NEW YORK — Mauricio Pochettinon’s strongest asset, many would argue, is that he brings a fresh perspective, something sorely needed for the U.S. men’s national team after the most brutal of summers. The group picked up just one win in seven matches over the last three months, naturally forcing leadership to decide it was time to rethink the direction of the team. And yet, as the celebrated Argentine settled into a chair for his first press conference as the USMNT’s head coach on Friday, one of the first compliments he received was on the topic of assimilation.
“I’m impressed that you remembered to say ‘soccer,'” U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone quipped right after Pochettino’s opening remarks.
Pochettino slipped back into his default term, “football,” for much of his hour-long introduction to the American soccer audience, but surprisingly threaded the needle between his outsider’s perspective and his understanding of the country’s sporting landscape. It aptly reflects both the task ahead of him, as well as vision he has for the job he officially accepted on Tuesday — breaking into the upper echelons of men’s soccer, a level the USMNT has yet to truly crack but hopes to with their unprecedentedly high-profile coach.
Pochettino’s decade of experience in the Premier League and Ligue 1 makes him a known quantity, even if he embarks on a journey very different from the ones at the top levels of the club game. Though he held his tactical cards close to his chest, as most coaches do, he wasted little time in promising the entertaining and effective style that has defined his managerial career.
“We want to play nice football, good football, exciting football, attacking football, and then of course, we will want to have the possession because we are a coaching staff also, the philosophy is to have the ball,” he said. “We need to run because we need to move, we need to [find] options, good angles to your teammate … but when we don’t have the ball, we need to run.”
His vision naturally includes the intangibles that are hardest to develop in a team, and in this case are arguably the very reason for his hire in the first place. The intangibles, after all, were missing during the USMNT’s dismal summer, and are defining aspects of the lore of any elite coach.
“We need to be competitive and all of that we need to translate this platform, that when they come, the players arrive to the national team, they need to know exactly what we need to do, how we need to compete, how to behave like a team and the potential is there,” Pochettino said. “The talent is there. It’s only to create the best platform for them to express.”
There was an optimistic tone underlining each of his comments on Friday, emerging as a much-needed source of positivity as the USMNT’s summer became progressively worse in the days before his hire with a loss to Canada and a draw against New Zealand. He said it was “difficult to judge because I think we cannot be unfair,” pausing on judgment calls until he finally meets with the team for his first games next month, friendlies against Panama and Mexico. He promised a clean slate for the wider player pool in his first weeks on the job.
“The most important thing is to see the potential that we have, very good players,” he said. “I think to send the message to everyone, not only those who were involved in the last few games, not only the players that play in Europe or the players that play here in USA, in the MLS. We tell every single player that’s out in the world, we are going to try and pay attention and from now on, they have the door open.”
His first step will be to establish a strong rapport with the players, notably on an individual level.
“The priority is always about to feel the players,” he said. “Of course, we have a plan but the most important is to feel how they are. How they feel together, first of all, but we love to talk in an individual way because it’s really important to talk alone with them, feel how they are. They can express themselves, how they see things. … That is going to be the first. The time you are going to be together, it’s to try to know them and for them to have the [ability] to know us.”
He rarely entertained the downsides of the job, at one point saying “I don’t see weakness because I don’t like to talk about weakness.” Despite the uphill battle of having less than two years to prepare a team for a deep run at a World Cup on home soil when the program has reached the quarterfinals of the knockout tournament just twice in their history, Pochettino mixed in confidence with the coaching insights one is used to hearing from soccer’s top managers.
“I think everyone thinks that it’s no time to prepare … What I wanted to tell you is that I’m on the opposite side. I believe there’s time enough. I don’t want to put an excuse. I don’t want to create an excuse for the players to say, ‘We don’t have time to buy the new ideas, the new philosophy.’ No. Football is like this,” he said before snapping his fingers. “It’s to the right button and start to perform.”
For the newness he offers to a team that has historically been led by homegrown coaches, Pochettino’s optimism was surprisingly rooted in his perceptions of the U.S., a nation he has never lived or worked in. He was tonally in lockstep with his new employers, who introduced him with a message about the upward trajectory of both men’s and women’s soccer in the U.S. ahead of a World Cup they hope will be a seminal moment in the sport’s American adventure. His outsider perspective perhaps offers the viewpoint that the USMNT’s aspiration allows them to fit into the U.S.’ sporting landscape, even though they are missing key accolades.
“USA have great athletes in other sports. It’s a winning culture, winning mentality,” he said. “We need to be inspired by many, many sports that we have here but I think for me, one of the most important things we need to be inspired in the women’s team. I see we have Emma [Hayes], for me the best coach. … For me, it’s so close to us. I think it is going to be our inspiration. That is the objective to match your results, but not only the results.”
Pochettino ultimately sees his task for the next few years as one to “create something special,” a fitting leader in the USMNT’s ambitious new chapter because of the many mission statements he shared on Friday, one was certainly more aspirational than the rest.
“We need to believe that we can win, that we can win all your games, that we can win the World Cup,” he said, “because if not, it’s going to be so difficult to show it and we want players that arrive at day one on the training camp thinking big and that is the only way to create this philosophy.”
