xbox a little bit of movie a little bit of game film meals a lot of time to kill and think really isn't that yeah i mean i think you got to catch 22 here right i mean in world cups past you didn't have as many days to wait to get to the next game so they were coming quick and fast and it wasn't as much downtime that you would have now with the six days that you have to wait it allows you to recover better to be more at your best but to your point a lot more downtime.

13:51But I think it only adds to the way that we play to have more days of rest and to have these hydration breaks because it looks like we are going to press our opponents and we're going to counter press when we lose the ball and be really aggressive. So it's almost like you got to play these games in quarters, right? Every 20 minutes, you know you're going to be able to get a break. So manage it in that way. So it'd be interesting to see how it plays out if we continue in that fashion. But I think because of having more days to rest, which are going to allow us to perform better, it makes for those longer days and maybe being a little bit bored because it kind of stretches out the tournament.

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15:52I mean, this is such a crazy unknown. The six days between these games, I'm sure for the players, it feels endless. You know, the boys are doing interviews. They know they're cementing a place in the wider US sporting consciousness for the first time in a long time. They're going on television shows, many of whom know nothing about football, make it feel like the boys are getting and win the World Cup. They've had a week to just think about this game. Pochettino brought it up himself. He said the performance was really good, but it's one game, only one game. We need to keep improving. We need to know it's going to be a journey.

16:26It's going to be really difficult. He knows that Dreamland win in the Paraguay game can actually create a breaking concentration and focus. When you say they need to stay hungry, how do you do that? I mean, just don't get too high, don't get too low. Even if our fan base is really excited and really passionate, I mean, you still got to think like Kobe Bryant. Job's not done. We need to make sure that we win the group because we want to give ourselves the best pathway possible to go as far as we can in the tournament. But what I will say, it's easier to have six days to recover after a win than it is to be, you know, after a loss, to be stressing or after a tie like Spain versus Cape Verde.

17:08because it's like all that pressure is on you and you have to talk about answer all these questions about what's kind of going wrong really it's things are going right but job's not done Australia is not going to be an easy opponent let's figure out how we're going to break them down if they are in a low block let's figure out how we're going to deal with counterattacking situations and also we got to figure out if they change up how they play how we're going to deal with some of those issues as well because in any fight you really don't know how teams are going to do until they do it right so you don't know if things will be a little bit different will things be the same you just try to prepare for as much as you can but you need to be hungry and you need to make sure that you do whatever you can because you've never been in a better position than right now to win the group because of your goal differential because of the way in which you played the fan base that you have behind you now but the job's not done you still you still got these next two games and I agree with you what you said the Australians are a bloody good football team watching them dismantle the favorite in the group Turkey they clipped them 2-0 Saturday night they were superb they were organized they were disciplined they were compact but above all their mindset they were fearless they seemed to really delight in frustrating the Turks and then picking them off in transition.

18:27It was an incredible game plan. Yeah, I was really impressed with the way that they approached that game, how hard they fought for each other. I mean, it was almost like you couldn't even get crosses off. They were blocking everything. They were clearing everything. The coach made a lot of big decisions in terms of personnel. I mean, going with a younger goalie who stood on his head in that game, got the clean sheet, but it was a group effort for everybody. And then the way in which they tacked and really went for it and made the most of those opportunities. They were lethal in front of goals.

18:57So look, hats off to them. They are going to be a tough team. It is going to be a tough challenge, but it's what it's all about. Playing these tough games and figuring out who you are as a team, and it's going to be another big test. But I tell you what, if they get a good result against Australia, we'll be in the driver's seat and we'll have a lot more answers of what this team's all about. I agree. I mean, I'm flashing this out now because I know Mauricio Pochettino listens to the pod. I think the Australian counter-attack can be a problem. I mean, they've got these two incredible stories, beautiful stories, a pair of refugee-born English-based forwards, Mohamed Toure, Nestoria and Kunda.

19:35Both of their paces freeze fast. I'll say the prospect of them running at Tim Ream is not great. They've got this physical, robust team with a selective press, and that press punished Turkey again and again. How do we break past that press? I mean, it's just to come up with a lot of different type of ideas. I mean, when we played against Paraguay, from my point of view, they didn't know what kind of block they wanted to be in. It was almost like a mid-block, which allowed us to get the ball into the channels and kind of deep runs from our midfield. If Australia sits in a low block, then it's going to be how quickly you're moving the ball and taking advantage of those opportunities of space that you create through that fast movement.

20:18Maybe beating a player 1v1 on the dribble, then someone having to step to you and slide in someone else. Or, you know, whipping balls in when they're facing their own goal, causing problems like what you saw in the way in which Belgium scored the own goal, whipping across where the defenders were facing their own goal. So stuff like that, quick movements, quick triangle passes, because if you play slow and in front of them, they showed us against Turkey that they're going to be difficult and they're not going to give up. And the longer that the game goes on, the more that they're going to believe that they can continue getting the job done.

20:53So if you get chances early, you need to put them away. Obviously, it's easier said than done. But if you get a goal early, it really opens up this game and then possibly changes the way that Australia might want to attack the rest of this game. That early goal would be so sweet. But also, the opposite is true. The longer Australia frustrates us, the more that pressure, those questions will be placed in our own heads. Look, before the game, this is a wild one. Colin Oglu, the Turkish captain, made the voluntary mistake. He wrote off the Australians. He talked about the skill gap, how he expected Turkey.

21:28I can't believe he said this. He expected Turkey to deliver, quote, a dominant win. The Australians said afterwards they were delighted to stick his words down his throat and turn them into ashes in his mouth. I mention this, Clint, because there's a couple of American pundits who've also talked about this clash. CBS analyst Mike Greller called the game a, quote, layup when it was announced. And then the Australian coach, Tony Popovich, said he was satisfied with the group Landon Donovan, took offense, called Pocovic, smug. And this is an incredible line. He said, you can get back on the Qantas airplane and head back home, pal.

22:08Alexi Lala said, Australia are, quote, an average team by any measure and certainly not a great team. I'm only reading these out because they are all three quotes all over the Australian press that media have feasted on us talking in this way that locker board material you understand how locker board material works yeah for sure i'm saying nice things about australia a because i think they're good and because i fear joining landon and alexi and grella on the on the locker board but can you talk as a footballer what does it feel like when the nation pisses you off well first of all when people do those type of things it's not really doing the u.s team any favors right but at the saying, Tom, it's not like the U.S.

22:52players are saying these type of things. These are just other people having opinions about the game that have nothing to do with it in terms of they're not going to be on the field and they're not going to be playing the game. So as long as the U.S. team is focused, that's my main concern. And as long as they know that this is going to be a tough challenge and are going about this in the right way, that's all I'm truly worried about. And I agree with you. The Australian side is going to be a tough side and it's going to be a difficult game and we're going to have to be at our best to get something from that you're a player who played with a chip on your shoulder we have we have given them a chip on their shoulder you're always looking for something to motivate you right you know you you you're fueled by hate you're fueled by people questioning what you can do and if anything it just galvanizes a team and brings people together for a common cause to to go out there and prove people wrong so i'm with you like I don't see the reason in doing it.

23:46It doesn't really benefit the US squad for us to speak in that way. So all I'm going to do is be more humble about the situation and more kind of like, don't get too high, don't get too low and just root for my team and hope that they go out there and put in a professional performance. I'll say Australia, I know you're listening. We love you. We fear you. We welcome you. We love you. Did I say we love you? We hope you have a great time in Seattle. I will say landing here, Australia have got a lot of support in this city. Australia's all over the place. A lot of Australian fans in our hotel. They're coming to show the world they can play football.

24:23They feel that too. Just like we do, we feel that pressure. We're trying to show our nation that we can play. They want to show the world that they can play football and that their fans don't get hangovers. It's very admirable, both of those things. You played in Seattle. You know these fans. This is going to be the best home field advantage the US will have all tournament, I think. I mean, first of all, I want to give a shout out to LA fans. They came out, they showed up and showed out, I must say. I've never seen anything like it after the game at the desk. Just the sea of you, red, white and blue cheering and being passionate about.

25:00It's been a while since I've felt that type of energy. It felt like Brazil 2014, Clint. Yeah, exactly. It was very, very similar to that. but what I will say about the Pacific Northwest and the fans in Seattle, they're on another level. I was very impressed with the games, the packed stadiums are playing there, 40 ,000 plus every home game, which was one of the highest or the highest in attendance at that time. And I think they will do the march to the match. Everybody will be there with their scarves and ready to support their team like their life depends on it. and I look forward to seeing that stadium rocking where you can barely hear yourself talk.

25:41I think I'm going to be doing the march to the match with Marshawn Lynch. Oh, heck yeah. Tell myself what's up. Completely and utterly bucket list, man. If you're Pochettino, are there changes you'd make ahead of this one or do you just roll with what's working? I think you kind of roll with what's working as long as everybody's fit. I mean, how do you go away from what you saw, right? That was one of the best performances I've seen. I think we talked about it last time. I mean, maybe the closest thing is 2002 versus Portugal, just the quality of team that they were and how we came out in that game and performed and got a result.

26:19So I think if it's not broke, why fix it? I mean, obviously you have people that can come off the bench and be some difference makers. I thought Weah came on and was dangerous. Gio came on and got that goal with the outside of his foot, which was an unbelievable goal and shows that he's a difference maker. And that's why he was picked to be on this roster. But I wouldn't change too much from what I saw. I think you kind of continue with that and just kind of have in the back of your mind some changes to make if things don't plan out how you envision them. Brendan Aronson's game, please God, off the bench and wonder.

26:57Give us a prediction. What kind of game are we going to see? what kind of score line will it be whisper that one so the australians don't get pissed off well since the australians are listening i'm gonna be a little bit more humble i'm gonna say probably a draw maybe like a 1-1 you know what i'm saying but i'm hoping it's i'm hoping a 2-1 i'm hoping we get a 2-1 so uh i think it might be 2-1 to australia oh i see what you did there i see what you did there hey wise move wise move brash i like that what kind of game will it be that we can talk about that? I think it's going to be a chess match.