If things had worked out differently, Mauricio Pochettino would have gone back to his beloved Tottenham over the summer. They had put in the call and it stirred him. Nothing was going to put him off – not even the possibility of the club being in the Championship.
Seriously, Mauricio? After a World Cup campaign with the United States and top jobs with Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain before that, he would have been willing to start a new chapter in the second tier of English football? “Yes, of course,” Pochettino says. “Tottenham … it’s the only club that always I am open to help. In whatever division.”
Football is about timing and Pochettino was left to reflect on how his stars did not align. It has been a theme of his managerial career, along with the desire to keep an eye out for greener pastures. And not be shy about doing so.
Spurs’ idea after sacking Thomas Frank in February was to get to the end of the season under the interim Igor Tudor, when they could assess a potentially deeper pool of candidates. They knew that if Pochettino was to be their man, they would have to wait for him because he was contracted to the US until after the World Cup. There was no way he could walk out on that challenge. Nor would he have wanted to.
Then the picture changed. When Tudor bombed, leaving Spurs one point above the relegation zone with seven games to play, they pivoted to Roberto De Zerbi, who said no to them after they dismissed Frank. De Zerbi had just left Marseille and needed a break. Now Spurs made him a long-term offer he could not refuse. And so Pochettino felt the door close to the club where he managed for five-and-a-half years from 2014; where he established such a strong connection.
“The problem was that the timings were never the best,” he says. “When I was free, I never received a contact and then when I was working, I received a contact but I cannot make the decision to come back. It was a little bit unlucky. Maybe one day the stars will align and it can happen. If I was free, of course, I come. But I wasn’t free. I was preparing the World Cup.”
Was the door to Spurs ever truly open for Pochettino? The club have insisted that De Zerbi was their No 1 target for the summer before they were forced to move ahead of time. Perhaps we will never know. But one thing is clear: these kind of teasers and Pochettino’s openness about them are a part of his story. They add to his swaggering appeal. In a game where micromanaged content is the norm, where managers are tied in knots by the party line, there is something exhilarating about hearing Pochettino hold court.
The 54-year-old has always had his suitors, ever since he first began to establish his reputation as a forward-thinking coach and charismatic man-manager at Espanyol, where he took charge in 2009. He has always liked to keep them close and he always will do. Should US Soccer be worried? Pochettino has just signed a new four-year contract to take him up to the 2030 World Cup. That is probably an unhealthy way of thinking. Better for the federation to focus on how it has one of the game’s elite managers and accept that they will have options.
Pochettino has had his share of sliding-doors moments. He was linked to the Real Madrid job in November 2017 as Zinedine Zidane was tipped for the sack only for the Frenchman to hang on and end up winning the Champions League that season. Two days before the final against Liverpool, Pochettino signed a new long-term contract at Spurs. Five days after it, Zidane announced his shock resignation. It was not the first or, indeed, the last time that Pochettino was linked to Madrid.
There have been links with Manchester United. The club considered him when they sacked Louis van Gaal in 2016, when they dismissed José Mourinho in 2018 and turned to Ole Gunnar Solskjær, initially on an interim basis (Solskjær would make the job his own), and before they hired Erik ten Hag in 2022.
Then there was England. Pochettino was in the conversation as the Football Association looked for a successor to Sir Gareth Southgate after Euro 2024. The way Pochettino tells it, he committed to the US in August of that year and it was before the FA started its search in earnest. It would end with it choosing Thomas Tuchel.
Would Pochettino consider the England job one day? He is aware that his Argentinian nationality would present an issue – because of the Falklands conflict and the history between the countries on the football pitch. It was fractious when they clashed in the World Cup semi-final in July, Argentina winning 2-1. But Pochettino does not see it as a deal-breaker.
“Maybe, yes,” he says of coaching England. “If you consider in a few years’ time, yes … if I got an approach. One thing I don’t want because the USA guys will kill me is if you say the headline is: ‘Mauricio will consider English job.’ It is like I am considering it now. No. Not now. If I am free [in the future].
“My respect is that it’s football. I am the first to feel for my people in Argentina but at the end of the day it’s just football. The World Cup semi-final was just one game of football, although people wanted to convert it to other subjects. It is true that it can be controversial because an Argentinian guy is thinking to maybe one day defend the flag of England and we were involved in a war …”
Pochettino still has his family home in north London. He has a love affair with the city and England. “We are very similar, Argentinian and English people, in the way we feel the passion of football,” he says. “I love the countryside here, too. I think you respect all the things that I also grew up with in my country.
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“In Argentina, I lived in a town in Murphy with a lot of Irish and British people around. And all the clubs … Racing Club, River Plate, Newell’s Old Boys. They are English language names, no? Now I am here doing my passion that is football and I cannot work here [for England]? Why? It is crazy. I really believe in the diplomatic things, going to talk and for sure to find the best way.”
Pochettino extended his contract with the US for many reasons, among them the faith the federation had shown in him. They offered him the four-year deal before the World Cup kicked off, which he appreciated greatly. He signed it in August. The challenge excites him – to change the perception of the game in the country, to build something. He has made a good start.
The World Cup ended badly with the 4-1 defeat by Belgium in the last 16. The game was overshadowed by the Folarin Balogun controversy; how the US federation was able to overturn the striker’s suspension amid trademark grandstanding from Donald Trump. It ought to have been a blessing. It ended up as a curse, affecting Balogun and the team; giving Belgium even more of a cause. But before that, everything had gone extremely well.
The free-flowing 4-1 victory against Paraguay in the opening game sparked a feelgood factor. Then came the comfortable win over Australia to secure qualification from the group with a game to spare. Bosnia and Herzegovina were swatted aside in the last 32. “We created something,” Pochettino says. “The fans were amazing. We never expected the fans in this way. The players changed completely the mindset.”
Pochettino’s situation, though, does feel different with the longer contract – certainly to him. “Now it is a different thing,” he says. “When we gave our word to the federation [in August 2024], it was about starting and finishing after the World Cup. For us, it was the moment to say: ‘If some club comes, it’s impossible.’ Always you can break a contract, say you stop and that’s it … you agree something. But in the moment it wasn’t right for us to create all these situations and expectations.
“Now it’s a four-year contract, it’s different. We can next season lose the Copa América or the Gold Cup, they’re not happy with us and they can sack us. Or we can say: ‘OK. It’s not in the way that we think.’ Four years is different. Maybe now if someone calls in the future, it’s a different, different type [of thing]. We are excited, we are thinking to spend four years to the next World Cup. But now it’s a long period.”
The conversation turns back to Spurs. As it often does with Pochettino. He says his former striker Harry Kane, who is at Bayern Munich, would be a deserving winner of this year’s Ballon d’Or. He insists he was pleased to see De Zerbi get more than £300m to spend on players over the summer; a figure he could only have dreamed about. “I am happy because I feel Tottenham … it’s still my club,” Pochettino says. And there is another window into his soul when he reflects on how Spurs got rid of the longstanding chair, Daniel Levy, last September – the man who dismissed him.
“I think he feels like I did when I was sacked,” Pochettino says. “I keep in touch with him and I never made the situation personal because you can sack a coach. The way I felt in that moment … you receive the letter, you pick up your things and you can never come back to say goodbye to the people, maybe 200, 300 people, that were your family. You cannot send a text, you cannot do nothing.
“That was really, really tough for me and I was talking with him [Levy] about that. Of course, I am not happy that now he feels the same because I am not a person who has bad feelings. But yes, it’s difficult for him and his family and I am so sorry for him.”
Pochettino is ready for the next phase of his US adventure. As ever, his mind and heart race with possibility.
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