Pros, cons of U.S. Men’s National Team’s new head coach

The United States Men’s National Team crashed out of Copa America in embarrassing fashion this summer, hampered by stale coaching and a lack of in-game guile.

But the USMNT’s tournament exit convinced the U.S. Soccer Federation that a new coach was needed to replace Gregg Berhalter, who was fired.

It appears the search for a coach is over. 

Multiple outlets, including The Athletic, reported Thursday that Mauricio Pochettino — the Argentine coach known for stellar spells with Southampton, Tottenham Hotspurs, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea — accepted an offer to lead the USMNT into its home World Cup in 2026.

Pochettino is a great coach and the USMNT is a promising team with immense potential. But the two are not a natural fit, so this match will require sacrifice and compromise from both.

Here are pros and cons of Pochettino coaching the USMNT.

PRO: Pochettino is brilliant with young players

Part of the reason Pochettino accepted a coaching job at Chelsea last year — a job many believed a poisoned chalice — was the club’s numerous young players. Pochettino adores shaping raw talent. 

His biggest career successes came from doing that with James Ward-Prowse and Luke Shaw at Southampton, Harry Kane and Dele Alli at Tottenham Hotspurs and with Achraf Hakimi at Paris Saint-Germain.

The addition of Pochettino is an excellent sign that U. S. Soccer aims to take its young generation seriously and equip its players with the skills to compete on the world stage.

CON: Pochettino doesn’t have a strong grasp on where — or how — young American players develop

For better or worse, the U.S. player pipeline is unique in the world of soccer.

Where other nations have clean, neat relationships among youth teams, professional clubs and their national program, the Americans have a complex web of high school athletes, pay-to-play road teams, NCAA draft picks, Major League Soccer academies and semi-pro leagues. Plus, they have young American players who travel abroad as teens to hone their skills.

Each of those pathways presents a different kind of player with different ball skills.

U. S. Soccer’s strength is in that variety, as it produces a breathtaking array of individual talent rather than the standard “product” like other nations. But if Pochettino isn’t aware of top high school programs, following NCAA ball or embedded within MLS infrastructure, he’ll struggle to manage talent from those pipelines. The strategies Pochettino used in Europe won’t work with them.

For all their faults, previous USMNT coaches Berhalter, Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley understood the unique intricacies of American soccer. Pochettino has a managerial pedigree that they cannot challenge, but he lacks their institutional knowledge.

PRO: Pochettino plays brilliant positional soccer

Much has been written about Pochettino’s on-field philosophy — he champions an ever-moving positional strategy where players shift to find space in between their opponents. There are dozens of examples of this strategy in action, but this Alli goal for Pochettino’s Spurs side in 2018 sums it up nicely.