U.S. Soccer announced Monday that Mauricio Pochettino will remain the men's national team head coach, the parties agreeing to a new deal that will run through the 2030 World Cup.
Pochettino's main task will be to lead the senior team for the next four years, but he will also take on an advisory role with U.S. Soccer on several related topics, including the pathway to the national teams, the youth game at large, coaching education and collaboration between the U.S.' professional leagues.
"Working together with U.S. Soccer over the past two years, it has become clear to us that there is tremendous potential to make the Men's National Team program even stronger," Pochettino said in a statement. "The passion we experienced from the fans throughout the World Cup only strengthened our belief in what is possible here. We are excited by the opportunity to bring all our experience and knowledge to even more areas of U.S. Soccer while helping strengthen the pathways for players, coaches and teams across the Federation. We want to try to have a lasting impact on the sport in the country that has welcomed us so warmly and for that impact to extend beyond results on the field."
Details of Pochettino's salary were not confirmed, but his return comes through what U.S. Soccer described as a "a philanthropic leadership gift" from federation donors including Kenneth C. Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire, Scott Goodwin and Adam Freede as well as several commercial partners. Griffin and Goodwin were also involved in U.S. Soccer's initial attempts to sign Pochettino in the summer of 2024.
Pochettino was one of the highest-paid national team coaches in the world before the new deal with an annual base salary of around $4 million, per U.S. Soccer's most recent publicly available documents, but the bonus structure at the time allowed for significant increases.
Multiple reports last week suggested that the parties were close to agreeing a new deal. Though negotiations picked up after the USMNT's run in this summer's World Cup was complete, U.S. Soccer formally offered Pochettino and his staff a new deal before the tournament began. Pochettino also admitted pre-tournament that he heard U.S. Soccer's pitch for the next four years over dinner at Jean-Georges, a restaurant located inside Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York on May 24.
"[U.S. Soccer CEO J.T. Batson] asked if we are open to listen [to] the project of the federation for the next four years and we said, of course, we are open," Pochettino said days later. "It's true until last Sunday, we didn't have an idea if the federation was happy with us, not happy, wanted us for the future."
Pochettino originally took the USMNT job in Sept. 2024, his sole focus on preparing the team for this summer's World Cup on home soil. They were eliminated in the round of 16 after a 4-1 defeat to Belgium, marking the team's fourth successive World Cup exit at that stage of the tournament.
Pochettino returns after mixed bag of results
Pochettino is now the latest in a string of USMNT coaches that will be afforded the chance to lead the team at a second World Cup, though his first stint in charge was shorter than many of his predecessors. There were just 18 months in between his first game, a 2-0 friendly win over Panama, and the USMNT's World Cup opener, a 4-1 win over Paraguay.
The months in between were rocky. The coach had previously admitted that his staff and the members of the ecosystem they were entering were not initially on the same page, saying, "We misjudged the situation. It was worse than we really believed." The low point was a pair of dispiring losses in the Concacaf Nations League in March 2025, a 1-0 defeat to Panama and a 2-1 loss to Canada, which he later described as a "punch that was painful."
The USMNT's form had picked up after the fact while Pochettino continued a project to expand the player pool, calling up 62 players in total before naming his World Cup roster in May. That project accelerated during the Concacaf Gold Cup in the summer of 2025, 13 members of that team eventually making the World Cup team including Alex Freeman, who scored in the USMNT's 2-0 win over Australia on June 19.
It all crescendoed at the World Cup, where things finally began to click. The injury-plagued squad was near full fitness this summer, while Pochettino's complex attack-minded approach finally began to sink in after a steep learning curve. The USMNT inspired plenty of optimism en route to their World Cup, with Pochettino becoming the team's first head coach to notch three wins at the tournament and picking up their first knockout round victory in 24 years, the 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32.
The USMNT's round of 16 clash against Belgium, though, was marred by FIFA's decision to make forward Folarin Balogun available despite picking up a red card in the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Balogun later told CBS Mornings that the decision, which came after U.S. president Donald Trump made a call to now-embattled FIFA president Gianni Infantino, was the source of "a lot of outside noise" that troubled the team before the game.
New tasks ahead of Pochettino
Pochettino will now be afforded the luxury of time, though it is not the only distinction between his first cycle and his second.
The USMNT will return to World Cup qualification after forgoing it altogether for the 2026 tournament, a privilege afforded to host nations. Pochettino is also expected to lead the team at the 2028 Copa America, which is reportedly set to return to the United States for the third time in 12 years and will act as an important check-in midway through the four-year cycle.
Another period of experimentation with the player pool is also likely en route to the next World Cup, several prospects already looking likely to break into the senior national team in time for the 2030 tournament. U.S. Soccer has also placed emphasis on the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, which will serve a crucial role in developing young players in the player pool. The men's soccer tournament is contested by U-23 teams and U.S. Soccer hopes to pick up their first medal in that event in two years' time.
Federation leaders already admitted that Pochettino and his staff played a role in mapping out the national team's future, including playing a "key role" in the hire of Steve Cherundolo, the former U.S. international and ex-LAFC coach, to lead the Olympic team.
