How would you describe it when a soccer team is clicking? Do you refer to it as “camaraderie” or “a good locker room”?
Perhaps it’s, as you hear players and coaches call it, a “tight-knit group.” Or maybe it’s what the younger folk today may refer to as “vibes.”
Whatever the term, some think it isn’t nearly as important as just assembling a team with the players possible. The cream, they argue, will inevitably rise to the top. For the most part, they aren’t wrong. Only eight countries have ever won a men’s FIFA World Cup. The last four winners of the UEFA Champions League — Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Manchester City and Chelsea — are among the wealthiest, most valuable brands in all of global sports.
But when players bond and sacrifice for a common goal, they become greater than the sum of their parts. That’s how Leicester City overcame 5000-1 odds to win the Premier League in 2016, or how Greece stunned host Portugal to win the 2004 European Championship.
How crucial is that sense of togetherness? Take it from the most capped player in U.S. men’s national team history.
“It’s probably the most important thing,” said three-time World Cup veteran and first-ballot National Soccer Hall of Famer Cobi Jones.
I caught up with Jones, who’ll debut his Cobi Club podcast in 2026, to break down the notion and importance of vibes – especially ahead of next year’s World Cup.
U.S. great Cobi Jones, right, hopes that Christian Pulisic and Mauricio Pochettino can get back on the same wavelength ahead of the World Cup.
USMNT supporters on both sides of the vibes debate have been going back and forth on the topic since the spring. In March, a full-strength American side featuring Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, and Antonee “Jedi” Robinson lost a competitive match to Panama for the second time in a year, snapping its four-year dominance of the Concacaf Nations League.
Four months later, with several of those first-choice players missing, a skeleton squad rounded out primarily by inexperienced MLSers exceeded expectations by reaching the Gold Cup final. That team lost, though, to blood rival Mexico in a match in which El Tri was clearly superior.
The vibes discussion has picked up again, when U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino called Pulisic back, but left out McKennie and several other mainstays to his 23-man roster for the upcoming matches against Korea Republic and Japan.
Christian Pulisic is back in the U.S. squad ahead of crucial friendly matches. (Photo by Logan Riely/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)
Jones knows why teams succeed, and why they fail. He was perhaps the best player on the 1998 U.S. team that finished dead last at that World Cup in part because of the poisonous environment that had taken root under then-coach Steve Sampson. The Americans, fielding many of the same players, reached the quarterfinals at the 2002 World Cup under Bruce Arena, who was renowned for his team-building skills. Fifteen years later, Arena was unable to fix the broken culture he inherited from Jürgen Klinsmann. The Americans finished behind Honduras and Panama in 2018 World Cup qualifying and missed the main event for the first time in 32 years.
“You can have world-class talent and do terrible, because the vibe isn’t there. People really have to understand: you’re going into camp like a month before the World Cup even starts,” Jones told me. “That means you’re living together, day in and day out for an extended period. You’ve got to have a good vibe or there’s going to be some issues.”
The last of Jones’ 164 international appearances came more than two decades ago now. It’s a USMNT record — he has seven on Landon Donovan and 13 more than Michael Bradley that might never be broken. Now 55, the Detroit-born, Southern California-raised former winger spent 12 seasons with his hometown LA Galaxy after stints in the Premier League and in Brazil. He did a ton of winning along the way, including two MLS Cups, two U.S. Open Cups and a Concacaf title with the Galaxy, the 2002 Gold Cup with the U.S. and an NCAA crown after walking on at UCLA.
Cobi Jones was part of the 1994 World Cup squad that exceeded expectations and the 1998 team that largely faltered.
Pochettino surely knows that he’ll need all of his best players if the Americans are to make a historic run at the 2026 World Cup on home soil. Successful teams need talent and vibes. Having one will never be enough.
“We always say this team is the most talented U.S. team. And I think they are,” Jones said. “You look at where these young men are playing, at the opportunities they had when they were kids to be trained at the highest levels. The ability is there. It’s about, can they come together as a unit?”
Jones — for whom the Galaxy will unveil a statue next spring at their stadium in Carson, Caifornia — will have a front-row seat. Two of the USMNT’s three World Cup group stage contests are at SoFi Stadium at nearby Inglewood. For U.S. backers worried about how the national team will fare next June and July, Jones has another message.
“To do something special, timing is everything. A lot of things that have to gel,” he added. “I always look at the 1998 World Cup, which France won. They didn’t score a goal four years later. Were they not good? Of course they were. Their players were still amazing. That proves that a lot of things have to come together to have a good performance as a team.
“I think these guys, they’ll find a way.”
Doug McIntyre is a soccer reporter for FOX Sports who has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams at FIFA World Cups on five continents. Follow him @ByDougMcIntyre.
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