U.S. Soccer finally closes deal, hires Mauricio Pochettino to lead men's national team

U.S. Soccer finally got its man Tuesday, announcing it has hired Mauricio Pochettino to coach the men's national team.

Pochettino, a former player who grew up in Argentina and most recently coached Chelsea in the English Premier League, reportedly reached an agreement weeks ago to coach the U.S. men through the 2026 World Cup. But the deal couldn't be closed until the final details of his departure from Chelsea last May were cleaned up.

With those issues resolved, he will be formally introduced as the team's new coach at a news conference Friday morning in New York and will manage the U.S. for the first time in next month's friendlies with Panama in Austin, Texas, and Mexico in Guadalajara. Mikey Varas, who formerly coached the U.S. under-20 team, managed the senior national team in this month's games with Canada and New Zealand.

"The decision to join U.S. Soccer wasn 't just about football for me," Pochettino said in a statement. "It's about the journey that this team and this country are on. 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."

Financial terms of the deal were not released, but a U.S. Soccer spokesperson confirmed it is a multi-year contract that runs through the 2026 World Cup, which will be co-hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The U.S. will play two of its three group-stage games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Pochettino, 52, guided Tottenham to a Champions League final and won a Ligue 1 title with Paris Saint-Germain but he has never coached a national team. He will be tasked with righting a U.S. squad that grew stagnant under former coach Gregg Berhalter, bowing out of this summer's Copa América in the group stage, the first time the U.S. has been eliminated in the first round of an international tournament it was hosting.

The USMNT went into Tuesday night's game with New Zealand having lost three straight games in the same year for the first time since 2007. U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone said Tuesday she's confident Pochettino can turn that around.

"Mauricio is a world-class coach with a proven track record of developing players and achieving success at the highest level," said Cone, a World Cup winner as a player. "His passion for the game, his innovative approach to coaching and his ability to inspire and connect with players make him the perfect fit for this role."

While the Americans were criticized for conservative, risk-averse play under Berhalter, who was sacked in July, Pochettino is known for a high-pressing, attacking style of play. His teams are encouraged to pressure opponents and that style has produced results in three of Europe's top five leagues.

Read more: U.S. Soccer fires coach Gregg Berhalter after Copa América collapse

A center back, Pochettino signed his first contract with Newell's Old Boys at age 17 and played in nearly 500 matches in Argentina, Spain and France. He also made 20 appearances for Argentina's national team before retiring as a player in 2006 and beginning his coaching career with Spanish club Espanyol three years later.

He went on to manage at Southampton, Tottenham and PSG before landing at Chelsea, signing a two-year contract before the 2023-24 season. But he was sacked two days after a season in which Chelsea finished sixth, leaving the coach and the club, chaired by Dodgers' part-owner Todd Boehly, to sort out the terms of Pochettino's separation from Chelsea, which was reportedly paying him an annual salary of $13.2 million.

JT Batson, U.S. Soccer's chief executive officer, was said to be instrumental in helping the two sides cut through that while also negotiating a contract with Pochettino that is reportedly the largest in the federation's history. Berhalter earned $2,291,136 in 2022, including $900,000 in bonuses.

"Hiring Mauricio is a step forward in our mission to compete at the highest level and make a lasting mark on the global soccer landscape," Batson said. "Mauricio understands the unique potential of this team and this country and he shares our belief that U.S. Soccer is on the cusp of something truly special."

U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker, who led the search for Berhalter's replacement after firing the coach in early July, overlapped briefly with Pochettino at Southampton, where Crocker served as academy director.

Pochettino is one of the highest-profile names to lead the national team and is just the second foreign-born U.S. manager since Boris Milutinov in 1995.

"Mauricio is a serial winner with a deep passion for player development and a proven ability to build cohesive and competition teams," Crocker said of the coach, who is fluent in English, Spanish and French. "His track record speaks for itself."

Berhalter, a former U.S. Soccer and Galaxy player under Bruce Arena, was hired in December 2018, 14 months after the U.S., under Arena, failed to qualify for a World Cup for the first time in 32 years. He led the team to a Gold Cup championship, two CONCACAF Nations League titles and to the round of 16 in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. With a record of 44-17-13, he left with the best winning percentage of any coach who worked more than seven matches with the national team.

But he was undone by the team's poor performance in the Copa América, which the U.S. exited in the group stage after losing to Panama and Uruguay.

Read more: Amid mixed Olympic results, U.S. men's soccer did achieve one important goal

"After the Copa América ended, there was a mutual feeling within the dressing room of disappointment," forward Folarin Balogun told ESPN last week. "But we knew that we had to put it to rest, we had to go away, reflect and come back for this camp."

Only Arena (81) and Jurgen Klinsmann (55) won more games with the U.S. than Berhalter, who survived an earlier challenge to his job after former teammate Claudio Reyna and his wife, Danielle, upset over Berhalter’s treatment of their son Gio during the 2022 World Cup, informed U.S. Soccer of an alleged 30-year-old physical confrontation between Berhalter and the woman who would become his wife.

The federation launched a months-long investigation into the incident before clearing Berhalter in the spring of 2023. Crocker then rehired him 13 months ago for the current World Cup cycle.

U.S. Soccer decided to offer Berhalter a new contract based on his performance and positive relationships with most players but his second stay lasted less than a year.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.