I’ve not been following this topic, but does England have someone in mind as their next manager? Surely Poch would’ve been one of the main targets for the FA? I mean his stock is low at club level and I personally don’t even rate him that highly, but still he automatically becomes one of the best international managers by taking this job. England don’t need a Guardiola/Klopp level manager to guide them to an international trophy, a guy like Poch is easily good enough for an overpowered squad on international level.
Pochettino | Agrees to be US National Team Coach
- Thread starter Bastian
- Start date
Exactly, you're right, he did all those things, except he did them when there was no expectation to do so at shit teams where they were just glad he had graced their doorway. As soon as he was expected to win things he gaslit everyone with lines like "trophies don't help the club" and had full blown meltdowns every other press conference, not to mention bottling every final he's ever managed because he doesn't know how to see out a win in a big match under pressure.
He would be an excellent manager for Manchester United if our ambitions were to finish in the top half of the table, but as we know, they are not.
Yet another successful coup by the US 
England will want another yes man who will fit in with the FA. Poch ain't that.
I guess that could be the reason, yeah.
The idea of ‘nearly men’ is mostly a supertitious belief, and a category it is incredibly easy to propagate after the fact by taking everyone who has come in at 2nd, 3rd or 4th place more often than 1st and call them ‘nearly men’ as if it was some sort of underlying quality you have discovered.
The fact is that those who have came in 2nd three times in a row are much more likely to win the fourth time than those who have come in 13th, 1st and 26th the first three times.
And another fact is that as a manager, your positions will be determined much more by who appoints you and when, than by your inherent quality as a coach.
Ancelotti is not a daft comparison to Pochettino if you know what you are comparing. If you are comparing who has had most success at the highest level of football - sure it’s daft. Or if you are comparing who has the most charismatic eyebrows too. But if you are comparing how it affects the league positions and trophies a manager can get measured by the state of the clubs that hire him - then they are comparable. Ancelotti may still come out trumps, but it is relevant that when hired by Everton, he came in 12th and 10th. It is relevant then that after his first five seasons as a manager, for Reggiana, Parma (who was a big hitter at the time) and Juventus, he came 2nd thrice and won no trophies. It is relevant that when he was at PSG he produced almost the exact same results as Pochettino at PSG. When talking about performances relative to resources/state of clubs.
When Ancelotti was hired by AC Milan in 2001, you could have him as a very definition of a ‘nearly man’ with his three 2nd places and no trophies in four seasons at two clubs who had won several just before he arrived. Then he came fourth in Serie A with Milan and exit in SF of two cups - surely a ‘nearly man’ yes? Then Milan win the CL on penalties in 2003, and suddenly he was never a nearly man to begin with.
I’ll just repeat to anyone who still thinks I’m saying Pochettino is as good a manager as Ancelotti - no, nowhere near.
It just goes to show that anyone claiming that a manager can’t be a good manager if he’s came in 2nd or 3rd a few times with Tottenham and has one league trophy in two seasons at PSG, that this proves he is a ‘nearly man’ - no, Carlo Ancelotti’s example proves that this reasoning is non-sense.
I think it's daft because Poch is on his 6th appointment now in c.16 years of management and he's only won things at a club that everyone wins things at so his body of work is quite large now and he's won very little and suggests that he isn't a manager who will win you things and have you at the very top. He's a good manager but not in the elite.
In contrast Ancelotti was winning things c. 5-7 years into his managerial career and built up the body of work of consistently winning from therein, so the use of Everton and Napoli as examples are irrelevant as they're the exception in his career rather than the norm.
In the career of Poch, not winning is the norm compared to the exception of PSG, where as alluded to, is a club that most managers, if not all, win something.
Already in retirement mode? Quite disappointing.
Yeah, if only everything had gone differently for Poch, he could have the same collection of trophies Ancelotti has. So who’s to say whose the better coach.
Like I said - it’s daft if you compare CVs or try to establish who is the best manager. It’s not daft if you try to evaluate what those results with those particular clubs prove to you about claims like ‘he’s a nearly man’ like you said, or that he is a useless manager or that USNT is ‘his level’ like others here have said.
In Pochettino’s 13 seasons as club manager/head coach, he has managed Espanyol for 3 1/2 seasons, Southampton for 1 1/2, Tottenham for 5, PSG for 1 1/2 and Chelsea for one season. He has one league title, one domestic cup title, one CL Final and one CL SF.
Limit Ancelotti to those appointments, and I will bet you that he would not have markedly better results than Pochettino has in 13 years. Ancelotti’s ability to get hired by better clubs early in his carreer is a key feature that pulls him apart from Pochettino. Getting to 0-0 at full time instead of 0-1 in his first CL final also seems a decisive factor. In his first 13 seasons he was hired by Reggiana one season and the other 12 he was at super-rich Parma, Juventus and AC Milan. He had won 1 league title, 1 coppa Italia, and 2 CL finals with Milan, Italy’s richest club at a time when Italian club football was the dominant league alongside La Liga. And we are talking about one of the greates ever club managers in the history of football. Pochettino has only had 1 1/2 season in a club comparable to 12 of those Ancelotti seasons in terms of the state of the club.
And again, the point about mentioning the genius Ancelotti in the same breath as the on the whole so far quite impressive good head coach Pochettino in this thread, is simply to say that looking at what Pochettino’s made out of his appointments so far and judging them on sweeping generalizations like ‘he’s just won one league in 16 years’ and ‘he’s a nearly man’ is a lazy way of missing that he has mostly done very well with the teams he’s had, and his results in no way prove that he can’t be a trophy winner in the future.
Arguing that Poch didn’t manage as many topclubs as Ancelotti did, isn’t that good of an argument in defense of Poch as many seem to think. The reason Real, Barca, Bayern and so on aren’t interested in him, is most likely that the people in charge there seem to think he’s just not good enough.
As always it's about making predictions and Poch hasn't shown to me, and many, that he's capable of being a consistent trophy winner at a bigger club. I haven't even said he's rubbish and point out he's a good manager, he just isn't an elite one to me. Being a 'nearly man' to me doesn't mean you're a rubbish manager or haven't done well with clubs at times, but it does mean it's the difference between being a good manager and an elite one.
David Moyes for example managed to win a trophy with West Ham and achieved incredible things with us at Everton, including an FA Cup Final and top 4 finish when we didn't really have any right to, but I wouldn't consider him an elite manager either, just a good one.
Good luck to him, not expected to win anything so will suit him.
I still don’t know why they decided to part ways with him when it looked like everything was coming together. They looked quite decent towards the end of the season, with the exception of the Arsenal game, and he’d managed to make a connection with the players.
So pretty much the same as every NT coach spare two or three then.
All fair that you don’t think he’s proven that he is the man to win you things. He hasn’t proven that, I agree (well he has of course proven he is a man that can win you things, since he actually won things, but anyway, I get what you mean by that).
But it’s not the same as what you wrote, that he had proven he is not the man to win you things. He hasn’t proven that. You can’t prove that with 11 seasons at Espanyol, Sot’on, Spurs and Boehly FC. Even the rightful genius Ancelotti couldn’t prove such a thing after six seasons at Reggiana, Parma, Juventus and AC Milan winning nothing.
And this is incidentally the one point where it makes sense to compare the two, whereas in most other questions it would be useless.
There will be a bit of expectation that they do well in 2026. I reckon will be considered a failure if he doesn't get to the 2nd knockout game.
I think he has proven that, if you disagree that's fine, he's got c.16 years of managerial experience that have indicated that to me thus far and it will take a lot to change it. I don't think he will. I think other clubs probably think that too given he isn't getting a sniff of any of the big jobs and he's now manager of the US national team.
Ancelotti did prove he could and continued to prove he could.
Are the US paying him a lot?
It seems like it's a move to not get embarrassed on home soil. Poch isn't a winner but his cup runs are generally good and the US know they won't win the world cup but if he can get quarters or the semi finals while playing attractive football it will be worthwhile from an American perspective.
It seems like it's a move to not get embarrassed on home soil. Poch isn't a winner but his cup runs are generally good and the US know they won't win the world cup but if he can get quarters or the semi finals while playing attractive football it will be worthwhile from an American perspective.
He finished strong but when assessing his tenure overall things were far from solid for the vast majority of the season.
Under him our midfield and defense were all over the place, which is why we conceded 63 goals in the PL. We did score a decent amount of goals but I have to say it often felt like quite a large amount of the goals were scored due to individual moments of talent rather than consistently creating chances through good team play. Palmer coming up with something out of nowhere bailed Poch out way too many times to count.
There is of course an argument to be made whether Poch could have built on that late-season form and improved things further going into the new season. It's definitely one possibility, but another is that the late-season good form was a purple patch and in time things would have evened out to the same level of mediocrity as most of the season was. Then there's also the question of the injuries and Pochettino's role in that. There have been some claims that Pochettino's training methods and his chaotic high-pressing game style played a part in the team having so many non-contact muscle injuries over the season. I have no idea whether that's actually true or not but knowing his game style and the physical toll it takes on the players it doesn't sound too far fetched to me.
All in all I would say keeping Pochettino would have been a gamble. Replacing him with a manager as inexperienced as Enzo Maresca was definitely an even bigger gamble but it was also one that I feel comes with a higher upside if everything goes accordingly. Best case scenario with Poch is we perpetually fight for top4 while the best case scenario with Maresca is we might eventually even fight for the league title within a couple of seasons. But if things go wrong under Maresca we could somehow end up being even worse than the lowest under Poch so really it's all just a big balancing act of risk management.
I personally wouldn't have been against giving Poch another chance this season but I'd also be lying if I said I was disappointed to see him go.
yes the expectations are pretty simple.
show some courage and a sibilance of attacking, entertaining football. And make it past the rd of 16 at our home world cup.
This is an excellent hire by the USA Federation. As other posters have said, the USA job doesn't have a ton of expectations (Beat Mexico and Win Gold Cup). With the 2026 World Cup in the USA/Mexico/Canada, all that is required is to play some good football and get out of the groups. If that happens it will be considered a huge win and step forward.
Part of the reason I feel the USA chased Klopp and now Poch is to have a "big name" to raise the expectations of the program.
Part of the reason I feel the USA chased Klopp and now Poch is to have a "big name" to raise the expectations of the program.
Does he only go after jobs where he can’t win anything?
By "multiple top 2 finishes" with Tottenham, you mean just the one in 2016/17?
He did also finish 3rd with them a couple of times, so I wouldn't normally be so pedantic, but you did counter another person's negative comment about Pochettino with "Yet another falsehood peddled on the Caf" - so I thought yours also warranted calling out.
I think it's a solid appointment all round. The US have done well to look at, and get, a good manager with a solid CV. While for Pochettino, it'll be an interesting and exciting time to dip his toe into international management leading up to the US hosting rhe 2026 World Cup.
I imagine he'll be looking to get back into club management after that - though whether his stock will be deemed lower or higher after a couple of years with the US (so effecting the calibre of European clubs interested in him at that stage) will depend on if he can get them playing well and reaching the later stages. An early exit, silimar to this years Copa America which they hosted, won't help him land a big job first up.
Last edited:
He’s the managerial equivalent of Sneijder, in that we will get linked with him every window
They probably are, I suspect Poch has another ambition as well, if he does a decent job with US national team he'll probably be a contender for Argentina down the line
He's more of a si senor
If we have a slow start the rewriting of history with Poch is going to be excruciating.
My only hope was one of our rivals would have fallen for it but even that's out of the window now.
I mean there’s an argument to be made he’d not be a success here but considering we’ve had Ole and Ten Hag during that period, finished 6th, 8th and been beaten 7-0, 5-0 and several other hammerings. I’m not sure you can class it as dodging a bullet. Unless we dodged a bullet and then went straight into an even bigger bullet.
As regards Ten Hag being 'an even bigger bullet', I'd personally much rather finish 3rd and then 8th - but win major trophies each of those seasons - rather than finish top 4 both times but remain trophyless.
I guess it's all about the old Arsene Wenger 'Top 4 trophy' attitude. I never agreed with it then or now - many scoffed at it at the time, but now it currently seems to be a prevalent viewpoint.
Poch could well have matched if not broke the all time PL loss record at Anfield last season if it wasn't for Nunez's inexplicably poor finishing. It was worse than your 7-0 there but like i said thankfully Nunez was full Nunez that night.
He also got hammered at St James Park, Anfield and at Old Trafford (the 'close' scoreline flattered us, you should have scored 4 before you got 1) aswell at at home to Wolves.
If last season was anything to go by you'd have had more of those type of batterings with Poch at the helm, not less.
But we dont know if Poch wouldnt have won trophies here. He won trophies at PSG but didnt at Spurs (like everyone who manages Spurs)
Well we kind of dont have to use hypothetics. United were literally the second worse defensive team behind Sheffield United last season when it came to Xg against, so no it wouldnt have been worse , we dont need to even use hypothetics, all the stats are there for how bad United were last season. We were literally one of the worse teams in the league defensively and got away with opposition poor finishing week in week out. if we started listing the games United should have been hammered in, the list would never end.
Geniunly interested why he's considered this great manager.
You should have met Amadeus, according to him Poch was a living god
True. But that's why I quoted both posts
I was responding to - as the scenarios being discussed there were finishing 2nd and 3rd but winning no trophies (Poch at Spurs) or what we've achieved under Ole and ETH.
The former was described as us 'dodging a bullet', but the latter then described in response as going 'straight into an even bigger bullet'.
I was just saying I'd much prefer the latter option under ETH, of one top 4 finish and two trophies, to two top 4 finishes but no trophies.
But as you say, we don't actually know what Pochettino would've delivered here - for better or worse.
Going from Berhalter to Poch - amazing times!
True. Or Gaitan, Garay... It's a long list. We could probably even make a lineup of players that were linked with United for years but never actually signed for club.Amadeus
The fall off is staggering.