It proved one game too far for Mauricio Pochettino's United States as defeat to Mexico in the Gold Cup final ended their hopes of lifting the trophy in their own country.

He said: "Mexico is a great team, they have great players and a good coaching staff, but I want to emphasise how important the fans are in a soccer match.

"When you have their support, you regenerate the player's energy on the field, and when you don't, you drain their energy and it's hard.

"If we had the majority supporting us today, it would have been different, but that's what we're dealing with. The truth was that if that happened in the opposite box, for sure, it's [given as a] penalty.

"This Gold Cup though allowed us to have the players together for 40 days to establish the principles of what we want, and that has been very helpful. It was important to see players crying after losing; it makes me happy because that's how this sport should feel."

Mixed results across the Pochettino's first 16 matches have shown a worrying inconsistency and during this time, they have lost all five matches against a team in the top 30 of Fifa's rankings.

Questions were being asked of the former Tottenham Hotspur and Paris St-Germain boss following consecutive defeats by Panama and Canada in the Nations League finals, and Turkey and Switzerland in Gold Cup warm-up games.