Mauricio Pochettino has opened up on the reasoning behind one of the more surprising decisions in recent international football: his choice to remain in charge of the United States national team rather than return to club management, having been linked with both the England job and a reunion with former club Tottenham Hotspur.
Speaking in a wide-ranging interview, the Argentine coach reflected on how different his career path could have looked. He revealed he would have been open to managing England, and that a return to Spurs, now in the Championship, felt like a real possibility before circumstances changed. Instead, he remains with the USA, a decision he says was shaped less by tactics or ambition and more by the people around the program.
Pochettino recounted a meeting with US Soccer's leadership in New York before the World Cup, where he was offered a new four-year deal despite voicing doubts about the team's prospects in the tournament. He said the federation's trust in him, expressed even before a ball was kicked, proved decisive. "We said, 'This type of people, I like to be with them,'" he explained, describing how that loyalty was reinforced once the tournament concluded and Tottenham renewed their interest. By then, he said, his outlook had already shifted. "When we finish, it was completely different, the vision," he said, adding that the World Cup experience had changed how American fans and the wider footballing culture viewed the sport. He pointed to sold-out crowds in Orlando, St Louis, Phoenix and Minnesota as evidence, contrasting it with a match against Paraguay in Philadelphia last year when much of the crowd appeared to support the visitors.
The World Cup was not without controversy, particularly the Folarin Balogun situation, which some inside the squad felt disrupted team chemistry ahead of a heavy 4-1 defeat to Belgium that ended the USA's campaign in the last 16. Pochettino dismissed suggestions that the affair was to blame, insisting his side simply underperformed on the pitch and that the group remained shielded from outside noise throughout the tournament.
On the wider coaching landscape, Pochettino suggested his generation of managers, a group that also includes Thomas Tuchel and Jurgen Klopp, has been drawn to international football partly because it retains a human element he feels is being lost in the club game. He described the shorter international windows as allowing players to arrive motivated and free of the frustrations that build up over a long club season, joking that even personal friction with staff barely matters given the brevity of camps. He voiced concern that a younger generation of coaches, raised in a more data-driven era, may struggle to replicate the balance between analytical and emotional man-management that defined his own generation.
Asked about England's World Cup exit to Argentina, Pochettino sympathized with his friend Tuchel's tactical dilemma in that semi-final, while also addressing the tension surrounding the fixture given his Argentine roots and deep affection for England, a country he said he would still consider managing one day. He argued that football and geopolitics should remain separate, insisting the match was simply a game despite the broader narratives attached to it.
Pochettino also touched on the state of the modern transfer market, expressing surprise at the scale of spending in English football, including by Tottenham following their promotion-adjacent rebuild, while insisting he still wants the best for his former club. He closed by backing Harry Kane for the Ballon d'Or this season, saying simply, "If I pick one, then it's Harry Kane."
Based on reporting from The Independent.