U.S. Soccer is expected to make Pep Guardiola a top target to replace Mauricio Pochettino if the U.S. men’s national team coach leaves for Manchester United, sources briefed on the situation tell The Athletic.
Guardiola, who left Manchester City this past summer, has been discussed internally as a candidate across multiple levels of the federation’s hiring process.
Should Pochettino leave — and The Athletic first revealed on Wednesday that he is United’s chosen candidate to replace current head coach Michael Carrick should a change be made — the sources, who spoke anonymously as they were not authorized to do so publicly, say U.S. Soccer would look to lure Guardiola into international management after historic stints at multiple clubs that included three Champions League triumphs, six Premier League trophies, three La Liga medals and three Bundesliga titles.
The pursuit would not be straightforward nor easy. Guardiola would be a leading choice for many of the biggest jobs in football but has shown little recent interest in an imminent return to management.
After Guardiola turned the Italy job down earlier this year, Italian football federation president Giovanni Malago told La Repubblica: “Pep was honest. He took a sabbatical, partly for family reasons, but if he’d done anything, he would have done it with us.”
Nonetheless, Guardiola has had dialogue with U.S. Soccer in the past, and has long been intrigued by the prospect of working in America. Guardiola lived in New York City during a year-long sabbatical after he left Barcelona in 2012, where he enjoyed relative anonymity living in a luxury apartment off of Central Park with his family.
At a press conference in 2024 after Pochettino got the USMNT job, Guardiola said he had “friends” in the U.S. and wished both the program and Pochettino luck.
“The USA is fascinating to try to build a project for many years and being able to get the national team to the next step,” Guardiola said. “The potential with the USA is there for the amount of people and sports and so on.”
U.S. Soccer’s courtship of Guardiola goes back many years.
Former U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati has a good relationship with Guardiola, sources said, and first suggested to Guardiola that he might one day coach the national team years ago. The Athletic reported U.S. Soccer’s interest in Guardiola during the hiring process after the 2022 World Cup.
U.S. Soccer then contacted Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp at the beginning of the federation’s last search, which ended with the hiring of Pochettino to replace Gregg Berhalter in 2024. During that search, U.S. Soccer recruited wealthy donors to help fund the salary that a high-profile international coach would command, and three names who fit the bill, everyone agreed, were Guardiola, Pochettino and Klopp.
Before the next coaching search, the first priority is planning the day-to-day of the current international window, featuring competitive matches against Haiti in the Nations League quarterfinals. Pochettino, as of Wednesday, was leading the team in training and is expected to remain in charge for the Haiti matches.
After that, U.S. Soccer will have four full months to run a search and recruit a top candidate. The USMNT will have a largely domestic-based camp in December outside of a FIFA international window; but its next competitive games are not until March. So, in theory, Guardiola could have a few more months off before jumping back into coaching.
Guardiola departed Manchester City this summer after a legendary decade in England, revolutionizing the Premier League, winning six league titles and leading City to their first ever Champions League triumph. Guardiola also won three FA Cups and five League Cups. That period of success has come under intense recent scrutiny after City was found guilty on nearly all charges it faced in regard to breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations.
He joined City after spending three seasons with Bayern Munich, winning the league each year. Before that, he made his name at Barcelona, winning three league titles and two Champions Leagues in four seasons. That iconic era was led by Lionel Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and Sergio Busquets.