Mauricio Pochettino and Manchester United: A Missed Opportunity
For years it felt like a matter of time. Mauricio Pochettino and Manchester United, drawn together by footballing logic and a lingering sense of destiny. Yet as the Argentine rebuilds his reputation on the World Cup stage, the story now feels less like an inevitable union and more like a great Premier League “what if”.
The job that always slipped away
Twice, Pochettino stood on the brink of the Old Trafford dugout. Twice, the moment passed.
The first near-miss came in 2018/19. United had sacked José Mourinho and turned to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as a stop-gap, a club legend tasked with steadying the ship while the hierarchy weighed up their long-term options. Pochettino, then at Tottenham, was the obvious candidate: progressive, proven in England, admired by Sir Alex Ferguson himself.
But Solskjaer would not stick to the script. He rattled off win after win, six in a row to start his interim reign, including a pivotal victory away at Spurs in mid-January. That afternoon at Wembley, with United breaking at speed and Solskjaer outmanoeuvring Pochettino on his own patch, the momentum shifted.
When United pulled off that extraordinary comeback in Paris against PSG in March, the decision was sealed. Solskjaer got the job permanently. United’s season unravelled in the months that followed, while Pochettino led Spurs all the way to a Champions League final. It didn’t matter. His window at Old Trafford had closed. By November he was out of Tottenham.
The second opportunity arrived in 2022, with Pochettino at PSG and United again in flux. Ralf Rangnick was in temporary charge, the club searching for a new direction. The shortlist narrowed to a straight shootout: Pochettino versus Erik ten Hag.
United chose Ten Hag. History has not been kind to that call.
Inside the club, football director John Murtough was said to have been particularly impressed by the Dutchman during talks. Pochettino, though, has offered a different angle on why he never truly entered the race.
“I was under contract at PSG,” he told Four Four Two. “After our Champions League elimination against Real Madrid, we had no option but to make sure we secured the Ligue 1 title at the least.
“United were in a hurry to announce their new manager before the end of that season because the situation had become unsustainable. I couldn't negotiate, whereas Ajax gave Ten Hag the flexibility to do so.”
Timing again. United rushed. Ajax allowed Ten Hag to engage. Pochettino, tied to Paris and under pressure to deliver the league, watched another Old Trafford train roar past.
Ferguson’s favourite who never arrived
Pochettino has never been just another name on a shortlist at United. In the background, he has long enjoyed the approval of the club’s greatest manager.
Sir Alex Ferguson admired the way his Southampton side played: aggressive, organised, brave on the ball. Impressed enough, in fact, to seek out Pochettino’s number and invite him to dinner. That kind of endorsement carries weight at Old Trafford.
For a while, it felt like a coronation delayed rather than denied. But his departure from Spurs, then a mixed spell at PSG, dulled some of the shine. Even his year at Chelsea, chaotic and cut short, only now looks better with distance. At the time, it felt like more evidence that his peak years might already be behind him.
The World Cup has started to change that conversation.
Reinvented in red, white and blue
Pochettino’s United States side has been one of the tournament’s revelations. They have not played like a cautious host nation. They have played like a high-end European club team dropped into international football.
Intensity. Aggression. Structure. The hallmarks of his best work at Southampton and Spurs have reappeared in national-team colours. The US have pressed with a ferocity few others have matched, snapped into duels, and attacked with a clarity that makes them look like a side who train together every day, not one assembled for a few weeks in the summer.
Momentum is building behind the hosts. Keep this level up and a run to at least the quarter-finals feels entirely realistic. For Pochettino, that would be more than a feel-good home World Cup story. It would be a statement that he still belongs in the conversation for the biggest jobs in Europe.
His contract with the US runs only until the end of the tournament. He has said he is “open” to extending it. Yet the logic points elsewhere. Coaching the national team through a World Cup on home soil is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The Gold Cup, for all its regional importance, does not carry the same emotional or competitive weight.
Walk away after this, and he re-enters the club game at the perfect moment: reputation restored, ideas refreshed, demand guaranteed.
United move on, again
By then, though, Manchester United are likely to be looking the other way.
Michael Carrick has just been appointed head coach on a two-year deal, rewarded for a strong second half of last season. His calm authority, tactical clarity and connection with the club have given United a sense of direction they have lacked for years. Right now, it feels like the right call.
But the timing is striking. Had Carrick stumbled, or had United delayed their decision until after the World Cup, the conversation would have been very different. Pochettino, riding the wave of a deep run with the US, out of contract and available, would have been impossible to ignore.
Instead, the pattern repeats. United commit early. Pochettino arrives at the party just a little too late.
A destiny rewritten
The idea of Pochettino eventually striding out at Old Trafford, backed by Ferguson’s blessing and finally given the keys to the club he seemed built to manage, once felt like a future waiting patiently to unfold. Now it looks like a parallel universe.
He is 54, still young enough for one more major European project, maybe two. The World Cup is reminding everyone why his name once sat at the top of every elite shortlist. Offers will come.
They just may no longer come from Manchester United.
The home dugout at Old Trafford, the one job that always seemed to be saving a seat for him, is starting to look like the one he will never take.
