The Athletic FC: Pochettino on USMNT pressure, USL vote to bring in promotion/relegation

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Hello! Mauricio Pochettino’s appointment sent football in the United States down a brave new road. Now promotion and relegation is about to do the same.

Coming up:

🇺🇸 Poch’s big USMNT ambitions
🗳️USL passes historic pro-rel vote
🚫’Disgraceful’ CL pitch
🤯Huge Robben coincidence

Full beam: Pochettino on pressure and belief USMNT can be No 1 in the world

The task of managing Chelsea took a pound of flesh from Mauricio Pochettino and his sharp turn into international coaching was interpreted by some as a conscious step away from the heat.

Countries, after all, ask less of a head coach than clubs. The pressure to sleep in the office is not quite the same (even if a certain former Chile employee used to do precisely that). Pochettino linking arms with the USMNT was a complete change of lifestyle and scrutiny. Or so we presumed.

For sure, it has been in one respect. He’s six months into the U.S. job, with fewer than 10 games behind him. Four weeks on the club circuit can be busier than that and it is only tomorrow, in a Concacaf Nations League semi-final against Panama, that the stakes ratchet up. All the same, do not mistake Poch in the States for a low-risk detox in the sun.

Jack Pitt-Brooke took part in a media briefing with him in London last week for this article on The Athletic. Pochettino cuts a relaxed, energised and optimistic figure, but he’s plainly aware that the spotlight on him is no small beam. Because the U.S. is suddenly at the centre of soccer’s universe and that puts Poch near the centre of it, too, with millions of eyeballs on him.

‘They want to win’

That, realistically, was part of the appeal. With a track record listing Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Paris Saint-Germain, Pochettino wasn’t going to undercut his reputation. As the USMNT gig becomes less obscure, targets like him become far more attainable.

But he cannot have predicted quite how politically charged the game in America would be, from this year’s Club World Cup to the 2026 World Cup, co-hosted by the United States with Mexico and Canada.

U.S. president Donald Trump is starting to spend time on football’s stage. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, a friend of Trump’s and mutual headline generator, has started popping up in the Oval Office. Only this month, Trump asked Infantino if the USMNT could win in 2026. Infantino read the cue by insisting they could.

It’s a nice soundbite but a narrative Pochettino would probably prefer to dampen. In the modern era, the USMNT have gone no further than the quarter-finals and they’re 16th in FIFA’s world rankings. But Poch is noticing that America lives for top billing in sports.

“The pressure is going to be there because we are a host,” he said. “It’s a country where the mentality is about winning. In everything that Americans are involved in, they want to win.” He’s got the memo.

‘The USA was a mystery’

I picked out a few of the other choice quotes from the extended conversation with Pochettino:

• On why he said yes to the USMNT: “For the challenge to live and experience a different culture. (The) USA was a mystery for me. The people are completely different.”
• On enigmatic forward Gio Reyna: “It’s not only about knowing if he can play well, it’s about if he can create a good atmosphere in the team.”
• On U.S. ambitions: “In five or 10 years, for sure we can be No 1 in the world.”
• On one day returning to Spurs, where he almost lifted the Premier League and Champions League: “I would like to win with Tottenham. We were so close and it was so painful.”

That final quote speaks to unfinished business on the club front, but the quote before it, a forthright prediction of USMNT power, is essentially why U.S. Soccer went all in on Poch. Go big or go home.

News round-up

USL Championship

• A big breaking story in America overnight: promotion and relegation is coming to the United Soccer League. Paul Tenorio landed the exclusive after a vote among USL owners yesterday. It’s the first professional league in the States to adopt pro-rel, with 2028 pencilled in as a launch date — and a good excuse to clip this banger-of-the-week from the USL’s Phoenix Rising, above.
• Arsenal Women lost 2-0 to Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final last night, but the real story was the ‘disgrace’ of a pitch they were forced to play on at Real’s Estadio Alfredo Di Stefano. It might have contributed to Arsenal’s first concession (below, by Linda Caicedo) and there’s no way the men’s edition would tolerate a swamp like it.

City cashflow: Revenue rise of 1,259%… but still room to grow?

After unleashing Chris Weatherspoon — aka The BookKeeper — on Manchester United’s finances yesterday, he’s bringing yin to the yang of Old Trafford by cutting through Manchester City’s figures this morning.

Commercially, City are a money-making machine. Their revenue has risen by an extraordinary 1,259 per cent since the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) bought them out in 2008. But in light of their vast income (a club record £715m, or $928m, last season), the unexpected lines in Chris’ overview were what stuck in my head.

For instance, City might have money to burn, but their net spend between 2020 and 2024 (transfer fees in minus transfer fees out) was only the sixth highest in the Premier League. Their total losses under ADUG are not far off half a billion. And most strikingly, their matchday income is miles off the pace — £138m behind Real Madrid’s in 2023-24. So for all their success, there’s room to grow yet.

Around TAFC

Catch a match

(Times ET/UK)

Women’s Champions League quarter-finals first leg: Wolfsburg vs Barcelona, 1.45pm/5.45pm; Manchester City vs Chelsea, 4pm/8pm — both DAZN/TNT Sports.

And finally…

Bayern Munich

Arjen Robben won the 2013 Champions League final for Bayern Munich in the penultimate minute of normal time. The goalkeeper he beat, Borussia Dortmund’s Roman Weidenfeller, will have replayed that moment in his sleep.

But on Monday night, Weidenfeller was forced to relive it in technicolour when he conceded a match-defining goal to Robben during an indoor game involving Bayern and Dortmund legends.

It was part of the Beckenbauer Cup, a bit of fun arranged by Bayern to honour the late Franz Beckenbauer. And if you give Robben’s 2013 finish another glance, the likeness is exceptionally uncanny. It’s history stalking poor Weidenfeller.

(Top photo: Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)