SEATTLE — Make no mistake: Mauricio Pochettino is pure Argentine.
“I am 200 percent Argentine,” he said, beaming. “I am not going to lie.”
He grew up in a farming village some 250 miles west of Buenos Aires, launched his career in Rosario and wore La Albiceleste’s colors in a World Cup. Passion spouts when he speaks about the love for his country and everything it has brought to sports and culture.
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His additional loyalties are with Europe, where he played and coached across decades.
But on the most American of holidays, as the coach of a U.S. World Cup team that, through style and substance, has rekindled national spirit and helped unite a divided land, Pochettino continues embracing his adoptive country.
On Friday night, with his players forming a crescent behind him, he donned a Mariners jersey and threw out the ceremonial first pitch at T-Mobile Park.
USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino addresses the crowd after throwing out the ceremonial first pitch before a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park.
(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / REUTERS)
He has become a big country music fan, playing Lainey Wilson in his office at the team’s base hotel on the Southern California coast. She reciprocated, via email with well-wishes to the team and an acoustic version of “God Bless America.”
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On Saturday, country music, including Luke Combs’ spellbinding version of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” graced the U.S. training grounds at the University of Washington.
His musical interests include country star Ella Langley and Georgia native Teddy Swims, whom he saw in concert last winter. He and his wife Karina and their friends were invited backstage.
During his team’s exciting run through the World Cup, Pochettino has even gotten caught up in the unofficial U.S. anthem — the postgame playing of John Denver’s 1970s hit “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
After the World Cup draw in Washington in December, Pochettino traveled to New York and donned a U.S. Olympic hockey jersey at a Rangers game. He attended the Ohio State-Texas football game last fall.
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On Saturday night, Pochettino and the team were scheduled to join friends and family for a rooftop viewing of Seattle’s fireworks show over its waterways.
The celebration will be brief. On Monday, Pochettino’s team faces Belgium in the Round of 16, with a quarterfinal berth — and the chance to keep this national moment building — on the line.
“When you feel part of something bigger that we are building here, I enjoy being part of that amazing project,” he said. When he took the job in the fall of 2024, he “wanted to feel the emotion. I love to be involved and be part of the party.”
With passionate locker-room speeches and emotional sideline reactions, Pochettino has embodied the U.S. spirit and won over an audience that might have known him only for having coached Tottenham Hotspur to a Champions League final and Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Neymar at Paris Saint-Germain in 2021-22.
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“He’s obviously taken to the culture, and at the same time has added his bit of culture to us,” captain Tim Ream said. “The group is such a melting pot — staff, players — and it’s an incredible representation of who we are as people. But he definitely won’t let us forget he’s still Argentine at the end of the day.”
Though he doesn’t live here — he calls London and Barcelona home — Pochettino has developed a deep affinity for the U.S. And should he and the U.S. Soccer Federation agree to extend their relationship for another World Cup cycle, Pochettino would undoubtedly spend more time here. (The new national training center in Greater Atlanta provides, for the first time, a permanent base of activities for the national teams and developmental efforts.)
At a recent meeting with reporters, Pochettino shared some of his observations of American life.
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“One of the things we really like, and we learn from you, is in the way you approach life: more casual than formal like in other places,” he said. “People are very approachable, make you feel comfortable; it’s very welcoming. You go to some place like Nashville and you go to a bar. If you are alone, you make friends so, so quick. You look like you belong in a few minutes.”
Traveling across the enormity that is America, Pochettino has noticed commonality.
“That for me was a massive surprise,” he said. In spite of different state characteristics, “You have the same sense of the human being. You always want to welcome people. You make people belong that are not [from] that place. … You are a country with a culture, very creative, very passionate.”
Even the food has surprised him.
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“People say, ‘Americans have no healthy food,'” Pochettino said. “Yes, you have healthy food but also Chick-fil-A. It’s amazing, no? Chick-fil-A, but you go to Whole Foods. You have organic, this, that. You have everything here.”
Shifting to the U.S. as a whole, he added, “That country is massive and the people are so good. I think [the coaching staff has] learned a lot. I think we are much better people now, knowing that country and the culture of the people here.”
As for his first-pitch honor, Pochettino practiced earlier in the day before U.S. training session. Goalkeeper Matt Turner, a standout youth player, provided tips. A staff member caught his tosses.
When the moment came, in front of a sellout crowd at the start of a holiday weekend, his offering wasn’t down the middle, but like almost everything he has done at this World Cup, he was pretty much on target.
