Argentines Famously Don't Know About National Pride
Bruce Arena suggests Mauricio Pochettino has issues as a non-American coach of the U.S. Men's National Team.
Bruce Arena took the U.S. Men’s National Team to a World Cup quarterfinal in 2002, and they only narrowly lost to Germany at that stage. He knows about winning knockout games at a major tournament, which is now the bar for any coach of the American team: win a marquee single-elimination match against a serious football nation.
By his appearance on Tim Howard and Landon Donovan’s Unfiltered Soccer, though, Arena doesn’t seem confident that current coach Mauricio Pochettino is going to achieve any feats at all.
“You know if you look at every national team in the world, the coach is usually a domestic coach,” Arena said. “And I think when you have coaches that don't know our culture, our environment, our players, it's hard. And listen, I'm sure our coach is a very good coach, but coaching international football is different than club football. It's a completely different job…
“If you’re an American coaching the U.S. team, you know the culture, you know the pride and how important the national team is. I think when you bring in someone from the outside, they don’t understand it. And especially in our country, because we’re so different. You ask me if we lack pride, well, I'm watching and I'm shocked. I'm shocked we can't beat Panama and Canada. It was shocking to me.”
Pochettino has managed the team for eight matches. They’ve won five and lost three, but mostly they crashed out of the CONCACAF Nations League at the semifinal stage. This was greeted with an outpouring of rage and angst from all concerned. It was Panama, to be fair, and the USA really should be winning football matches in their neighborhood of the world. It’s not the strongest continent for the game, and this is meant to be one of the world’s leading nations.
But let’s not pretend the Nations League is a serious and important tournament, or that we can judge a manager after eight games. Major international coaches are judged by the major tournaments. If Pochettino gets results at the 2026 World Cup, all of this will be a historical footnote.
Will he do it? Hell if I know. But he brought Tottenham Hotspur, not exactly a gang of seasoned trophy hunters, to the brink of total victory in the Champions League. Only one of modern football’s truly great sides, Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, were able to stop them. Pochettino had much better players at Spurs than he does with the American team, but it’s clear this guy can get a tune out of top-level professionals.
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Does he need some special American Spirit to get the same out of the American national team? It seems doubtful. The last coach of this team was American, and it didn’t go so well. Maybe Pochettino’s tenure will ultimately prove Arena’s claim that managing at the top club level has nothing to do with coaching a national team. But what is the American “culture” of football that Poch couldn’t possibly understand? Losing to Belgium in the Round of 16? And is Mauricio Pochettino, a guy who represented Argentina at that same 2002 World Cup, really unaware that playing for your country is an honor and you should do it with pride?
Yes, no nation has ever won the World Cup with a “foreign” manager, but the U.S. is not in it to win it. We’re in it to win a big game or two. That’s what Poch is getting paid the big bucks to do, future financials of the soccer federation be damned, and we will judge him on whether he does it. But let’s be honest about another thing while we’re at it: If Poch and Prime Bruce Arena were matched up as coaches in a quarterfinal, I know who my money is on.⚽︎
Lets ask Mexico how well their Argentine coaches have fared. The reality is the USMNT’s best results at FIFA tournaments were both spearheaded by an American coach: Bruce Arena’s 2002 WC team and Bob Bradleys 2009 Confed Cup team. Both those teams were not the most gifted technically, but they were hard teams to play against. I agree with Landon and Bruce on this 100%. Its a shame that given our political climate its easy to fall into “left/right” mindset and try to paint these opinions as xenophobic. Its not a matter of discriminating anybody based on their nationality or their lack of understanding national pride, rather its the idea that one of our own can motivate our players in a way a foreign coach simply cannot given our unique soccer culture.