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

The U.S. men’s soccer team’s hiring of renowned manager Mauricio Pochettino finally became official on Tuesday, nearly a month after reports first emerged that he had agreed to take the job.

Pochettino will lead the team through the 2026 FIFA World Cup on home soil and will try to get the best out of Christian Pulisic, Gio Reyna, Tim Weah, and other young players who seem to have lots of talent but have underwhelmed on the field. That includes in the Copa América, where their flop led to the firing of previous manager Gregg Berhalter.

A 52-year-old Argentina native, Pochettino will arrive in New York on Wednesday and be officially introduced at a news conference there on Friday morning. His first games in charge will be next month: an Oct. 12 home game against Panama in Austin, Texas, and an Oct. 15 visit to perennial rival Mexico in Guadalajara.

“The decision to join U.S. Soccer wasn’t just about football for me; it’s about the journey that this team and this country are on,” Pochettino said in a statement. “The energy, the passion, and the hunger to achieve something truly historic here — those are the things that inspired me. … I see a group of players full of talent and potential, and together, we’re going to build something special that the whole nation can be proud of.”

» READ MORE: U.S. Soccer had a big decision to make after the Copa América flop

What took so long to get the deal done? Pochettino was owed money by the last team he worked for, England’s Chelsea, which parted ways with him in May. And while it wasn’t officially called a firing, it looked like one from afar. Pochettino couldn’t sign a contract with another team until that was cleared up.

The U.S. Soccer Federation understandably didn’t want to pay off a big sum for a situation it had nothing to do with, and Chelsea seemingly didn’t want to budge over money it owed. No one expected the negotiations to take this long, but now they’re finally done.

The Athletic reported that U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson brokered the final deal: Chelsea paid up what it owed minus the salary U.S. Soccer agreed with Pochettino.

That salary will not be cheap. ESPN reported it’s $6 million a year, easily the highest in U.S. men’s team history — though not as high as it might have been. U.S. Soccer hasn’t officially announced the number (and likely won’t until it’s in future tax documents), but the governing body did say commercial sponsors and some major individual donors are helping pay the bill.

“We made huge investments, historic investments, in our national training center [under construction in suburban Atlanta], in bringing Emma [Hayes] on board to set our women’s national team up for success, and we’re doing that here with our men’s national team, and wanting to put this team in the best position for ’26,” Batson told TNT’s broadcast of Tuesday’s U.S. men’s game vs. New Zealand, a 1-1 tie. “We’ve come so far as a soccer country, and we of course have so much room to go. I think what this shows is our ambition as a federation, as well as other people’s belief in our opportunity.”

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U.S. Soccer’s announcement named two of the biggest donors: Ken Griffin, the multibillionaire CEO of hedge fund Citadel; and Scott Goodwin, cofounder of asset management firm Diameter.

“I am excited to join my fellow Americans in supporting our teams’ efforts to triumph in the upcoming World Cup and beyond,” Griffin said in a statement to The Athletic. “When our players do well on the pitch, it expands the reach of this great sport.”

Pochettino comes to the U.S. after 15 years managing clubs in Europe: Spain’s Espanyol (2009-12), England’s Southampton (2013-14) and Tottenham Hotspur (2014-19), France’s Paris Saint-Germain (2021-22), then Chelsea (2023-24). His players at Tottenham included current U.S. centerback Cameron Carter-Vickers and former right back DeAndre Yedlin and goalkeeper Brad Friedel.

While at Chelsea, Pochettino got to know current U.S. women’s manager Emma Hayes, who led the Blues’ women’s team from 2012 to 2024. Crocker told TNT that Hayes was as interested as they were in the potential hire — and brought it up while coaching the U.S. women to the gold medal at the Olympics last month. The Athletic reported that Hayes lobbied Pochettino to take the job and volunteered as a reference for him to U.S. Soccer.

“Of course we’re going to use that as another reference point as well,” Crocker told TNT. “We’ve got the highest respect for each other. And the dynamic of seeing those two work together is really exciting as we move forward.”

» READ MORE: Emma Hayes is friends with Dawn Staley. How did that happen?

Before then, his 17-year playing career went from Argentina’s Newell’s Old Boys (1989-94) to Espanyol (1994-2001 and 2004-06), Paris Saint-Germain (2001-03), and France’s Bordeaux (2003-04). He also played 20 games for Argentina’s national team, including at the 2002 World Cup — and a 1999 exhibition against a U.S. team that coincidentally included Berhalter.

Pochettino’s coaching achievements include taking Southampton, usually a low-to-mid-level Premier League team, to a team-record eighth-place finish in 2014; and Tottenham to four straight UEFA Champions League berths, including the team’s first final appearance in 2019. He also won the French Ligue 1 title during his one season in Paris, though that was easier because PSG perennially dominates the league.

If that resumé doesn’t seem like much in terms of trophies, it’s important to understand that Tottenham, PSG, and Chelsea are among the craziest clubs in the soccer world to manage. Spurs and PSG have long histories of underachievement on big stages, and all three clubs have long had volatile front offices — with Chelsea throwing in meddling ownership on top.

That made it difficult to just get on with coaching. But Pochettino has won a lot more games than he’s lost over the years, which kept his elite reputation intact.

At Southampton, Pochettino briefly overlapped with current U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker, who ran the club’s youth academy at the time. A decade later, they hadn’t forgotten each other.

″I’ve known Mauricio for a long time from my time at Southampton,” Crocker told TNT. “I just reached out, made a call, and just said, you know, ‘Hey, Mauricio, myself and JT [Batson] would love to come and outline the project to you.”

When Pochettino said yes, Crocker and Batson went to to meet Pochettino and his longtime assistant, Jesús Pérez, in Barcelona, Spain, where Pochettino now lives. What was planned to be a two-hour meeting became five hours of deep conversations — and Crocker did not hold back about the U.S. team’s positives and negatives.

“You go there hoping that we can outline where we are as a team: the warts and all, the positives, but also some of the challenges with the team as we work towards 2026,” he said. “I think what was really interesting straight away is the questions [Pochettino] asked, the detailed questions, his understanding of the squad and the team, some of the prospects in there, and some of the opportunities. … They were just as quick to do a detailed presentation on our strengths and weaknesses as we were. So straight away, you could see there was real interest.”

The U.S. men’s team has had many foreign managers in its history, perhaps more than some fans realize since many of them were long ago. Jürgen Klinsmann (2011-16) was the most recent, and Bora Milutinović (1991-95) is another famous name.

But Pochettino is the first U.S. manager to come from South America, a barrier that has taken too long to break, given how many great coaches the continent has produced.

Hiring Pochettino could also have a huge impact on this country’s Latino population, which U.S. Soccer historically hasn’t done nearly enough to market to or recruit players from. Though Pochettino will probably only have the U.S. job for two years, that could be another big piece of his legacy if it goes well.