For landing USA men’s World Cup coach Mauricio Pochettino and his women’s national team counterpart Emma Hayes, the U.S. Soccer Federation’s leadership deserves enduring credit.
Both programs were rudderless after respective unprecedented setbacks at the 2024 Copa América and 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Both needed a refresh.
In response, USSF president Cindy Parlow Cone and CEO JT Batson lured the best two coaches available against all odds. Former Chelsea manager Emma Hayes was hired to coach the USWNT. Mauricio Pochettino, one of the best-regarded club bosses in Europe following successful stints with Tottenham Hotspur and Paris Saint-Germain, was recruited to lead the men.
But while Hayes won the U.S. women their fifth Olympic gold medal in just her 10th match in charge, Pochettino’s once-promising tenure ended in flames on Monday in Seattle, where the Stars and Stripes suffered an incomprehensible 4-1 loss to Belgium that rendered their entire 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign on home soil an abject failure.
The U.S. men have never suffered a more lopsided, embarrassing defeat in the knockout stage of any previous World Cup, a disappointment more than 30 million Americans had the misfortune of watching unfold live. The damage it caused to the USMNT’s credibility is incalculable.
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Yet less than 12 hours later, U.S. Soccer confirmed that it’s still considering bringing Pochettino back for the 2030 World Cup cycle.
Yes, you read that correctly.
“We have a great deal of respect and gratitude for Mauricio, his staff and everyone part of the program,” the statement read in part, adding that the two camps had agreed to continue discussing a possible extension. “We have shared excitement about our potential and also shared clarity about the amount of work at all levels still required to achieve our ambition.”
Since his much-celebrated arrival in September 2024, Pochettino talked up his roots in a place where, per his own words on the eve of Monday’s train wreck, soccer is “more important than religion.” He said he wanted to mold in his own image a collection of American players that had gotten far too comfortable.
“When I was a player with Argentina,” Pochettino said at his introductory news conference in New York City, “Copa América, World Cup or friendly, it was the same: Show that you’re the best, and win the game for your country.
“That’s what it means to be competitive,” he added. “We’re going to be focusing on that.”
The standard Pochettino holds his players to also applies to him.
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Had the 54-year-old overseen the sort of capitulation he did on Monday with his national team, at a World Cup hosted in his home country, he would have been fired before leaving the stadium. It would be the same in Brazil or France or Germany or any of the other nations whose success the USA hopes to one day emulate.
Pochettino could’ve resigned on the spot, like Portugal’s Roberto Martínez did shortly after losing 1-0 to Spain a few hours before the USA’s debacle against Belgium. Instead, Pochettino blamed his players before pointing the finger at himself.
“Maybe the explanation is so easy — it wasn’t our day, in the quality and individual,” he said. “Of course, the principal [person] responsible is myself and, yes, we need to see and to check what we did, because it wasn’t the performance or [the] way that normally we play.”
Pochettino On USA’s Loss To Belgium: ‘We didn’t connect with the game’ | 2026 FIFA World Cup™
Pochettino is a good coach. The USSF was fortunate to sign someone of his caliber, with experience at the highest level, before the most important moment in its 113-year-history. And until Monday, against mostly inferior foes, everything was great.
But when it was all on the line, Pochettino was badly outmaneuvered by his Belgian counterpart, Rudi Garcia. His job was to get the best out of his team in the game he was hired to win. He didn’t come close. Had the U.S. lost in extra time, the way Jürgen Klinsmann and Bob Bradley did at the same stage in 2014 and 2010, maybe a case could be made to give Pochettino an entire four-year cycle.
A 4-1 defeat is indefensible. If that Copa América failure cost Gregg Berhalter his job, as it had to, Pochettino shouldn’t survive a collapse many multitudes worse.
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That’s not to say that Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams and the rest of what was once considered a golden generation of talent shouldn’t shoulder their share of the fallout. And most of the public’s ire has been directed their way.
Those players know they’ll never live this down. Squandering the opportunity provided by a home World Cup is a stain that will persist beyond their careers. Every single member of that roster will take it to his grave.
For Pochettino, the sting will subside in comparatively short order. He’ll return to the Premier League, or take another national team job four years from now, or four years after that.
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There might not even be lasting damage to his reputation. The rest of the world will chalk up Monday’s fiasco to the U.S. just not being good enough. But the Americans punched above their weight for decades before Pochettino got here, including a scoreless draw with England four years ago in Qatar.
Yet the man billed as a massive upgrade wasn’t able to prevent his team from being humiliated in Seattle by the weakest of the eventual quarterfinalists.
Before you say it was just one game, it wasn’t. In Pochettino’s 22 months at the helm, he lost seven of eight matches against European opposition, including a 5-2 drubbing by this same Belgian team in March. The Americans haven’t beaten one elite opponent during his tenure.
In a sport where tiny margins decide wins and losses, millions of Americans saw that Pochettino hadn’t adequately prepared his squad for the biggest game in American soccer history.
Hiring Pochettino was a coup for U.S. Soccer. Rewarding him with an extension on the heels of such a profound calamity would be an even bigger own goal.
United States’ Best Moments 2026 FIFA World Cup™ 🇺🇸
