United States men’s national team (USMNT) head coach Mauricio Pochettino is considered a top manager, having had stints at Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain (PSG). And now, he has opened up on coaching Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Kylian Mbappe in the same team.
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After leading Tottenham Hotspur to the 2019 UEFA Champions League final, Pochettino was hired as PSG’s coach in January 2021. He got the chance to field an attacking trio of Messi, Neymar, and Mbappe during the 2021-22 season, guiding PSG to the Ligue 1 title.
However, the aforesaid troika failed to live up to expectations as PSG were eliminated from the UEFA Champions League at the last-16 stage in Pochettino’s only full season.
Revealing the challenges he faced coaching the trio, Pochettino recently stated on The High Performance Podcast, “The problem is when people start to say, ‘Ah, come on, you need to win 4-0 from the bus’. But it’s not like that, because you receive Messi with no pre-season after the Copa America, big stress and trauma after leaving Barcelona… he needed time to adapt (at PSG). Neymar had some problems (with injuries). Mbappe too.”
Pochettino, who also helped the Parisians win two domestic trophies in the 2020-21 season, also stated that finding the optimal way to use the elite trio was a serious hurdle.
“These three guys needed a team behind them to play for them. They need to share space. Who’s the penalty taker? It’s not easy to say because Messi, Neymar, Mbappe… it’s a really complex situation as it goes on. What we did was be ourselves and try to do things the way we felt was right, knowing we were going to suffer and that it was going to be difficult,” he said while shedding light on the difficulty of assigning specific roles to players.
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The USMNT coach also compared his tactical regimen at Tottenham with his style of play at PSG, highlighting how the aforementioned players were not sacrificial enough.
“In Tottenham, a team that was so high line, press high, recover balls in the opposite half… you cannot expect Messi and others are going to press people. When he was in his peak at Barcelona with Pep Guardiola, he never pressed and that is the situation where people can be confused. That was the (most) difficult challenge at PSG,” Pochettino concluded.
After the end of the 2021-22 season, Pochettino was replaced by Christophe Galtier at the Parisians. He eventually joined Chelsea in the summer of 2023 before being appointed as the USMNT’s head coach, succeeding Gregg Berhalter, in September 2024.
