'Made us even more proud to be American' - Mauricio Pochettino leaves USMNT for Man Utd with a culture reset and an unfinished legacy

Seated next to U.S. Soccer's decision-makers in New York, Pochettino was all smiles. It was September 2024, and the Argentine had just been named the USMNT's new head coach. The task was simple: guide the USMNT to the World Cup. His aims were bigger: win the thing.

"It's about creating something special; that is the most important thing," he said. "We are here because we want to win. We are winners. We are a successful, very successful coaching staff that sometimes maybe didn’t win; other times we won. But I think the most important thing is to create something special."

He added: "We need to really believe and think of big things. We need to believe that we can win, that we can win all [of the] games. We can win the World Cup."

That ambition was lofty, but it set the tone for Pochettino's tenure. The big question he and his staff often fell back on was "Why not us?" For so long, American soccer was told what it wasn't, but Pochettino wanted to shift the narrative to focus on what it could be. Answering that question was, at times, complicated. It required long looks in the mirror from Pochettino, his players and, at times, the American soccer ecosystem at large.

The Argentine's tenure started well enough, with posters spread around Austin ahead of his debut, Nations League wins over Jamaica and a January camp that seemingly lit a fire under Pochettino himself. The early days were full of promise and enthusiasm. Pochettino was handpicking new faces to add to the list of returning stars. All was good for the first few months.

Those vibes, however, shifted that March at the CONCACAF Nations League, and the rest of Pochettino's tenure was all about rebuilding from that very moment.

The losses in the Nations League were a wake-up call for Pochettino and everyone else that there was still something broken in the USMNT's culture.

That culture came into question in the weeks before Pochettino's arrival. After crashing out of the Copa America under previous manager Gregg Berhalter, a new voice was needed, one that would seize back power from the players and reshape the national team program. Yet, the team Pochettino walked into was one not quite ready for that culture shift. The end result? March 2025. Losses to Panama and Canada. Wake-up calls.

"We say, 'What the f***?'," Pochettino told reporters over a year later. "We were so excited about [the job] because we say, 'Oh, it's so close, the World Cup, so I think the people are desperate to help, to be involved, to come to the national team'. No, it was the opposite.

"That punch, we expected. I think it was more of a plan to have this punch that was painful, but was necessary for the people to realize in which place we were. Even for the players to realize that, in this way, it's impossible. It was impossible to arrive in good condition for the World Cup."

The change wasn't immediate. The USMNT's next gathering, the Gold Cup, was a firestorm, one that boiled over into a public battle between Pochettino and star Christian Pulisic. The latter asked to take the summer easy. The former said, "No chance". If Pochettino was to seize back that power, he would have to do it his way, and he did it by refusing to bend for the team's star player.

The Gold Cup, ultimately, was a success. Led by a young group of players that, crucially, wanted to be there, Pochettino mixed in the right amount of veteran know-how to get the team to the final. Once there, they couldn't quite get over the hurdle. Pochettino was seen in tears postgame after the finale loss to Mexico, not because of the loss but because the outside world could now use it to invalidate what those players had done that summer.

That summer, though, helped produce players who appear to be key to the USMNT long-term. Alex Freeman went from unknown to star. Matt Freese won the goalkeeper job and didn't let it go afterwards. And Sebastian Berhalter proved he was far more than just the son of Pochettino's predecessor as he became a USMNT star in his own right.

"He's done a lot for me," Berhalter said Thursday. "I think from Day 1, he's always believed in me. Before I set foot on the field, the way I play and the way that I try to carry myself, he just said, 'It doesn't matter what you're doing in the field, these are already the right things'. To be honest, I can't thank him enough for that, regardless of whether he's the coach or not the coach.

"I say it every time: he's meant so much to me, and he's helped me develop as a player and as a person. As a player, that's all I can ask for."

In players like Berhalter, Pochettino saw something and, post-Gold Cup, he saw it with the group as a whole. And, even when the fall began with an ugly loss to South Korea, he kept seeing it.

"The process is like when you put the seed in the soil," he said. "It's, at first, a seed. You don't see nothing, no? Then you start to grow the tree. It was difficult to explain the plan because it's not easy."

From there, the USMNT rattled off wins over Japan, Australia, Paraguay and Uruguay, the middle two of which ultimately became group stage opponents. Losses to Belgium and Portugal stung, but they were also reminders of how hard the USMNT would have to work to reach the level they'd want to.

Then came the World Cup, and, from the moment it arrived, nothing else mattered. That was what Pochettino was hired to do. It was over the course of those few games, not his tenure's few years, that he would write his legacy.

Even leading up to the World Cup, the rumor mill swirled. AC Milan were interested. Pochettino had to address one day after USMNT training, reaffirming his commitment to the World Cup run.

He was, in fact, committed, and he oversaw a run unlike any that had come before it. Not results-wise, of course, as the USMNT ultimately fell at the same Round of 16 hurdle they did last time. The way there, though, was different. It was a new-look USMNT.

With Pochettino at the helm, the USMNT were the aggressors. They demolished Paraguay in the opener. They took it to Australia in the second game. Even against Turkey, a game that included a heavily rotated USMNT, they were in it until the very end before conceding a late goal. The vibes were high, and they carried the 10-man U.S. right through a Round of 32 win over Bosnia & Herzegovina. It wasn't just the wins, but how the USMNT won. They did so by playing fun, attacking soccer that, as it continued, caught the attention of the rest of the world.

And then it all came crashing down. The now-infamous Folarin Balogun red card situation became a geopolitical incident and, 24 hours later, the USMNT were out. The fallout of Balogun's overturned red card didn't help, but Belgium were better, and much better would be putting it lightly. And so the World Cup dream ended with something worse than a whimper: an embarrassment.

Many expected that to be the end of Pochettino's time. It would be viewed as a period of extreme highs and some of the lowest lows the team has experienced, too. But then, surprisingly, Pochettino decided to come back, signing a four-year deal that would see him lead the U.S. into the 2030 World Cup cycle.

Few expected him to make it all the way through. He'd already been the subject of interest from Tottenham, Real Madrid and AC Milan. Yet it was logical to expect at least a few months of Pochettino. Maybe a few years.

It turned out to be just a few weeks before Man Utd came calling and ended a USMNT era for good just over 100 days into its second phase.

And so we reach the inevitable end, wondering what to make of it all. What was the Pochettino era? Was it a cultural reset, or what is more of the same? Was it something that changed things or a brief foray into the international coaching market for a one-off World Cup? Did the USMNT get better? Does it matter?

All complicated and nuanced questions centering around a complicated and nuanced manager. Pochettino's tenure, whatever it was, was a ride, one that shaped the USMNT and left the team in a very different place than it was before he arrived. At the very least, Pochettino leaves a foundation, one of accountability, but also one of belief. During his tenure, Pochettino believed in the USMNT project but, given his personal ambitions, that belief was always going to be replaced by his belief in his own abilities to manage at the very top of the sport. Despite their struggles, that's what Manchester United is. It's an elite job for an elite manager. The players he's leaving behind understand that fact.

"He wants us to just be of a mindset to go out there and win," Balogun said. "I think he's laid the foundation. I think us as players have that ownership to not just do that because the coach was in charge. I think we have the ownership as players to carry that out now because we know the standards. I think that's the benefit of having a top coach."

Back in the U.S., a new generation is rising. That generation, briefly, got to work alongside Pochettino on his way out the door. One of the reasons he initially signed on to manage a second cycle was the prospect of working with that new generation, one that seemingly has the potential to take American soccer even further than their predecessors.

But if that happens, it'll happen without Pochettino, who now heads to what appears to be his dream club. However, if American soccer does take a step forward in 2030 or beyond, it might just be one that could be traced back to Pochettino's culture shift, and it might just be the result of Pochettino's favorite question: "Why not?"

That, then, maybe his legacy: the questions. So, with that, so long, Mauricio Pochettino, a coach that left American soccer with more questions than answers, and that may not be a bad thing.

"He's created a great foundation and a great base for this team. We all know what's expected, and we're always working 100 percent," Berhalter said. "We're always fighting. We're always doing the little things to make sure we're representing this country the right way. I think he really instilled that in us.

"Even though he's an Argentinian coach, he made us even more proud to be American, and I think that speaks volumes of who he is as a person and as a coach."