The energy, warmth and vivacious sense of fun is all there. A break from the day-to-day of club management has, it seems, done wonders for Mauricio Pochettino who arrives for our interview relaxed, happy and full of enthusiasm after a lunch in the London sunshine.
It was a very different Pochettino to the one I last saw 10 months or so ago a few weeks before leaving Chelsea. He is about to jump back on a plane to the USA to prepare his side to take on Panama in the CONCACAF semi-finals ahead of next year’s World Cup, which the USA are co-hosting with Mexico and Canada. Life, though, could have looked very different for the Argentine on this sunny day in London where football is football and most definitely not soccer.
His Chelsea departure after he and the club “mutually agreed to part ways” took some by surprise after he had finished the season strongly guiding Chelsea to a League Cup final, the FA Cup semi-finals and a sixth-placed finish to gain Europa Conference League qualification.
Pochettino became USA head coach in September 2024
By the time he left, there was a growing harmony with most of the fans although “the love” that he had had at other clubs was never there, but Pochettino looked to have lost a bit of his mojo amid the business of Chelsea. So came the first of his big decisions of the last year.
“I think always when something doesn’t work it’s better to stop and to look at different things and I think it was the best decision for both sides,” Pochettino says. “Yes, I think both sides are happy to split and then to be open to see different options, and different options appear.”
They did for various clubs and countries but Pochettino’s next big decision of the last 12 months was to become head coach of the USA in September.
“Maybe it’s not easy for the people to understand why,” he says. “I think being the national coach or head coach of the USA with the World Cup in 2026, I think for a coaching staff like us, after too many years working in clubs, I think it was a great opportunity for us to challenge ourselves, to know how to discover and to learn doing things in different ways.
“I think it was a great opportunity and that is why we started to pay attention and when the offer arrived, I think it was easy to say yes.
Pochettino will lead the USA team at their home World Cup next year
“I think to host the World Cup is an amazing experience. Then with the country that we are talking about, the USA, I think it’s amazing. Too many good things appear in this moment and of course one of the reasons to take the job was because hosting the World Cup is very close. It isn’t waiting four years to play the World Cup, it was less than two years.
“I am so excited because I think the decision was good, I am enjoying it a lot and I think it’s so exciting to discover every single day different things to work on and different emotions. It’s a completely different job than in the past, a mystery because it’s a completely different world but I think we are really, really enjoying that situation.”
‘Timing wasn’t right for England job’
Pochettino had been a contender for the England job which Thomas Tuchel (right) was given
I suggest to Pochettino that he might have been preparing another nation for those finals if reports after the departure of Sir Gareth Southgate linking him to the England job are to be believed. So was it a possibility?
He pauses for a moment and then says: “It’s always about the timing.
“I was talking with my former president Daniel Levy [Tottenham chairman] and he says always football is about timings and he always told me, ‘Mauricio, always it’s timing’.
“It’s true because he has experience in football and it’s a privilege to be head coach of the England national team but the timings sometimes are not in the same, in the moment that you can be available like this and this option disappears.”
It was of course another former Chelsea head coach, Thomas Tuchel, who got the job but there’s a sense that it could have been quite different.
Poch: I want Spurs return one day and still talk to Levy
Ex-Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino (left) retains a ‘very good relationship’ with the club’s chairman Daniel Levy
The mention of Daniel Levy and the pair’s relationship took me by surprise. Six years after leaving Tottenham he still cites the club’s chairman as a sounding board. That must be a rarity I say to him, and Pochettino looks at me like I am mad.
“Why?” he says, and I remind him, “Because he sacked you.”
He replies: “You’re talking about two different sides, professional and personal and I’ve seen always the appreciation in between both.
“He is always there and he’s going to be there. It’s another thing to take professional decisions. It’s true after nearly six years with all that we lived together, it was tough because of all the ups and downs and emotional things that we lived.
“I’ve seen always it’s difficult in football that that doesn’t affect all this type of situation in your relationship. For us, we split very well. One thing was professional, another personal and now, like the day after we left Tottenham, we keep always a very, very good relationship.”
Does he ever think there’s another chapter of that story to go with Spurs? Could he ever see himself back there?
He responds: “Look, when I left the club I always remember one interview I said I would like one day to come back to Tottenham and that is of course,” Pochettino pauses and continues, “I am in the USA, I am not going to no, I’m not going to talk about that, but what I said then still after six years or five years, I still feel in my heart that, yes, I would like one day to come back. We see the timing, like Daniel said.”
Levy (left) and Pochettino worked together for five years at Spurs before the Argentine was sacked in November 2019
For the moment Ange Postecoglou is the man in charge at Spurs and, after coming through the last-16 tie against AZ Alkmaar, the quarter-finals of the Europa League await.
Pochettino still follows his old side closely and has urged the need for time and trust.
He says: “We suffered something in Chelsea from the beginning when we suffered too many issues and when you don’t have your squad you cannot manage this type of thing and it forces you to try to find different ways to approach the team and it is always going to affect your result.
“It’s not an excuse because it happened with other teams, but sometimes that happens and you need to trust. I think they start to feel and to recover the path to start to win and then to start to improve in the Premier League.”
He understands the frustration of the fans and talks passionately about what has been created at the club – the training ground and the stadium – but it’s tangible footballing rewards that he hopes Tottenham can also get to celebrate.
That is perhaps all for something in the future. For the moment the focus is on the World Cup. He thought he had left the “pressure and scrutiny” behind when he departed Chelsea, but only last week FIFA President Gianni Infantino was piling the pressure back on during a visit to the White House to see Donald Trump.
Pochettino smiles and says, “I saw with Infantino, and Infantino said, ‘Oh, the USA can win the World Cup’. The President asked, ‘Can we win?’ Maybe he needs to ask me directly because I don’t believe that Infantino can say three, four names of our players.”
Pretend I am Trump and I ask you that question. “If he asks me, I say yes,” Pochettino admits. “President, with your help, with the fans in behind hosting the World Cup, all is possible.”
I did after all say the enthusiasm, confidence and swagger was back.
