In September 2024, Pochettino was handed the challenge of leading the United States into a World Cup they will co-host with Canada and Mexico.
Yet it has not all been plain sailing.
Pochettino has won 11 of his 20 matches at the helm and defeats to the likes of Mexico (twice), Panama, Canada, Turkey, Switzerland and South Korea have drawn criticism.
He has also reportedly faced issues around changing the culture, external and mindset of his players and been unhappy about arriving at home matches only to find that the visiting supporters significantly outnumber, external American fans.
And all this has come while he acclimatises to the different demands placed on an international boss.
“The intensity is completely different because you need to arrive for a few days to prepare the game and play, prepare another game, play, and go back,” Pochettino continued.
“After November, we are going to have three months until March to prepare another game. In a national team you are desperate to coach the players.
“You feel empty because after the second game you cannot have communication and you cannot keep working on improving things.”
The United States have only ever reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup on one occasion, in 2002.
The MLS was formed in 1995, one year after the US hosted the 1994 World Cup, and has improved and grown significantly since then, with Lionel Messi’s arrival in 2023 evidence of a changed landscape.
“I think players like Messi are helping the kids, not only when the kids want to play basketball or American football or baseball, they now want to play also soccer,” added Pochettino, who stressed his employers have told him to use the term soccer rather than football to avoid public confusion.
He added: “The motivation is massive. Sometimes you feel that people don’t understand too much.
“You find some coaches that say, ‘oh you know, you need to know the culture of the American player’. I say, ‘No, I know the most important thing – the culture of football and soccer. We need to translate the culture of football to the American player’.
“I think after one year we are making great progress. We are building [ideas] with people that the language of football is only one and it doesn’t care if you are American, Brazilian or English. Our football is [to] compete in the way that you need to compete, if you want to win.”
