Mauricio Pochettino appeals to emotion and soccer skills as he takes over national team

NEW YORK — With any soccer team, you can talk endlessly about tactics, formations, and so on. But with a national team, where a manager and players don’t get to spend much time together, sometimes you have to throw all that out and just go win.

Though Mauricio Pochettino has never coached a national team until now, he left no doubt that he knows what it takes in his introductory news conference as the U.S. men’s program’s new boss.

“Everyone thinks there is no time to arrive in the best condition to the World Cup. … I am on the opposite side,” the 52-year-old Argentina native said. “I don’t want to create an excuse for the players to say, ‘Yeah, but now we don’t have time to buy into the new ideas, the new philosophy.’ No, football is like this: it’s to touch the right button, and then start to perform.”

» READ MORE: Five things to know about new USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino

He wants his U.S. players to think big, as his players at Southampton and Tottenham did when he took those English clubs to historic heights.

“I think the players are so intelligent and so talented, and they can, I think, play in a different way,” Pochettino said. “I think we have time, and we need to really believe and think [about] big things. We need to believe that we can win not only a game, we can win the World Cup.”

Those were headline words, for sure. So what will the execution be behind them?

“We need to see the player, feel the player, see all the characteristics, but I think we are very flexible,” Pochettino said. “We are a coaching staff that, the first thing is we love the aesthetic in football, and for us it is really important. We want to play a good football, exciting football.”

Even better was his quip that followed: “We are in the USA, you know.” He tied that to acknowledging a desire “to convince our fans” to show up with his team’s play.

“The potential is there, the talent is there, it’s only to create the best platform for [players] to express themselves,” Pochettino said.

» READ MORE: Mauricio Pochettino’s hiring by the U.S. men’s soccer team is finally official

But he knows that is easier said than done. Other teams will come to play too, and when the World Cup comes, many of those opponents will likely have better talent.

“We need to move, we need to give options, good angles, to your teammate,” Pochettino said. “But then also the opponent is going to play, and the opponent is best with the ball. When we don’t have the ball, we need to run, we need to be aggressive.”

Pochettino must deal with his team’s psychology, too. Not only did the U.S. men flop at the Copa América this summer, but they looked startlingly un-energetic in this month’s friendlies, a 2-1 loss to Canada and a 1-1 tie with New Zealand.

Captain Christian Pulisic said after the New Zealand game that he hopes Pochettino can “flip a switch for a lot of the guys to take a step up” and change “the mentality and the culture of the group.”

» READ MORE: U.S. Soccer had a big decision to make about the men's national team's future after the Copa América flop

Those words invited a new round of criticism. How can a group of players spread among some of Europe’s biggest clubs not have the inner drive to step up themselves, instead of needing a coach to light a spark in them?

Pochettino excused Pulisic’s remarks, calling him “really frustrated after two games, and it’s normal.”

Unsurprisingly, there were lots of questions Friday about culture, and Pochettino tried to answer them all.

“It’s difficult to describe, in words, a culture,” he said at one point. But he has a pretty good sense of what his ideal culture for this team should look like.

“The USA culture is there,” Pochettino said. “In other sports, the USA has great athletes. In other sports, it’s a winning culture, a winning mentality. … We need to be inspired by the many, many sports we have here.”

What inspiration does he find in his own sport? One of the big ones, it turns out, will be down the hall from his office when U.S. Soccer’s big new training center in suburban Atlanta opens in 2026 — and it’s someone he already knows well.

Pochettino is close with U.S. women’s team manager Emma Hayes, since they both worked at English club Chelsea during the 2023-24 European club season. And when he met with U.S. Soccer executives about the new job, he knew president Cindy Cone was the only World Cup-winner in the room.

» READ MORE: After more than 20 years of waiting, Emma Hayes’ dream to become the USWNT’s manager has come true

“We have Emma that is the best coach in the world, and the women’s team in the history [of the sport] won everything, Cindy,” Pochettino said. “It’s so close to us, I think this is going to be our inspiration. That is the objective: to match your results, but not only the results, but the way you create the philosophy to defend the badge, the country, the culture.”

Those words formed one of the best summaries of the difference between the U.S. men’s and women’s teams that anyone has ever delivered, no matter their background.

And he wasn’t just talking to be nice. Pochettino said that when he started doing his pro-level coaching license course two decades ago, while still a player at Spain’s Espanyol, he spent six months with the club’s women’s team to learn about that side of the sport. So his interest is not new.

Pochettino said he and his trio of longtime assistants — Jesús Pérez, Miguel D’Agostino, and goalkeeper coach Toni Jiménez, all of whom will join him on the U.S. staff — had been thinking about taking up a national team for a few years, and “the USA was one of our favorites.”

That points to an angle of the hiring that hasn’t been discussed as much as it perhaps should be. In a country whose Latino population is a huge part of the soccer culture, Pochettino is the first South America-born manager to lead the U.S. program in its 108-year history.

Though Argentina has influenced American soccer for decades, U.S. Soccer has often been subpar at attracting the country’s Latino population, whether in marketing or player scouting. If Pochettino can help change that, it will resonate long beyond his contract that runs through the 2026 World Cup.

“I take it as a huge responsibility, and I hope that for the tens of millions of Latinos this is a point of connection with the national team,” he said in his native Spanish. “But we need all of our fans’ support, Latino or not, in the USA. When the national team plays, all the stadiums have to be full, with fans enjoying the event, having a good time, and seeing their team win. It’s important for that to happen from now until the World Cup.”

Then he added a phrase in his native Spanish that everyone in the room understood, even those who don’t speak the language well.

» READ MORE: Trinity Rodman and other new USWNT stars will be even bigger deals now as Olympic champions

“El fútbol es pasión,” he said: Soccer is passion.

“El fútbol es un contexto de emociones,” he added: Soccer is a context of emotions.

“Y quien mejor que un Argentino para trasladar” — And who better than an Argentine to carry — “la emoción que es el fútbol — el soccer?”

That last part needed no translation.