"It's annoying me a little bit, the VAR." That's the USMNT head coach, a few months out from hosting the biggest sporting event on the planet, going on record about his frustration with the technology that now controls the game's biggest moments.
Mauricio Pochettino said it plainly on The Overlap — VAR is changing football, and not in a way he likes. Coming from a manager who's navigated Champions League knockouts and title races at Tottenham and PSG, that's not a casual gripe. It's a considered one.
What's actually bothering him
His concern runs deeper than a disallowed goal or a ten-minute wait for a penalty decision. Pochettino thinks the sport is being reshaped at its core — that the relentless intrusion of video review is altering how the game is taught, felt, and ultimately understood.
"It's changing the way that we also educate our young kids in that game," he said. That's a coaching perspective you don't hear enough. When players grow up in a game where every tackle is a potential review and every celebration carries a caveat, something changes in how they play instinctively.
He also took direct aim at what he sees as football's drift toward entertainment product — particularly pointed given he's now working in America, where sport and spectacle are practically the same thing.
"Football is not an entertainment game. It's a competitive game, and that is what we are forcing it to change into."
The awkward timing for the US
The irony is difficult to ignore. The 2026 World Cup will be played largely on American soil, in front of American crowds, broadcast to an American audience being introduced to the sport at scale. FIFA will lean hard into the entertainment framing. And Pochettino, the man responsible for making the host nation competitive, thinks that framing is precisely what's wrong with football right now.
It won't change anything. VAR isn't going anywhere, and certainly not before a World Cup. But if the USMNT gets knocked out on a tight offside call after a four-minute review, don't expect their coach to hold his tongue about it.
