The appointment of Mauricio Pochettino as manager of the United States’ National Team ahead of the 2026 World Cup has come as a huge statement of intent by the host nation, while simultaneously representing a change of pace for one of European football’s best managers of the past decade.
The United States Soccer Federation sacked Gregg Berhalter after the side’s disastrous Copa America group stage exit last month, the first time the States had failed to move to the knockout stage of a major tournament they’d hosted.
Keen to avoid the much broader embarrassment that would ensue from a 2026 repeat on the global stage they’ve now landed former Argentina Pochettino, who’s built an outstanding reputation with Southampton, Tottenham and PSG, in particular.
‘I think it’s a big coup. Clearly they’re looking for a big name heading into the 2026 World Cup, and as this is a chance for the eyes of the whole world to be on the USMNT they want the best person [possible] to lead it’, The Athletic’s Jack Pitt-Brooke told Box2Box.
‘The USA have really underachieved recently, and there’s real room for expansion and improvement there. Particularly with the new format if he can get a few wins together at the start of the World Cup, then he can really build a sense of momentum that must be really attractive to him.’
The day-to-day demands of the modern Premier League last season ended Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool tenure earlier than some expected, and questions abound as to Pep Guardiola’s stamina to continue with Manchester City beyond this campaign. Increasingly, the titanic tenures of Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger a generation beforehand seem unreplicable.
Duelling with Klopp and Guardiola for almost the entire length of their tenures has been Pochettino, who was harshly dismissed by Chelsea after a single season in May. Perhaps it should not surprise that the change of pace international football brings – and widely tipped for his longtime adversaries – has caught his eye.
‘Pochettino really is a training ground coach, he likes being out there on the grass with his players, improving skills and fitness. As an international manager you don’t get your players for months at a time, and I know that will be a big change in tempo for him.
‘The pressure will be high, it always is as a home nation, and that will be multiplied by having a big name manager who ultimately has been brought in for this World Cup. That’s not to say they’ve got to win it or get to a certain point, but to have a team which the US home public can rally behind.’
Therein may lie the major appeal of Pochettino to his reportedly new employers, with no official announcement having been made as yet. The enormous diaspora of Spanish-speakers in the USA, perhaps missed by more-traditional promotional work done by the major American sporting bodies of the NFL & MLB, looms as the great untapped population that if harnessed, could be one of the defining factors of this World Cup.
‘Pochettino is a native Spanish speaker and in the US, there’s a huge enthusiasm for football in the Spanish-speaking community. The USFF really wants to tap into it, given how much media coverage of the team there is on Spanish language channels, for example.
‘He’ll really relish that sense of being the front and centre face of US soccer, to both English and Spanish audiences, between now and the big kickoff in June 2026.
‘He’s also a real romantic, someone with a real love for the history of the game and World Cups have always been hugely important to him. He recalls as a boy watching Argentina win the 1978 & ‘86 World Cups, and famously played himself in 2002.
‘As well as he’s done in club football he’s always wanted to be involved in a World Cup [again] in some capacity, and now he’s got that.’