NEW YORK — Mauricio Pochettino stepped onstage inside a Manhattan theater, beneath a 20-foot-tall screen that earlier bore his face and name. A host introduced him as “one of the most sought-after managers in the world.” A sizzle reel played. Spotlights beamed. And so it began, a new U.S. men’s national team era brimming with possibility, led by something of an international soccer unicorn: a superstar coach.
Pochettino arrived in America on Thursday as the most accomplished man to ever take charge of USMNT.
He met with media Friday, “such a momentous day for the U.S. men’s national team and the U.S. Soccer Federation,” legendary broadcaster Andrés Cantor intoned. “Today is an incredible moment which we will remember for years to come.”
Pochettino arrived with a glittering résumé, and an endorsement from Pep Guardiola, and hype that felt unique — because his appointment is unique.
He is perhaps the most accomplished club soccer coach to ever defect to a foreign national team.
He arrived after spells at Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham. “He’s a top-class manager,” Guardiola, the top-class manager, said Friday. And top-class managers in their coaching prime, for the most part, simply don’t jump to national teams. The rhythms of the job are too sporadic. The sport’s annual pinnacles are elsewhere. The potential for impact, with only a few training camps per year, is relatively slim.
And when they do jump, they go to their native national team.
Of the 36 squads who reached the World Cup quarterfinals or Euro semifinals since 2014, 35 were helmed by coaches who had some prior association with the country they were leading.
Thirty-one were helmed by coaches who’d either been promoted from within, hired from domestic clubs or offered a change of pace amid winding careers at non-elite foreign clubs.
Of the other five, one coach (Ronald Koeman, Netherlands) was a former national team captain; another (Roberto Mancini, Italy) was a former national team player; two of the five were Louis Van Gaal’s second and third stints in charge of the Netherlands.
The only exception, the 36th of 36, was Roberto Martinez, a Spaniard who led Belgium’s golden generation to the World Cup semifinals in 2018. Martinez took the Belgium job after being sacked by Everton.
Pochettino, a 52-year-old Argentine, has held three more prestigious jobs than Martinez ever had … and yet here he was, meeting with Major League Soccer owners and commissioner Don Garber on Thursday, hustling around a Warner Brothers space Hudson Yards on Friday to fulfill various media obligations.
Soon, he will head to Atlanta, the site of U.S. Soccer’s soon-to-be headquarters, “for some good barbecue and to do some house-hunting,” U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson said.
And then he will begin to answer the question that all of this begs: Can a superstar coach elevate a middling national team?
“We need to really believe in big things,” Pochettino said Friday. “We need to believe that we can win — that we can win not only a game, we can win the World Cup.”
History suggests that they can’t. International soccer, history says, is largely driven by players. The list of coaches who’ve won major tournaments over the past decade is littered with names that, prior to those titles, were largely unknown: Joachim Löw, Jorge Sampaoli, Fernando Santos, Juan Antonio Pizzi, Didier Deschamps, Tite, Mancini, Lionel Scaloni, Luis De La Fuente.
The list of coaches who engineered surprise runs to finals, semifinals or quarters is even more anonymous: Jorge Luis Pinto, Chris Coleman, Janne Andersson, Stanislav Cherchesov, Zlatko Dalić, Kasper Hjulmand, Walid Regragui.
The common threads, and the simplest explanations for all of their success, are player quality and randomness. As for why top-class managers rarely crack those lists, the conventional wisdom is that those who do take national team jobs hardly have any time to instill their values and systems, and therefore little chance to prove their worth.
Pochettino, though, said Friday that he doesn’t subscribe to the conventional wisdom.
“Everyone thinks that there’s no time to prepare, and to arrive in our best condition to the World Cup,” he said. “What I want to tell you is that I am in the opposite side. I believe that it’s time enough. I don’t want to create an excuse for the players.”
When asked about implementing his signature high press, which requires both extreme fitness and coordination, he didn’t quite explain how he plans to do that in the few dozen legitimate training sessions he’ll have with the full USMNT between now and June 2026, when his first World Cup as a manager will begin.
“We need to see the player, feel the player, see all the characteristics,” Pochettino said Friday. He mentioned that he and his staff “are very flexible,” but also said: “We want to play nice football, exciting football, attacking football. … The philosophy is to have the ball. … When we don’t have the ball, we need to run, we need to be aggressive, we need to be competitive.” When players fly in to national team camps, “they need to know exactly what we need to do, how we need to compete, how we need to behave like a team,” he added. “And the potential is there, the talent is there.”
That, then, is the experiment: Can he unlock potential that hasn’t yet been seen?
The U.S. Soccer Federation is making a seven-figure bet that he can.
Cantor, whom the federation tabbed to introduce his fellow Argentine on Friday, proclaimed that Pochettino “will be able to take this team to the next level.”
U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone called him “the best person in the world for this job.”
His unveiling was that of a savior. Cameras followed him through hallways and down stairs. Applause rippled. Fans, who’d become fed up with the previous USMNT regime, suddenly dreamed.
Parlow Cone was asked what, in the end, would qualify the Pochettino hire as a success, and, “You know, I think it’s already started,” she said, and she glanced around the theater-turned-news conference room. “Right? Look at this.”
And she twice referenced Emma Hayes’ work with the U.S. women’s national team. Parlow Cone joked with Pochettino about it, but also said seriously: “I mean, [Hayes] had, what, eight weeks to win a gold medal, and turn the women’s team around. And I think Poch has the same abilities to do something similar with the men’s team.”
