Klinsmann: "Pochettino is just here to win games"
CHICAGO, Ill. — Mauricio Pochettino's appointment as the head coach of the U.S. Men's National Team shocked the world last fall. But former USMNT manager Jürgen Klinsmann feels that, unlike his own job responsibilities during his rollercoaster five-year tenure, the ambitious Argentine coach isn't here to change American soccer directly.
"Mauricio is just coming in to win games," Klinsmann said Thursday during a Q&A at the United Soccer Coaches Convention in Chicago. "Now we're leading up to the World Cup, and he knows that. He's coming in to make us maybe go to a quarterfinal or semifinal. That's our wish from Pochettino."
"He is not coming in to change the youth soccer landscape, the college system, or MLS. It's not his job, and he's not gonna spend time on that. He will spend time on gathering his players around him, figuring out who are the best players that I can bring to that World Cup, and how can I make sure that we go as far as we can."
It's easy to draw some parallels between Pochettino's hiring and Klinsmann's arrival in mid-2011. Both took over the national team mid-cycle from an American coach who had perhaps stayed one cycle too long, and both entered the gig as foreigners with no previous managerial experience in the United States. However, unlike Klinsmann, who succeeded Bob Bradley three years out from the World Cup in Brazil, "Poch" will have less than 20 games with his main group before the world's biggest sporting event comes to North America in 2026.
"I was brought in years ago to change the whole U.S. Soccer landscape," Klinsmann added. "To build the relationship with colleges, to build the league, and figure out a way for every single player (to develop). I was hammered because I called in a kid from Stanford and made him a national team player before he played professionally (Jordan Morris). Then, two years later, he was still playing for Stanford and got a million-dollar contract from Seattle Sounders."
"(Pochettino) is in a different time now with us going towards that fantastic World Cup in our own country, and he knows that. I saw him at the MLS Cup final and we talked; he knows he needs to get results for a whole soccer nation waiting for a big, big, big moment."
A World Cup winner with Germany as a player (1990) and a bronze medalist as a coach (2006), Klinsmann has had plenty of ups and downs in an eventful coaching journey that followed a legendary playing career. His most recent post, as head coach of the Korean national team, was certainly a unique one. The now-60-year-old took over the Taegeuk Warriors immediately following the 2022 World Cup and guided them to a semifinal finish at the 2024 Asian Cup; despite thrilling wins over Saudi Arabia and Australia in the knockout stages, he was unceremoniously dismissed after becoming deeply unpopular with the Korean public and federation staff.
Klinsmann said his biggest regret was not becoming familiar enough with Korean sporting culture, a particularly meaningful lesson that foreign national team coaches may take given the traditional idea that homegrown coaches perform better at the international level. The issue specifically came up during the Asian Cup when a fight broke out between team captain Heung-min Son and Lee Kang-in.
"Looking back at that now, I say to myself, 'I should have learned far more about their culture and about their way of hierarchy and about their way of dealing with things,'" Klinsmann said. "I mean, I learned a lot about the Korean people, and they're wonderful people, but I was not aware (of some things).
"The fight was drama, drama. I wish I would have known more about these things, and I believe that we should know how their family handles things and how their society handles things."
Read more:
https://meninred97.com/5-takeaways-from-pochettinos-usmnt-start/
https://meninred97.com/offseason-a-work-in-progress-says-berhalter/
https://meninred97.com/u-s-way-introduced-on-road-to-2026/
