With Mauricio Pochettino gone, the USMNT needs to stay the course

When times get tough, some people tend to buckle down and figure things out the hard way. Other people punt at the first sign of trouble or safety. Is Mauricio Pochettino adhering to the latter principle? Who knows.

But just two years after initially arriving in the United States, Pochettino is all but set to jump ship as the USMNT coach and sail back to Europe. The word is that he's going to head to the Premier League and take the Manchester United managerial role, with Michael Carrick leaving the post.

News initially started spreading on Tuesday, but the possibility of his departure grew exponentially on Wednesday. And when Fabrizio Romano says that something is happening, you know that something is truly happening. That's what's happening here; Romano himself confirmed that there was a deal between the two sides even without official word of Carrick's firing.

Only around 12 hours later, he confirmed that Carrick was sacked and that Manchester United was working towards appointing Pochettino.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new for Manchester United. We've seen the club fire coaches after only a short period of time, no matter their success.

One of the more notable recent examples is Erik ten Hag; despite showing an ability to win trophies, the club's league form was enough fuel for the front office to replace him with Ruud van Nistelrooy and then Ruben Amorim. The club's form improved under van Nistelrooy, and they made a run to the 2025 Europa League Final under Amorim. But the latter could not fully right the ship; losing that Europa League to Spurs and getting upset by Grimsby Town were only two of the results that bogged down Amorim's bid to win the full-time job.

In came Michael Carrick, who got the club back to Europe during the second half of the 2025-26 campaign. But a poor start to the season that saw the club tumble into the Premier League's relegation zone ultimately cost him his job.

Now comes Pochettino.

Whether he can save a United side that is currently 18th in the table and that has league fixtures against Liverpool and Brentford coming up right after the break remains to be seen. But recent history will put him in a very tough position.

Going forward, the USMNT needs to treat this managerial hiring period as the most important in the national team's history.

Even though Pochettino will draw the ire of a lot of Americans, his work in the United States helped to firmly establish the USMNT as a national team that not only can beat the best teams on the continent, but can also make their presence felt on the global stage. Say what you will about their World Cup group stage opposition, but Pochettino did end the national team's winless streak against European sides.

Even though the trophy haul and the FIFA World Rankings don't reflect that upward trajectory, he's nonetheless set the foundation for an American team that can once again reach its historic heights, perhaps even as soon as the next World Cup. Having significantly grown the player pool in recent months, Pochettino will leave an expansive depth chart for whoever his successor might be, one that offers plenty of options for building the strongest possible USMNT lineup.

Obviously, the big name is going to be Pep Guardiola. He'd be the dream hire for American soccer fans, and there is a higher level of interest than one might think. Not only did the federation recently establish that Guardiola would be at the top of their list, but this upcoming search won't be the first time that he's been a name to consider for U.S. Soccer.

Didier Deschamps would be an interesting hire. He most recently managed the French national team and got them to two World Cup finals and a very high-scoring third-place match. Another manager who could make a switch of national team to join the USMNT is ex-England manager Gareth Southgate; say what you will of his lineup decisions, but he did get England to a pair of European finals and a World Cup semifinal.

An underrated hire and my personal favorite would be ex-Morocco manager Walid Regragui. Though he doesn't bring the familiarity with a European system, something that Pochettino brought and that other contenders will bring, he is nonetheless a very capable manager, even with few openings to his name. And when compared to the four managers mentioned before (Pochettino included), he easily makes an impression. I'm not saying he has more accolades than all four of them, but his resume is more than capable of holding its own against the others on that list.

During his first year as the manager of the Moroccan national team, Regragui ended a 36-year World Cup knockout-round drought, getting Morocco to the top spot in a group that featured Belgium and 2018 World Cup runners-up Croatia. With knockout-round wins against Spain and Portugal, his Moroccan team was the first African nation to reach the semifinals at the World Cup.

Beyond that tournament, Morocco hasn't once fallen below 14th in the world rankings and became the third African nation to reach the top ten and the first since Egypt did it 17 years ago.

Bringing Regragui into the fold would mean that the USMNT gets a manager who has experience in terms of coaching at the international level and who can win such contests. The USMNT only scratched the surface when it came to Pochettino's tenure with the national team; bringing Regragui into the fold would mean that the team has an opportunity to learn how to consistently keep pace with Europe's biggest names.

Though Regragui won't have an Achraf Hakimi-led defense that can make an impression on the offensive side of the pitch, he will still have a backline that boasts plenty of goalscoring options, including Villarreal right back Alex Freeman and Philadelphia Union centerback Neil Pierre.

If you need discipline, Regragui brings that. Tyler Adams can easily control the defensive portion of the midfield in a potential 4-1-4-1, one of the branches of the 4-5-1 that Regragui generally employed during his time with the Moroccan national team.

Even then, the USMNT lacks the high-efficiency aerial striker that Regragui previously had in Youssef En-Nesyri; that's actually how Morocco gained the advantage in their 2022 World Cup quarterfinal against Portugal. That said, similar to how Regragui had Hakim Ziyech at his disposal, he will have a potent winger in Christian Pulisic to work with when it comes to creating crossing opportunities.

Either one of the aforementioned four options could easily help the USMNT continue the work started by Pochettino. Systematically, it's fair to argue that Regragui could make a lot of sense for the USMNT, though it remains to be seen how much interest the federation will dedicate if the likes of Guardiola and Deschamps express a significant level of interest.

The USMNT will want to get a new hire sealed by the time the March international window rolls around. Preferably, having a new manager appointed for the December friendly against Jamaica will give the team time to change tactics, but it's not the end of the world if the team has to navigate a new hire and a Nations League semifinal.

No matter which way the hire goes, the USMNT has to hit it out of the park. That means making a choice that isn't just the one that is the most high-profile, but also the one that makes the most sense for the team considering how they've developed since Gregg Berhalter's second go-around.

With this wrench in the works, the USMNT's 2030 World Cup cycle just got a lot more interesting. If they can navigate this hurdle, there will be little doubt that they can reset and refocus on the World Cup without too much of a setback. That alone keeps them on par with the rest of the world.