Mauricio Pochettino\u2019s position on his United States men\u2019s national team deal has become more flexible, and that only adds weight to renewed speculation over Manchester United.<\/p>\n
The former Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea manager is already well regarded at Old Trafford. He delivered Spurs\u2019 strongest sustained domestic spell in the Premier League era and has also brought structure and unity to the USMNT setup.<\/p>\n
United have looked at him before. Sir Alex Ferguson once travelled to meet the then-Tottenham boss over lunch. Pochettino later described that exchange as, \u201cIt was a meeting in London between colleagues, between a genius and an apprentice,\u201d and he chose not to take the job at that stage.<\/p>\n
More recently, Tottenham made contact again before the World Cup. Pochettino, who signed a new four-year deal with the USMNT only months ago, had no interest in leaving before a home tournament. As he put it: \u201cThey called everyone, they called all the coaches!\u201d<\/p>\n
That situation looked difficult to change at the time, with reports suggesting any move would have required \u201cone of the biggest financial compensation fees in football history\u201d, around $30 million. Yet Pochettino has since made clear that the wording of his current contract matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s a four-year contract, it\u2019s different,\u201d Pochettino explained. \u201cWe can next season lose the Copa Am\u00e9rica, or the Gold Cup, and they\u2019re not happy with us, they can sack us. Or we can say, \u2018O.K., it\u2019s not the way that we think.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cFour years is different. Maybe now if someone calls in the future, it\u2019s a different type [of situation]. We are excited, we are thinking to spend four years, to the next World Cup. But now it\u2019s a long period.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has also spoken openly about wanting a Premier League return. \u201cI have the ambition [to return],\u201d he told Sky Sports News in September. \u201cMy dream now is to be in the USA for four years, but after that, why not? We are still young, and I think coming back is always my goal; to win the Premier League, to be in the Premier League and to build a project with the possibility of winning.\u201d<\/p>\n
For United, the attraction is obvious. For Pochettino, the footballing case is less straightforward, with the club in a very different place from the one he has known before.<\/p>\n
Still, the mutual interest is real, and the manager has left the door ajar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pochettino\u2019s contract talk has sharpened speculation over a possible future move to Manchester United.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179],"tags":[1047,59,182],"class_list":["post-22349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","tag-champions-league","tag-featured","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}