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The U.S. national soccer team received a huge boost Thursday morning when Mauricio Pochettino agreed to become their next head coach.
The Athletics revealed that Pochettino, who had been a prime target for the opening, had struck a deal with US Soccer, the sport’s governing body. Pochettino has never scored at international level, but he is a highly respected name in the club game.
This is a big-name arrival ahead of the Men’s World Cup that the US will co-host with neighbors Canada and Mexico in 2026, with the majority of matches taking place, including all matches from the quarter-finals onwards. But who is Pochettino? To what extent is this a coup? What is his playing style?
Here, The Athletics‘s Jack Pitt-Brooke answers everything you need to know about the 52-year-old Argentinian.
Who exactly is Mauricio Pochettino?
Mauricio Pochettino is considered one of the best managers in European football.
As a player he was a very competitive centre-back. He left his native Argentina at the age of 22 to play for Barcelona-based Espanyol in Spain, before having brief spells in France with Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Bordeaux before returning to Espanyol. to complete his playing career. He played for Argentina at the 2002 World Cup and won a total of twenty caps.
Pochettino, left, playing for Espanyol (Luis Bagu/Getty Images)
Pochettino also started his coaching career at Espanyol, in 2009, and gained a reputation for playing brave, high-pressure football with young players, turning around the team’s fortunes and saving them from relegation to Spain’s second division. His next job was with Southampton in the English Premier League in 2013, where he took the team to new heights with his energetic playing style. The following year he moved to Tottenham Hotspur where he oversaw their greatest sustained run of the modern era, finishing third, second and third in the Premier League in consecutive seasons as well as the 2018/19 Champions’ final reached. Competition.
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Since then, Pochettino has managed PSG, won the French Cup and a Ligue 1 title and spent last season as head coach of Chelsea, where he guided them to sixth place in the Premier League, enough to qualify for European football in the coming season. , and to the final of the Carabao Cup.
How much of a coup is this for the USMNT?
To have one of the club world’s best coaches manage the men’s national team is huge.
The best comparison might be to Jurgen Klinsmann, the former German striker who coached the USMNT from 2011 to 2016, but Pochettino comes into the job with much more of a track record in European club football management than he does. Klinsmann had just one disappointing season at Bayern Munich (2008-09) before landing the US job and taking hosts Germany to the semi-finals of the 2006 World Cup.
Pochettino, on the other hand, has been one of the most impressive coaches in the European club game over the past fifteen years.
What he did at Tottenham remains one of the best-sustained spells of management in recent years, even if it ultimately didn’t lead to them winning any trophies.
Why would Pochettino take an international job?
Pochettino has always been a romantic with a love for the history of the game.
He knows that the World Cup is the pinnacle of the game. He remembers as a boy watching Argentina win the 1978 (as hosts) and 1986 World Cups, the latter of which made Diego Maradona his lifelong hero. He is immensely proud of his participation in the 2002 World Cup, even though he is remembered by some for giving away the decisive penalty in a 1-0 group stage defeat to England – he still has a photo of that dubious ‘foul’ which he committed on Michael Owen, signed by the English striker, on the wall at home.
Pochettino ‘fouls’ Owen during the 2002 World Cup (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
He told me in an interview in 2022 how much the World Cup means to him. “You don’t think about anything, you don’t think about money, you just think about doing your best and making people happy,” Pochettino said. “Because you know very well that your country is behind you. The feeling is completely different from other competitions. That’s why the players feel so different.”
Pochettino told me that ‘of course’ he would like to win a World Cup one day, and not necessarily with Argentina. He said, ‘You never know what’s going to happen. I’m open to everything.”
What about club football?
Since being sacked by Tottenham in November 2019 after their poor start to the season, Pochettino has worked for two of the most prominent and richest clubs in Europe, PSG and Chelsea.
In Paris he was put in charge of Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé, one of the best front lines ever assembled at club level. Ultimately, he performed in line with most PSG coaches, both before and after him, and was released at the end of the 2021-2022 season.
He was brought in from Chelsea last summer to impose a new style of football on their big squad and after a difficult start he finally got there, giving them a great end to the season (they won their last five games, scoring 14 goals ) and won over fans who initially doubted him due to his connections to London rivals Tottenham. He eventually left Chelsea in June as his reputation improved.
But both were difficult experiences at times, with a lot of internal politics to manage. European club football is in a strange place at the moment, with not many clubs offering their managers/head coaches the opportunity to build something.
That would be part of the appeal of taking on a very different challenge with the USMNT.
What kind of football does he play?
Throughout his career as a manager, Pochettino has tried to get his teams to play a bold, aggressive and pressing style.
It is a positional game, aimed at maintaining a good structure in and out of possession, so that the players are in the right places to win the ball back quickly – ideally within three seconds – when his team loses the ball. He wants his teams to dominate the ball and defend high up the pitch.
Pochettino’s Tottenham mastered this style of football and took the North London club to new heights.
At their best, a Pochettino team is physically ruthless, powerful and dominant, giving the opposition no breathing space. At PSG it wasn’t always possible to play exactly like this due to the large personnel up front who didn’t always want to press from the front. But in the second half of last season, Chelsea started to look like a Pochettino team, and the wins followed.
Are these methods suitable for international football?
Fitness work is hugely important for Pochettino and his coaching staff, but the nature of the international game is that coaches don’t spend that much time with their players. It is harder for them to improve their players as individuals, something Pochettino has always been big on, during those short spells together before returning to their clubs.
Pochettino with his players at PSG (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
One thing that has always been important to him is bringing in young players, ever since he started at Espanyol and then at Southampton.
When he was discussed as a potential England manager not so long ago, the point was made how many of their current squad owe their careers to their development under Pochettino: Luke Shaw (Southampton), Harry Kane, Kyle Walker, Kieran Trippier ( Tottenham), Conor Gallagher and Cole Palmer (Chelsea). He hopes to develop a similar generation of youth now that he has the USMNT job.
How will he deal with the criticism that this role brings?
Pochettino is used to media attention, especially after his spells at PSG and Chelsea. But international football is different. There will certainly be less daily attention than during his days at those clubs, but there will be moments when Pochettino has the eyes of hundreds of millions of Americans on him. The American public is unlikely to be forgiving if they feel the team is not heading in the right direction as the 2026 World Cup gets bigger.
But that’s part of the appeal, considering how huge an event it will be in two years. Coaching that team at their home World Cup, in front of 70,000 people in their opening group stage match at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on June 12, 2026, will be the equivalent of standing in front of the entire world.
Does it matter that he’s not American?
The team previously had non-American coaches, and not just Klinsmann. There was Bora Milutinovic, from Serbia, in the early 1990s, the last time the US hosted the World Cup. Men from Poland, Greece, Britain and more have also had the job. There is no reason that nationality should be a barrier to Pochettino in the role. He has worked for three different Premier League clubs and although he initially had an interpreter at Southampton, his English is now certainly good enough to work in the United States.
Most importantly, he will demonstrate a commitment to American football and a deep knowledge of all the players at his disposal, whether they are in MLS, Europe or elsewhere. This means a lot of hard work and flying miles, getting to know them all.
How much does this improve USMNT’s chances at the 2026 World Cup?
It is difficult to predict how proven club managers will fare in the international game. They are in fact two different formats of the same sport.
Antonio Conte, a serial title winner at club level, improved Italy but could only take them to the quarter-finals of Euro 2016. Luis Enrique had a great European Championship with Spain in 2021, reaching the semi-finals, but they were eliminated in the final. next year’s World Cup in the round of 16 in Morocco. Hansi Flick won the treble with Bayern in 2020, but could not even get Germany out of the group in Qatar.
Predicting international tournaments is virtually impossible, given the small margins between success and failure at that level. But we can say that Pochettino will bring new ideas, energy and proven methods to American employment, as well as a sense of confidence and optimism that the entire country can feed off.
(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)