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The Gold Cup is Concacaf’s Euros and Copa America equivalent. Sunday’s final against Mexico is the United States’ last competitive match before the World Cup, which explains the sense of urgency going into it.

Pochettino’s side have experienced a promising campaign despite missing some key players. Their presence in the final reflects that progress.

It has been a bonding experience for the players involved, but it’s likely the XI that starts their first World Cup game in Inglewood next June will look significantly different.

Due to a combination of injury, the Club World Cup and fatigue, this current squad is without familiar names such as Fulham’s Antonee Robinson, Juventus pair Weston McKennie and Timothy Weah, AC Milan duo Yunus Musah and Christian Pulisic and Monaco striker Folarin Balogun.

Star man Pulisic’s decision to rest this summer rather than take part in the Gold Cup was particularly controversial given the context of building for next year’s home World Cup.

The players Pochettino has been able to call upon have developed into a useful unit as the tournament has progressed and it’s the most together and determined a US group has looked since he took over.

He might wish this togetherness could have been created with his first-choice group but, on the other hand, it has given him a good chance to test fringe players in a competitive, high-pressure environment with a trophy on the line.

Some of this contingent have made a good case for inclusion in next summer’s 26-man squad.

Diego Luna has long been touted as a player with the potential to offer the United States something they’ve been missing. The 21-year-old energetic playmaker, who plays his club football for Real Salt Lake in MLS, has come into his own in the Gold Cup as one of this team’s star players.

In goal, Matt Freese, of Manchester City’s US relative New York City, has been given the nod ahead of Nottingham Forest’s Matt Turner all tournament and, bar one mistake against Haiti, has pushed for inclusion at the World Cup.

Freese’s penalty shootout heroics in the quarter-final against Costa Rica gave him a tournament highlight, doing his chances of a 2026 call-up no harm at all.

Elsewhere, midfielder Jack McGlynn, who was also eligible to represent the Republic of Ireland, has showcased his talent on the international stage, Bayer Leverkusen-linked Malik Tillman has impressed in a role just off the striker, and Crystal Palace defender Chris Richards has strengthened his claim for a starting centre-back role.

Regardless of what happens against Mexico, this Gold Cup has been a useful experience and a productive exercise – but there’s an argument it needed to be more.

Sooner rather than later, Pochettino needs to turn this work in progress into a fully prepared first-choice team.

It was approaching midday and the first-team players at FC Pacos de Ferreira were being put through their paces. They ran and ran under a scolding sun. At the top of the hour, their work done, they walked off, in ones and twos, to seek refreshment and shade.

It looked a lot like a normal day of pre-season training. Just around the corner, though, on Rua do Estadio, the club’s flag flew at half mast. Visible above the west stand of Pacos’ stadium was an electronic billboard bearing a message and a photo.

“Forever,” it read. The photo was of Diogo Jota.

Inside the main stand is the old first-team changing room. The floor is green and white checkerboard, the wooden lockers starting to show their age. It was here, in October 2014, that Jota pulled on the yellow Pacos jersey ahead of his first match in senior football. When he left to join Atletico Madrid two years later, the windfall allowed the club to build new a new eastern stand with more modern facilities.

“We call that the Diogo Jota stand,” explained Paulo Goncalves, the club’s long-serving technical secretary.

Outside, Goncalves pointed to the far end of the pitch. “That was where he scored his first goal,” he said. He pointed towards the tribune. “He ran and hugged his mum over there.”

Jota only played 45 times for Pacos. When his career clicked into gear, taking him from this modest club to stardom, he might easily have moved on, cut ties. But his gratitude to Pacos — for launching his career, for taking a chance on him when the country’s big hitters would not — forged a strong connection.

He acted as a ‘godfather’ to youth players during a summer tournament last year, lending advice and support from afar. He would drop in when he was in the area. “He was always in touch, always sending us messages,” said Goncalves, the emotion audible on his voice. “Especially in difficult moments.”

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One thing that has become apparent since the death of Jota and his brother, Andre Silva, is that everyone has a story about him — little examples of his decency, his humanity, his heart. The tales come from Liverpool, from Wolverhampton, from a hundred other places.

Travelling through the north of Portugal, though, what really struck home was the regionality of this tragedy.

Jota was born in Porto. He spent his childhood in Gondomar, a sleepy satellite city, played for the local team. His grandfather still lives there, down a bumpy path off Rua da Minhoteira. Jota’s parents were in the house next door; the kids learnt to play football in the connecting yard. When Jota left SC Gondomar, it was only for Pacos, 30 minutes away. He later returned to the region with FC Porto. His brother played for Penafiel, another local team. Their father, Joaquim, spent his youth in Foz de Sousa, just to the south. Jota’s widow, Rute Cardoso, grew up in Jovim.

The entire region is in mourning for the loss of two of its sons. For huge numbers of locals, the loss is all the more acute for being personal.

Take Vitor Borges, a taxi driver who worked for years with Jota’s mother, Isabel, at the Ficosa car factory in Porto. “Her and her husband overcame a lot to raise those boys,” he said, shaking his head. “And all of it gone, just like that. No one deserves this, but least of all her.”

Or Miguel Pereira, a former neighbour of Jota and Silva, slightly older but young enough to remember kick-arounds at the red asphalt court at the top of their road. He brought up a photo on his phone: his son Vasco with Jota, taken in May 2024. “It was a year ago but it feels like yesterday,” he said.

Pereira had come to the headquarters of Gondomar SC to pay his respects. Vasco and his cousin Goncalo play for the club’s under-eight team. They recently won their local league title and had brought a replica of the trophy with them to lay down in tribute. They wound a Gondomar scarf around it before setting it down.

Gondomar’s academy is named after Jota. His face adorns the side of the main stand. On the clubhouse there are images of him as a boy, in Gondomar’s shirt, and as an adult, playing for the Portugal national team. On Friday afternoon the site had been transformed into a temporary shrine. There were flowers, candles and scarves, photos and drawings. There were football jerseys bearing messages written in marker pen. “You will always be our hero,” read one. “Diogo and Andre, forever sons of this land,” read another.

At the back of the main stand is a training pitch, the astroturf degraded, and an old club minibus. Jota played here between 2005 and 2013; there’s a good chance that minibus took him and his brother to games in nearby towns, their paths criss-crossing the foothills.

On the main pitch, the sprinklers were on. Six starlings perched behind the goal. Through the main gate, more people came: two teenage girls in Liverpool shirts, three young men on their lunch breaks.

Pedro Figueiredo, a Porto fan, had felt an urge to pay his respects. “He played for my club and I admired him a lot,” he said. “He came from nothing and worked immensely hard.”

Eugenia Dias had brought her granddaughter, Bernadita. They laid a hortencia down together. “Diogo was an idol to the people of Gondomar,” she said. “My son played with him when they were small, maybe five or six. We’re all in mourning. We felt he was ours, in a way.”

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A sign just off the main route into Gondomar informs you that this is Portugal’s goldsmith capital. There are around 450 businesses producing jewellery in the city. Their products are sold around the globe.

There is an obvious resonance here. Not just because Jota was a gem but because he needed working; we are not talking here about a sure thing, one of those kids who was only ever going to be a superstar. He was still playing for Gondomar at 17. Porto did not want him, hence the move to Pacos. His was a grinding, blue-collar path to the top. It made it all the more meaningful to those who followed it.

“He was a humble man, someone who fought for everything he had in his life,” said Gondomar resident Maria Nogueira. “He was a symbol of the region.”

She was stood outside the Matriz de Gondomar church. It was Friday afternoon, just before 4pm. The public wake for Jota and Silva was yet to start but already a large crowd had gathered. Some people strained for a view of the chapel, for a sight of the family. Others took shelter under trees.

When the doors opened, people formed a line. They waited in the afternoon heat: men in polo shirts, men with walking sticks, women with flowers, families. They kissed their neighbours and friends, shared pallid smiles. They came to leave wreaths, to say prayers, to say nothing at all, to be silenced by the senselessness of it all.

“I just thought it was important to pay tribute,” said Fernando Eusebio, who wore a Porto shirt and admitted he did not know how he would react to seeing the coffins inside. Another man clutched a large bouquet to his chest. He said he was a childhood friend of Cardoso, Jota’s widow. The sentence got caught in his throat; he struggled to get the last words of it out at all.

As the public entered, friends and relatives of the family began to depart. There was a girl, wrapped in a Portugal flag, crying. The Porto president Andre Villas-Boas was ashen-faced, as was Diogo Dalot, Jota’s Portugal team-mate. At the chapel’s exit, an elderly woman wiped away tears. Her husband stared into space.

Their devastation was comprehensible. The scene inside — Jota’s parents sobbing, Cardoso stricken by grief — was one of almost unbearable sadness.

When the church bells rang at 5pm, the queue was still growing, people arriving at the end of their work days, wearing suits and supermarket uniforms, exhausted but present. They kept coming, too, the line eventually winding around the side of the cemetery, the flow only slowing when the sun had finally begun to tire of its own vigil.

The following day, the funeral would bring further emotion. New faces, too: the Liverpool delegation, more of Jota’s Portugal team-mates, flown in from the four corners of the globe. Ruben Neves and Joao Cancelo played in Florida on Friday night at the Club World Cup and were here at 10am on Saturday morning. It would be a world event — testament, in its way, to football’s reach, as well as to the breadth of lives touched by Jota.

Being here, though, among the queuing locals, it was impossible not to think about roots: those that ground us, that keep us connected to where we come from, if we allow them to. It is obvious that Jota nourished his. Cherished them, too. That, far more than his ability as a footballer, made these people love him.

For the family, there is only pain, as raw as it is unjust, a wound they cannot even yet fully comprehend, let alone cauterise. But later, you hope, that will soften into gratitude — for the 28 years they had with him, for the memories, for the beauty he gave not just to their lives but those of so many others.

Waiting to enter the chapel and say a prayer for Jota, Maria Nogueira held a bunch of flowers with a note attached.

“Thank you, Diogo,” it read, “for making so many people happy.”

(All photos: Jack Lang/The Athletic; Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Top Photos: Rene Nijhuis/MB Media, Octavio Passos/Getty Images, Jack Lang/The Athletic)

CULIACAN, Mexico — Inside a sports arena in Sinaloa state’s capital, the crowd was sparse early on the card as young amateur boxers in puffy headgear threw punches and danced about the ring. Outside stood a bronze statue of Julio César Chávez in boxing trunks, one glove raised.

The event Friday was organized by one of Chávez’s brothers and “The Legend” himself was advertised as a specially invited guest. But Chávez didn’t appear. It had been a difficult week for the family.

Chávez’s eldest son, Julio César Chávez Jr., was arrested by U.S. immigration agents outside his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday, accused of overstaying his visa and lying on a green card application.

But more significant here in Culiacan was that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security also noted that there was an active warrant for his arrest in Mexico for alleged arms and drug trafficking and suggested ties to the Sinaloa Cartel. The agency said he would be processed for expedited removal.

The name Julio César Chávez in Culiacan is like saying Diego Maradona in Argentina. People stop and conversations begin.

Chávez is the city’s idol and source of pride, known simply as “The Legend.” He went from a working class neighborhood along train tracks to the highest echelons of boxing fame and became a national hero.

But when the questions turn to Chávez’s eldest son and the Sinaloa Cartel, conversation ends and eyes avert.

There was a time when many in Culiacan would speak of the cartel that carries their state’s name, perhaps with euphemisms, but openly all the same, because its control was complete and for that they largely lived in peace.

But since a bloody feud erupted between factions of the cartel last year, following the abduction of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada to the United States by one of the sons of former leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, it’s safer to avoid any mention at all.

In the stands Friday night, the arrest of The Legend’s son, was on the minds of many, but discussed only in hushed voices.

Óscar Arrieta, a sports reporter in Culiacan, covers boxing and said Chávez Jr.’s arrest had had a big impact in Culiacan, largely because the “harsh” way U.S. authorities linked him to organized crime.

U.S. authorities did not detail the alleged ties between Chávez Jr. and the cartel other than to mention that he married a U.S. citizen who is the mother of a granddaughter of Guzmán.

He mused at why if there had been a Mexican arrest warrant since 2023, hadn’t there been any effort to capture him. He was a very public figure, active on social media and for the past six months or more, training for a highly promoted fight in California.

On Friday, Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said that he had mostly been in the U.S. since the arrest warrant was issued.

“I think it was also a way for the United States to expose the Mexican government in a way, but without a doubt much more impactful, because normally sports doesn’t mix with anything else, much less with organized crime,” Arrieta said.

Culiacan’s boxing gyms had mostly been quiet since Thursday’s announcement of Chávez Jr.’s arrest, in preparation for Friday’s event.

There had already been weigh-in for Friday’s fights and most fighters weren’t around.

At one that was mostly covered outdoor spaces, teenagers tightly wrapped their wrists, bounced and shuffled, shadow boxing in a circle.

Jorge Romero is a former professional boxer who trained under another Chávez brother. Now he’s a trainer at Sinaloa Autonomous University.

Romero said he knows Chávez Jr., regards him “an excellent person, a great human being” who had really focused on his training ahead of his bout in California just a week ago. He expressed full support for him.

Questions of ties between Chávez Jr. and organized crime, Romero said, were “too delicate” to touch. But in general, he said boxing and the cartel walked separate paths in Culiacan.

“We don’t have anything to do with organized crime,” he said. “On the contrary, it’s a clean sport, very healthy from my point of view.”