Will Pochettino Matter?
In soccer, do coaches really matter?
That’s been a “fun” little debate that’s been had back and forth across the internet, with proponents of the more extreme views squaring off in the public square. The “no” position sits well as an inflammatory statement, generating engagement from the people who clearly feel like the man at the top means something to the way the game is played out. And those instincts cause a gut level reaction that makes it hard not to respond. And the wheel of content grinds on.
The actual answer lies in the middle, and doesn’t really drive engagement (the singular currency of the internet era) the same way. Coaches matter — that’s why they’re paid so much — but they matter a whole lot less than the players. After all, soccer happens on the fly. Coaches don’t get to call timeouts to work up elaborate plays like they do in basketball, and they definitely don’t have a defined playcalling system and script like they would in American football. The most significant influence they have is in changing the players through substitutions, and with only 5 of those that influence is fairly limited as well.
The Twitter Tacticos don’t want you to believe that. They want everything to be a chess match, a battle of wits with increasingly intricate movements determined by bald headed psychopaths with furrowed brows watching hours and hours of tape. The “Great Man” theorists believe that these managers are born for their positions, the stars aligning in beautiful symmetry as they make their debut on the planet.
Those same Tacticos also are notable in that they don’t seem to have any real belief in luck. Everything is deterministic, rock will always beat scissors, and every loss is underpinned by a failure. Nowhere is this more obvious than the threads you will get about body language in the wake of a penalty shootout (notably — never analysis before the shootout).
The point being, you can’t trust these people. They are hucksters. Luck is real, player differences drive outcomes over the long haul, and coaches are really there to get blamed and fired to save the sporting director their job.
The argument looks even more ridiculous when you see the amount of cheerleading that happened for BJ Callaghan and Anthony Hudson — two well meaning but ultimately fairly inconsequential interim managers. The same voices that demanded better coaching were placated by chair fillers carrying out the same style with the same players in the same competitions. How much could coaching matter really?
What About International Management?
Now, managing a club team is a totally different approach than managing a national team. You have a budget, and your sporting director acquires and pays players within that structure. Having more money is usually a path to having better players, but of course there are many ways to squander that money. If, as a manager, you want a player — let’s say a defensive midfielder — you can in theory sign tens of thousands of players. That might be constrained by work permits, or budget, but even then you can get a working shortlist of thousands of players to look through. Scouting is paramount, and being able to filter through large numbers of individuals accurately is a huge part of the job.
Another issue is roster flexibility. After all, these players sign contracts and cannot easily be moved. If you want to bring someone in, you have to send someone out, and that is a whole process in and of itself. That means overall turnover is fairly limited even in a club with near bottomless pockets, and each signing represents an opportunity cost. Multiple misses cannot be undone except over multiple transfer windows, and so getting each and every signing correct is paramount.
That’s not the case in international management. While your total realistic player pool may be measured in the tens or hundreds, and nowhere near the thousands, there is no rule saying you can’t completely turn over your entire team in between camps. That means the manager, who has final say in picking the team, has a lot more control over who is on the field than the average club manager does. Since player difference drives the outcomes, then in theory the manager who has the most control over player difference would have the most impact. There’s also the impact on the margins of recruiting dual nationals, something very important to the USA. If you can win important players to your national side, you can make a lasting impact on the team.
That said, I do think there’s more to international management than trying to assemble a nation’s 23 “best players”. In fact, although I have not seen any literature on this, I think the relationship between player wages (the single best indicator of player quality) and wins is probably much less strong in the international game. Instead, the formation of a clear but simple tactical system where each player role is maximized for best fit is probably an effective way to win, and much more in the domain of the coach.
To sum it up — I think coaches probably matter more at the international level than club level due to their increased impact on the players who are on the team and their responsibility for fitting players into a framework. A good deal of ink is spilled over the difficulty of establishing a “system” with a group of players you have relatively limited time with, but I think that’s actually a lesser issue.
Ok, but what about Pochettino?
At this point, it’s believed that Pochettino is going to be the next manager of the USMNT. Through the history of the federation, there has never been a more successful or decorated manager. Klinsmann had more success as a player, and was world famous before being a manger, but Pochettino has not just managed at the highest level but won trophies as well.
At the same time, Pochettino’s current legacy is as a manager who couldn’t quite push his best teams past expectations. His inability to win anything meaningful with Tottenham and of course his failure to win Champions League (and Ligue 1) with Paris Saint-Germain are black marks on an otherwise excellent record, which may cause some fans to have a little concern. Personally, I’m not worried; his 1.45 PPG with Southampton is far more instructive about his ability to do more with less than any of his more high profile failures where anything but perfection wasn’t enough.
Will he matter?
It depends. The USMNT player pool is in a weird spot right now. Many of the promising young players like Ricardo Pepi or Folarin Balogun are not playing enough. Many of the older more established players are dealing with stalled careers. Some, like Tim Ream, are aging out of their ability to contribute in a meaningful way. Pochettino’s challenge is going to be managing a time of transition, but doing so quickly enough to be ready for a World Cup in less than 2 years.
Berhalter had a much longer runway but still managed to have trouble in key areas. His midfields were poorly constructed and lacked synergy well into 2022 World Cup qualifying, and in many ways fell backwards into the “MMA” midfield that ended up being the preferred choice. His possession system was often woefully inadequate in creating chances, both in general and for his strikers in particular. He abandoned any real effort to create sustained pressure in zone 14. Finally, the combative press fell apart over the course of the World Cup without the player depth to support it, and the same approach resulted in underwhelming performances in the Copa America.
There’s no question luck played a role in Berhalter’s sacking, and even more than that he really couldn’t control every single player performance that he was being called into account over. At the same time, it was not a specific moment but the gradual compounding of 5 years of evidence that made it clear he was no longer the man for the job (if he ever was).
Here’s to 2026
There’s no question that Matt Crocker has come in and made a big splash with his hirings. He found immediate success with Emma Hayes, who came in and took gold in the Paris Olympics. Now, he’s swung for the fences again with another former Chelsea manager. It’s brought a great deal of excitement to the program after a significant lull following the underwhelming managerial rehire. This is a chance for incredible momentum heading into the most important tournament in USMNT history.
Mauricio Pochettino is no stranger to building from the ground up, and his preferred style is a close enough match to what we have seen that it should be a fairly smooth transition. In the end, though, his success is going to be predicated on his ability to identify the right players for the system he runs — no matter what team they’re playing for or league they’re playing in.
Pochettino has a big task ahead of him. He’s got to take the team to heights it hasn’t reached before, with a talent level that’s questionable at best and in many ways stagnating. We know that a huge part of that is going to be luck — whether it’s tournament draws, fitness going into the tournament, or simply the reality that sometimes the ball doesn’t go in the net.
That’s why a large part of evaluating Pochettino’s success with the USMNT will be more about process than performance. Is he picking players that fit together? Is he asking his team to play in a way that makes sense for the context of the match? Is he willing and able to make hard choices about personnel?
All that remains to be seen. Either way — I’m here for the ride.
