Early in his time at Tottenham Hotspur, Mauricio Pochettino returned to Argentina for a week’s rest and outdoor recreation, accompanied by his coaching staff and club owner, Daniel Levy. Over the course of a trip that included hair-raising white-water rafting, the pair had many conversations about playing style, recruitment strategies and evaluation of talent. Pochettino liked conducting a challenge in which he and his boss had to split every Premier League squad into good players, very good players and stars. Figuring out exactly that demarcation could be the most important undertaking of his new job.
The United States Soccer Federation (USSF) signed Pochettino to a two-year contract worth $12 million (€10.8 million) last week. They didn’t have that kind of cash in their coffers so, FAI-style, went cap in hand to a couple of friendly billionaires to underwrite the salary and to help them land somebody with serious pedigree to right the ship. Drastic action was certainly required. With 21 months to go until the country co-hosts the World Cup, the men’s national team has been taking on water for a while. What was perceived to be a golden generation of American talent recently lost at home to Canada for the first time in 67 years and drew with New Zealand. The Argentinian will have his work cut out.
“I think the players are so intelligent and so talented, and they can, I think, play in a different way,” said Pochettino, sounding a suitably positive note at his introductory press conference. “And for sure, I think we have time. We have time, and we need to really believe and think of big things. We need to believe that we can win, that we can win all of the games. We can win the World Cup. Because, if not, this is going to be so difficult, surely.”
Rather ambitious stuff considering he’s inheriting a side that couldn’t get out of their group at Copa America this summer, and which has been on a downward spiral since reaching the second round of the 2022 World Cup. Not to mention he is being paid four times his predecessor’s wage and has just nine international windows until the tournament. Dealing with Levy at Spurs, wrangling egos at PSG and navigating the labyrinthine mess at Chelsea were very different managerial tasks to trying to figure out the best XI from a playing pool some believe is longer on quantity than on quality.
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A dozen Americans, drawn from Juventus, AC Milan, Monaco, Borussia Dortmund, PSV and Celtic, will feature in this season’s Champions League, with six more across the Europa and Conference competitions. More than 40 of their compatriots are plying their trade elsewhere around the continent, impressive numbers that suggest the extended roster is a lot better, say, than that available to the new Irish manager. And, even if Christian Pulisic never quite convinced as a superstar in England, he retains genuine game-changing talent, is one of the best players in Serie A (not the boast it once was) and has seen the inside of a Champions League final.
If there seems plenty for Pochettino to mould and shape, the problem is too many of those available for selection are interchangeable journeymen at international level, and the team always seems to add up to less than the sum of its parts. The USSF hasn’t helped matters with baffling decisions such as hiring underqualified Gregg Berhalter twice, the second time after the nasty post-Qatar soap opera involving him and the aggrieved family of Gio Reyna, the Borussia Dortmund winger whom he seriously underused at that tournament. Wasted years.
As the clock started to tick down to 2026, the word is sponsors such as Nike, who pay the USSF north of $60m a year to wear the swoosh, were getting concerned about the prospect of the US going out in the first round of the World Cup and the consequent impact on shirt sales. Berhalter had to go then, and in a country where every Premier League and Champions League game is available live, Pochettino is box office enough to have made headlines beyond traditional soccer-friendly media outlets and to be generating proper excitement.
Moving fluidly between English and Spanish last week, he sounded confident and assured. Like a man who believes he, and the extensive backroom that goes everywhere with him, can get this group of players to finally allay growing suspicions that the best of this generation might not be as good as they, their supporters or their national media think they are.
At some point he will have to grasp the nettle and address the eternal argument about whether promising Americans are better off staying in Major League Soccer, a curious competition where the standard is at best akin to the lower half of the English Championship, or trying their hand in Europe, where the air is thinner. Jürgen Klinsmann, the last foreigner to take this gig in a blaze of positivity, got himself into serious bother for suggesting the latter. That he was correct didn’t stop sensitive types in the domestic scene from going after him.
Arriving with a more impressive and more lengthy CV than the German, Pochettino comes with a reputation for a holistic approach to management too. At Spurs, he used to keep a tray of fresh lemons on his desk because an Argentinian pal told him the fruit absorbed negative energy. Might be worth doing so again.
