USA make Pep Guardiola ‘top target’ to replace Mauricio Pochettino
Pep Guardiola is a “top target” to become the next USA head coach with Mauricio Pochettino set to leave the role and become the next Manchester United manager.
Michael Carrick was finally sacked by United on Thursday morning and, as The Independent first reported a few days ago, Pochettino is being lined up for a return to club football to take over at Old Trafford.
The deal is currently being finalised, with an official announcement expected relatively soon, although the specifics of when exactly the Argentine will leave his USMNT role is not clear, with a two-legged Concacaf Nations League quarter-final clash against Haiti taking place on Saturday and Tuesday.
Whether Pochettino remains in charge for those two matches or not, the US will soon have to embark on a search for a new coach and The Athletic are reporting that ex-Manchester City boss Guardiola is their preferred early choice.
Guardiola left Man City after 10 trophy-laden years – the legitimacy of some of which have been thrown into doubt with the club being found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules – this summer and is yet to return to management. US Soccer has reportedly discussed the Spaniard internally as a candidate across multiple levels of the federation’s hiring process.
It certainly would not be an easy appointment, with the 55-year-old being the leading, currently available coach in world football and showing no rush to jump back into management after the end of his City tenure.
He was in the frame for the Italy job a couple of months ago but turned them down, with Italian football federation president Giovanni Malago telling La Repubblica: “Pep was honest. He took a sabbatical, partly for family reasons, but if he’d done anything, he would have done it with us.” Instead, Roberto Mancini returned to manage the Azzurri for a second time.
Guardiola is reported to have long been intrigued by the prospect of working in the United States, and enjoyed his time in New York during a year-long sabbatical after leaving Barcelona in 2012 – including the relative anonymity of living in the US’ biggest City.
He has previously had discussions with US Soccer, who have long been keen to attract him to the role and when Pochettino was appointed in 2024, Guardiola wished him luck, saying in a press conference: “The USA is fascinating to try to build a project for many years and being able to get the national team to the next step. The potential with the USA is there for the amount of people and sports and so on.”
After the two-legged quarter-final with Haiti, the US won’t have another competitive game until March (although will have a training camp, mainly for domestic players, in December outside an official international window) giving them plenty of time to conduct a thorough managerial search and potentially allowing Guardiola a few more months away from football before diving back into management.
