I hope, in this lifetime, you find someone who loves you the way Mauricio Pochettino loves Tottenham Hotspur. The grip Spurs have on his heart seems the stuff of a literary classic: his imperfect partner who called things off at the first sign of trouble must merely check in on him occasionally to rekindle hopes of a reunion.
Perhaps a bit extreme, but this week’s revelation – that he’d return to Tottenham even if they were relegated and chalking his absence up to imperfect timing, not the part about handing the club a decade-old title – has implicity laid out the terms of his return as United States manager. Others may always have interest in his services, and a certain North London suitor will never get the door slammed in their face outright.
“Now it’s a four-year contract, it’s different,” Pochettino said this week. “We can next season lose the Copa América or the Gold Cup, they’re not happy with us and they can sack us. Or we can say: ‘OK. It’s not in the way that we think.’ Four years is different. Maybe now if someone calls in the future, it’s a different, different type [of thing]. We are excited, we are thinking to spend four years to the next World Cup. But now it’s a long period.”
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If you’re a Spurs fan, it warms the heart to revisit last decade’s glory days. If you’re a US fan, you’re quite sick of hearing so much about a team besides the one he’s managing. If you’ve been cursed to support both, this must be a very confusing time. And if you’re US Soccer, you know that you no longer have an ace in the hole to outflank any outside interest.
One can’t undersell the appeal of coaching a World Cup host team, with a direct path to Pot One and raucous support for every match. Already a familiar face to Americans who follow the sport, Pochettino became a genuine sensation in the broader sports landscape. Millions of Americans had parallel thoughts that he, clad handsomely in a $500 safari shirt, resembled Russell Crowe – perhaps tacitly revealing that millions of Americans have long undersold the appeal of Russell Crowe.
Compared to his previous post at Chelsea, the US job offered relative reprieve. Never before has Pochettino been such a prolific fixture on hours-long podcasts. The stop/start cadence of international management is appealing for the football men who have grown weary of the meticulous corporatization of the club game. In that sense, Pochettino is among esteemed company.
Two years after Jürgen Klopp left Liverpool citing mental exhaustion, he has refreshed his tracksuit collection with fresh duds from Die Mannschaft. In his opening press conference, he read aloud to the press his terms of service – and was celebrated for it. Carlo Ancelotti was in no rush to abandon Brazil after a middling tournament, despite real questions about the pool’s depth and quality in midfield. Even Pep Guardiola held talks with Italy immediately after his decade in Manchester.
What’s different about Pochettino from, say, Klopp is his perceived eagerness to return to the club grind. Even atop the Red Bull Football conglomerate, Klopp was quick to brush aside any insinuations about returning to management. Pochettino, by contrast, held talks with Milan about their coaching vacancy immediately before the 2026 World Cup.
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There may be a simple answer. Each of Ancelotti, Guardiola, and Klopp – company with which Pochettino is regularly associated – has been the champion of England and Europe. Pochettino, at this stage, has not reached those summits.
Is aiming for a Copa América semi-final more enticing than restoring Tottenham to previous heights? What about reaching a World Cup quarter-final an ocean away from the tens of thousands who soundtracked the previous one? What can US Soccer offer that his caliber of clubs – Tottenham and beyond – can’t exceed?
While Pochettino and his charges have something resembling an excuse for their lack of execution against Belgium, the fact remains that the USMNT were once again eliminated in the last-16. Just like they were under Bob Bradley in 2010. And Jürgen Klinsmann in 2014. And Gregg Berhalter in 2022.
In theory, Pochettino will enter his second cycle in a position of strength having undertaken a thorough examination of the player pool. The fresh faces are no longer MLS journeymen or players in Europe’s lesser divisions. Instead, they’re promising prospects: 16-year-old wonderkid Cavan Sullivan, new Crystal Palace showman Zavier Gozo, highly anticipated La Masia netminder Diego Kochen.
If anything, working the up-and-comers into the established core and identifying sturdier central defenders to partner with Chris Richards should be an incredibly exciting project. The core is in great shape, with this summer’s headliners – Folarin Balogun, Alex Freeman, Richards, and Malik Tillman – all aged 30 or younger in the summer of 2030. There’s plenty of reason to think that the program is better positioned for a deep run at the next World Cup than the 2026.
Actualizing that potential will require a clear vision and a dedicated effort to raise this team’s standard throughout every window of the next four years. Batting eyelashes at past employers hardly projects that level of dedication. And so, for the next four years just like the past one, the biggest question surrounding the USMNT won’t be how far they can go in 2030. It’ll be whether Pochettino will still be the man leading them there.
