Three years ago, the United States Soccer Federation released a dossier that I’m still surprised was ever made public. It was titled, “A BREAKDOWN OF THE RIGOROUS PROCESS IN THE SEARCH FOR THE USMNT HEAD COACH.”
World Cup 2026
The report claimed that the federation had employed things like “advanced data analytics, sophisticated metrics, and cutting-edge hiring methods” to find its next manager of the U.S. men’s national team. Then the federation bragged about the person who oversaw it all:
“When the U.S. Soccer Federation hired Matt Crocker after years of service with English Football Association and Southampton in the English Premier League, he entered the soccer landscape in the United States with a fresh pair of eyes and a rigorous set of criteria for his primary responsibility at the outset of his tenure: identifying the best coach to lead the U.S. men’s national team.”
The cutting-edge criteria and the expert outsider perspective led the USSF to the man who would lead the USMNT to the promised land: the guy who was already there. After the 2022 World Cup, U.S. Soccer took six months and employed what it said was a “battery of practical and psychological testing” to figure out that it just wanted to keep Gregg Berhalter as the coach. Berhalter was signed to a new three-year contract, and 12 months later, when the U.S. was eliminated from the group stage of the
Match Details
Rather than going through another data-driven dog-and-pony show to replace Berhalter — what if the “sophisticated metrics” led back to him again? — U.S. Soccer decided to keep it simple and lean on the two things America does better than anyone else: creating celebrities and producing billionaires.
The federation decided it wanted a famous coach with an obvious track record, and so it got an uber-rich hedge-fund manager, Citadel’s Ken Griffin, to help foot the bill to hire Mauricio Pochettino at a $6-million-a-year salary.
Pochettino is one of the most successful club coaches of the modern era. His teams all play a clear and recognizable style, pressing high up the field and taking risks. They are so-called “protagonists” in their matches: imposing their style and bending the shape of the game to their intensity.
Tournament Impact
The USMNT had never been protagonists before — until this summer. Crocker left the federation for Saudi Arabia, but Pochettino got the team pushing high, pressing hard, and scoring lots of goals. He transformed the way the U.S. men’s national team plays.
And it didn’t matter at all.
On Monday, the U.S. was knocked out of the World Cup in the round of 16, the same stage the Americans exited their past three World Cups. Use artificial intelligence, hire McKinsey, convince a billionaire to become American soccer’s modern Medici, put an ad on Craigslist: the result is always going to be the same. The head coach is never going to save the national team.
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