The CBS Sports Golazo Network analyst joined Mic'd Up to discuss Champions League, Christian Pulisic and the state of the USMNT

For Nico Cantor, it's about the excitement that comes with a voice in his ear. The Golazo Show co-host is constantly buzzing through European football, switching from game to game as events unfold in real time. It forces a certain understanding: Man City lose to Real Madrid one second, PSV beat the Juventus next. Piece it all together, and the CBS Sports analyst is about as talented as it comes to talking fans through what's happening.

But he has a different perspective. Unlike some of his Paramount+ co-hosts, and CBS's other on-air talent, he doesn't have an extensive resume of professional soccer. Cantor played at a high enough level, but these days he's an analyst and a fan. Very few – even at the top level – can claim to have consumed the game with more vigor than he has. Still, he remains a skeptic. His chief job this year? Make sense of an often strange revamped Champions League group phase.

"I don't think I can draw a conclusion now, because the new format isn't over. We still need to see a champion… but I was expecting a little more excitement," he tells GOAL.

Cantor grew up watching the USMNT. He saw Bob Bradley, Jurgen Klinsmann and Bruce Arena fail to deliver for the country in the biggest moments. New coaching hire Mauricio Pochettino might be different.

"There's a different aura that he brings to the table," he said.

And that's a good thing, too. These days, the USMNT player pool is largely based in Europe. This is a different archetype of footballer to the one that failed over and over. Pochettino understands that.

"He brings a lot of different assets to the table, as a manager, given his experiences, as a coach, and as a player. And I think there's a certain level of respect that a lot of these guys respond with when you have a manager like Pochettino coming into the dressing room," Cantor added.

Meanwhile, Cantor has a role in a shifting American soccer landscape. The USL announced two weeks ago that it will found a Division One League. MLS would seem to have a competitor. Cantor is a part owner in a team that could soon push for the highest level, FC Naples. This is an exciting time for him.

"One day I will be able to tell my grandchildren I own the team. Who knows what will happen, but I feel like we are going somewhere special with the space that we have at USL right now," he said.

Cantor discussed the Champions League, Christian Pulisic's Serie A pedigree and more in the latest edition of Mic’d Up, a recurring feature in which GOAL US taps into the perspective of broadcasters, analysts, and other pundits on the state of soccer in the U.S. and abroad.

GettyON THE NEW CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FORMAT

GOAL: You cover the Champions League pretty extensively. Do you think this new format has worked?

CANTOR: I don't think I can draw a conclusion now, because the new format isn't over. We still need to see a champion. We're back to where our roots are, the round of 16 going forward. But if you want to specify a little bit about the league phase in this iteration… on matchday 8, I was expecting a little bit more excitement. That doesn't mean that maybe in the next couple of league phases we won't get that. But my general feeling is that over eight match days, the good teams are gonna go through to the knockout stage. You'll have your big teams that stumbled, Real Madrid, Manchester City and whatnot, but overall, the teams that we expect to be eliminated got eliminated. I don't think the plot advances too much in the league phase.

GOAL: So it ends up kind of the same?

CANTOR: There's a lot of excitement, because you do have the big games, but if Bayern does lose to Aston Villa, personally, I feel like it's not that big of a deal, because there is still so much margin of error. You have seven games to right your wrongs. I do feel like Manchester City stumbling so much… those poor performances in a group stage very likely would have had them eliminated. But they were able to make up for lost ground up until matchday eight, and managed to get themselves through the league phase.

The two cut off points that this league phase provides, which is between the eighth and ninth place in the 24th and 25th place… we did get some excitement this season, because Manchester City was toeing that second cut off line. They were flirting with with elimination. I wonder how many times we're going to get a team as big as Manchester City coming up on a match day eight, flirting with that cut off line? Now, the top eight scenario changes a little bit. We knew Liverpool was going to be in the top eight. We knew Barcelona was going to be in the top eight. How much did we care? I don't know how much drama there really was for us, for teams playing in it, it's a different story.

GOAL: It's better for those guys, in a sense?

CANTOR: I've spoken to players, and they have said that they like playing all of these games and going to different places. It's fun, it's dynamic. But for us, how much do we care that Brest didn't make top eight, but they still made the knockout playoff round anyway? It was historic. Or for Celtic, there wasn't that much drama on the line for Celtic at the end because we knew they were going to be playing knockout stage football. So I have mixed emotions. I'm excited that a team like Brest, like Celtic, like Lille – I'm excited that a team like Aston Villa has an opportunity to really make waves in a knockout stage of the Champions League that, for the most part in recent history, they haven't been able to.

My hunch tells me that it's too much, as fun as it was. But the counter argument is, you would see a group stage and you'd pick the two winners of every group stage from the moment the draw happened, and you would be 80 percent right, 90 percent right. The reality of the situation is that there's probably 12 in Europe that are really at an elite level. And there's always like your your your teams that kind of stumble over the line and want to be dark horses. But more often than not, it doesn't matter how you pit the best teams in Europe together, you're gonna get those 12 elite teams that really know how to play world-class football.

AdvertisementAFPON MANCHESTER CITY

GOAL: Is it good for the Champions League that Man City got knocked out early?

CANTOR: I think it would have been worse if Real Madrid got knocked out, just with the history of both teams. I don't think Manchester City is a team that's synonymous with the Champions League in the same way Madrid is. I think the viewer at home would rather watch a magical Real Madrid run. I feel like that's something more palpable for the fan than an oil run Club or a state backed club that has unlimited funds.

Yes, obviously, Pep [Guardiola] is a mastermind. And personally, if Manchester City would have gone through, I'd love to see how Pep would have turned the story of their season around. But I'm a traditionalist. I'd rather get an El Classico final than a PSG against Manchester City. But is it good for the competition? I don't think, personally, I don't think the competition takes too much of a hit.

Getty Images SportON USMNT PLAYERS IN EUROPE

GOAL: Obviously a big focus for you guys is American soccer at large: Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tim Weah. Do you think it's bad for the U.S. men's national team that Pulisic and Milan get knocked out early?

CANTOR: No, not necessarily, because I think it's two different contexts. Christian was in a pretty frustrating and difficult situation for a footballer at Chelsea, but he still performed for the U.S. men's national team. Ideally, you would want Milan to be performing well as a club, which means that Christian would be most likely performing well. So you always want your best players doing their best. I mean, a prime example is Gio Reyna not getting minutes for Dortmund and showing up for the men's national team. I don't know how sustainable that is, but it has happened before. So you want your best players to be playing on teams that are having successful seasons, for their standard, to be competing. You want Christian to compete.

For any footballer being at such a big club like Milan, and having to endure this turbulence that Milan is currently going through, it sharpens your craft at the end of the day, because you have to be perfect. You can't stumble. It's a different type of challenge, and that only helps a national team player like Christian, like Yunus Musah, and similarly, for Rafa Leao. He is going to have to learn how to put Milan on his back at certain times and get them through these last couple of months and deliver either a Coppa Italia or make the Champions League, which is top four in Serie A. It'll be a monumental turnaround, but the fact is that they need to get results, that the pressure is on, that anything not top four would be seen as a failure. You either sink or swim. We will see who's cut out for it. And I think Christian, over the last several seasons, has shown that he's cut out to be competing at this level.

GOAL: A natural follow up: what if Milan don't do it? What if they're out of European football all together? If you're Pulisic, do you have to leave?

CANTOR: Depends on what the club wants from you. If you're out of European football together… I mean, that would be a disaster for Milan. That would be not ideal whatsoever for all those guys. For Santi Gimenez, who just arrived at the club. For Theo Hernandez, for Pavlovic, who plays for Serbia. For [Mike Maignan] the starting goalkeeper of the French national team. It'll be a long 2025-2026 season if Milan are not in Europe whatsoever. If they could lock in a Europa League spot, it would behoove them, and they're suddenly a favorites because of the name to win a Europa League in the next season, which is which is probably more likely where they're going to end up finishing rather than a Champions League spot.

So if you're Christian, from what it looks like, they're very interested in him remaining a pillar of this Milan. Without Christian, this Milan team would be worse off, because when nobody was responding, Christian was putting up pretty important contributions. So yes, it's a tricky situation if you don't make Europe altogether. For everybody: where do you go from there? Do you have faith in the process that you can come back stronger? That's going to have to be Milan's response. If they don't make Europe, their only focus is going to be Serie A. They better be challenging for the Scudetto towards the end of the season.

Getty Images SportON MAURICIO POCHETTINO

GOAL: I saw you say some very passionate things about the level that the USMNT is at and the expectations around the World Cup. What do you make of Mauricio Pochettino's hiring and what do you make of his job so far?

CANTOR: Pochettino is a world-class manager that has a wildly different perspective of football than previous managers of the U.S. men's national team. Similarly to the Jurgen Klinsmann hire, you have a certain European pedigree that you're bringing in to the national team. But at the same time, Poch also brings South American experience to the table. Poch plays by a different set of rules, the rules of an elite European manager. Here in the United States there's certain processes in place that you need to respect and whatnot. He can follow the rules that he wants.

So I think he brings a lot of different assets to the table, as a manager, given his experiences, as a coach, and as a player. And I think there's a certain level of respect that a lot of these guys respond with when you have a manager like Pochettino coming into the dressing room. He's coached some of the best players in world football. So how do you not allow yourself to be humbled in a locker room and really listen and row in the same direction?

GOAL: He's from Argentina originally, obviously. How important is it for the U.S. soccer audience that he's Latino? Does it matter?

CANTOR: It's someone that's coming from a different football culture, and I think that's very respectable. I think Klinsmann was given that respect when he came in. Ultimately, after the World Cup in Brazil, he came up short and left the US national team set up. But there's a different aura that he brings to the table. And I'm not saying the traditional American coach profile is a bad thing. I think the traditional profile of coach from the United States really understands what, motivates us, what gets us to go the extra mile. I mean, from Bruce Arena to Bob Bradley, those guys didn't have poor performances in the US Men's National Team. There was a really good level with those guys and with the squad and whatnot.

But now the player pool has changed. The motivations are different and for these guys, for everyone to be on the same page, I think you need to bring in somebody of the profile that the guys in Europe, which is the majority of our national team, are listening to every day. They want to hear something similar. They know at this point what's elite and what's not.

Now, it's about combining that to achieve a certain feeling that the past generations achieved without even having been to Europe. That's the incredible thing. It's so mind blowing if you look back on it. A lot of domestic based guys and four or five or six players from the squad were playing for mid level European teams not so long ago – and those were your leaders. But the majority of the team, they weren't playing at the clubs that our guys are playing at.

So it's incredible that those groups would really affect the aura of the national team. It's contagious. They filled you with hope, with desire, with motivation. And now with Pochettino, hopefully, that's the right combination to get this team to a place where they're inspiring everybody that's watching them.