Mauricio Pochettino\u2019s arrival at Old Trafford brings familiar questions with it: can he turn strong coaching into silverware, and can he do it under the weight of expectation at a club still rebuilding after years of turbulence? For Manchester United, those questions matter because the new manager\u2019s history in finals is not encouraging.<\/p>\n
Across his career, Pochettino has reached seven finals and won only three. All three of those victories came at Paris Saint-Germain, where honours are expected more often than at most clubs. His first success arrived in the Troph\u00e9es des Champions, when PSG beat Marseille 2-1 in the 2020 edition, played in 2021 because of Covid-19. He followed that by lifting the Coupe de France after PSG beat Monaco in a final played in an empty stadium. A year later, he added the Ligue 1 title before leaving Paris, although PSG had already lost the Troph\u00e9es des Champions to Lille earlier in that campaign.<\/p>\n
Before his time in France, Pochettino had already built a reputation for improving teams without quite crossing the final line. At Tottenham Hotspur, he took charge of sides shaped by Harry Kane, Son Heung-min and Christian Eriksen, but major honours never arrived. The League Cup final in 2015 ended in a 2-0 defeat to Chelsea, and the 2019 Champions League final brought even greater pain, with Liverpool winning 2-0 after Tottenham\u2019s remarkable run to the last match.<\/p>\n
More frustration followed later. In 2024, while managing Chelsea, Pochettino guided them to the League Cup final only to lose to Liverpool after Virgil van Dijk struck in the 118th minute. His most recent final came with the United States men\u2019s national team at the 2025 Concacaf Gold Cup, where Chris Richards scored first, but Mexico fought back to win 2-1.<\/p>\n
For United, the pattern is hard to ignore. Pochettino has often taken teams close, but his record in decisive matches suggests the club may need patience as well as ambition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pochettino\u2019s final record is mixed, and Manchester United will know why that matters immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-22478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22478","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=22478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}