"Now it's a four-year contract, it's different." Mauricio Pochettino said it plainly, and it's worth understanding what he actually means. The man who treated his first USMNT deal as essentially unbreakable — refusing club approaches even as they came in — is telling you the next four years are not the same arrangement.
He could leave. U.S. Soccer could sack him. Both sides have outs. That's a meaningful shift from the coach who said walking away before the World Cup was "impossible to think about."
What changed after the World Cup
Pochettino signed his original contract with one purpose: get the U.S. to the World Cup and see it through. He did that. The Americans reached the last 16, played with genuine identity, and won matches — against Paraguay, Australia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina — that gave a football-skeptical public a reason to care. The tournament ended in a 1-0 defeat to Belgium in the round of 16, which Pochettino refuses to blame on Folarin Balogun's controversial overturned suspension. "Belgium was much better," he said. Fair enough.
The new four-year deal wasn't a given. It was widely assumed Pochettino would return to club football this summer. What changed his mind, he says, was the people inside U.S. Soccer — the board offered him an extension before the World Cup even started as a show of faith. That kind of loyalty registers with him. He signed.
But he's being honest about what this contract actually is. Lose the Gold Cup next year, stumble through a Copa America, and the relationship could sour. "They're not happy with us, they can sack us. Or we can say 'OK, it's not the way that we think.'" That's the reality of a long-term deal without a tournament deadline forcing both sides to stay put.
The Tottenham thread that never quite closes
He was asked about Spurs. Of course he was. Pochettino confirmed he received a call about the Tottenham job earlier this year — during World Cup preparation — and that timing, as with every previous near-miss, killed it before it started. When he was free, no call came. When the call came, he wasn't free.
Spurs ended up giving Roberto De Zerbi a five-year contract in March. That door is now shut for the foreseeable future. Pochettino's response when asked if he'd have taken the Tottenham job had he been available: "If I was free, of course I come." And on whether he'd have managed them in the Championship if it came to that: "Yes of course. It's the only club that always I am open to help. Whatever division. Another club, no. But Tottenham, yes."
That's not nostalgia talking. That's a man who still considers Tottenham his club in a way that goes beyond his employment history there.
For now, Pochettino has four friendlies coming up — Peru, Chile, Mexico, and Canada — and four years to justify a new contract that, unlike the last one, neither side is locked into forever.
