Former Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain supervisor Mauricio Pochettino is anticipated to be named the following coach of the United States males’s nationwide group, sources with information of the scenario confirmed to FOX Sports activities on Thursday.
A number of media shops in England reported late Wednesday and early Thursday that the Argentine had agreed to take the U.S. job. No contract had been signed as of Thursday morning, and the U.S. Soccer Federation’s board of administrators has not but signed off on any deal, one supply mentioned. However these are thought-about formalities at this level.
Barring any late snags, Pochettino will change Gregg Berhalter as USMNT coach. Berhalter led the People to the second spherical of the 2022 World Cup however was fired on July 10, a bit greater than per week after the U.S. was eradicated within the group stage of the Copa América on house soil. Pochettino’s camp first met with U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker in Europe the week of July 15, in keeping with a number of sources.
Pochettino is taken into account one of many prime coaches within the international recreation — and possibly the perfect accessible supervisor on the open market after former Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp rebuffed an preliminary strategy from U.S. Soccer. Touchdown the 52-year-old is a big coup for the us. The affable Pochettino, who’s fluent in each English and Spanish, will instantly turn into the face of the lads’s program upon his arrival.
With the 2026 World Cup co-hosted stateside (and in Canada and Mexico), Crocker had set his sights on recruiting an elite coach to steer the lads’s group. The Welshman has already achieved that on the ladies’s facet; final weekend, former Chelsea Girls supervisor Emma Hayes received the nation’s fifth Olympic gold medal in simply her tenth recreation on the helm of the USWNT.
Crocker and Pochettino have historical past. They beforehand labored collectively at English membership Southampton when Crocker oversaw the Saints’ youth academy. The latter took humble Southampton to an eighth place end within the Premier League in his lone season in 2023-24 earlier than shifting on to a profitable five-year run at Tottenham Hotspur. Pochettino led Spurs to their highest Prem factors totals ever and a Champions League runner-up medal in 2019.
He then received the French Cup and Ligue 1 in his two seasons at PSG earlier than returning to London final summer time with Chelsea. Pochettino took the Blues from twelfth to sixth in England’s prime flight earlier than leaving, to the shock of many, after the 2023-24 marketing campaign.
Pochettino started his teaching profession with Spanish facet Espanyol in 2009. As a participant, the previous central defender amassed 20 caps for Argentina and took part within the 2002 World Cup. He has a couple of ties to American soccer, having coached present USMNT heart again Cameron Carter-Vickers and former U.S. World Cup gamers Brad Friedel and DeAndre Yedlin throughout his time at Tottenham.
Pochettino was one in all a number of high-profile coaches that the federation had preliminary conversations with both straight or via intermediaries. Others embrace Klopp, former England coach Gareth Southgate and Hoffenheim supervisor Pellegrino Matarazzo, the one American head coach working in one in all Europe’s prime 4 leagues.
Pochettino was one of many highest-paid coaches within the membership recreation at Chelsea and PSG, and can virtually definitely turn into the best-compensated nationwide group boss on the planet as soon as he formally indicators on with the U.S. Hayes is the highest earner on the ladies’s facet.
The USMNT’s subsequent match is a Sept. 7 pleasant towards Canada in Kansas Metropolis.
Doug McIntyre is a soccer reporter for FOX Sports activities. A former workers author with ESPN and Yahoo Sports activities, he has coated U.S. males’s and ladies’s nationwide groups at FIFA World Cups on 5 continents. Observe him @ByDougMcIntyre.
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