Coaching Philosophies and the Mauricio Pochettino System

The chance to drop in with fellow Santafesinos Messi and Martino is probably high on the list of why he came over.

 

So which players would benefit from the switch to a 4231, and which would lose minutes?

 

I'll be curious what he does with our passing out of the back. It's a weakness in the player pool and I'm curious if he has something to do about it. I mean, on one hand it is easy to say we don't have the players and shouldn't play out of defense, but you do have to get the ball forward somehow and just hitting long ball just hand sit back over more often than not. So, saying just don't let the defense play out is kinda silly unless you have another option. But can he get our players who often struggle with this aspect of the game to move the ball out of defense in a way that gets the ball forward without losing it? Does he focus more on shorter passes and bringing the midfield deep to help? Who does he trust to handle the ball deep? etc.

 

On the Double Pivot over Single Pivot

I’d say, holding mid / destroyer types, who benefit more from being the man to shield the backline might be hurt by it. This includes Tyler Adams, Lennard Maloney, James Sands, Daniel Edelman, and Kellyn Acosta.

Adams should be able to adjust quickly into a 4231 formation, if he can stay healthy, so I’m not worried about him.

Sands probably needs to re-convert back to center back anyways. And he’s getting left behind on the depth charts as it is, so I don’t know if that’s a significant loss.

We needed to move on from Acosta.

But Maloney might be the one player who would be the one where we see the most significant difference. I don’t think he’s cut out for a double pivot midfield, as he shines best when he can anchor the midfield. We’ll have to see, but that’s my guess.

All the rest ~ Tessmann, McKennie, Musah, Busio, Cardoso, De la Torre, etc. I would say that a double pivot midfield helps them more than it hurts them.

Overall, it seems like our player pool is better suited for it.

On playing with a CAM over the dual 8/10’s.

This clearly benefits Gio. And Pulisic if he needs to slide in there. If Gio can stay healthy, find a good club, and progress, he has every opportunity to make this his own.

In addition, Malik Tillman should benefit from this formation.

I can’t say about Brenden or Paxten Aaronson yet.

If Cremaschi evolves into a quality player, it suits him better. Zendejas probably too. Mihailovic, Ferreira, and some others, as well. But hopefully we won’t have to rely on them too much.

Simply put, I’d say it’s a formation that depends on Gio and Pulisic staying healthy and being in form to function best. And, if they are both healthy and in form, then, I’d say it’s an improvement.

 

Something like this?

Dest Richards Ream Jedi
Adams Johnny
Weah Reyna Pulisic
Balogun

 

"The role comes with sponsorship and endorsement fees."

Well, if people want to see how they got around the PR dynamic with Emma Hayes' salary, there's a good chance it's right there. I'm curious to see where they got total comp.

As for fit, I think Pochettino is a great fit for what the US wants to do. The 4231 is pretty much a form of 433 and requires many of the same skillsets. He builds out of the back. I'm a BIG fan of the counterpressing; I think this team needs aggression.

The positional play elements, bombing fullbacks, formation and general philosophy shouldn't be a big departure from what we've been doing, so he can build rather than tear down with a 2 year timeline.

At the same time, he's much more of an offensive gambler than Berhalter, at least he was with his club teams, and he'll commit more offensively. That should help the offense, but I will be super curious to see if he sticks with a riskier strategy or becomes conservative given personnel once the games start mattering.

I think there was probably a better fit, but not much of one, frankly, in terms of club coaches.

 

I'm never quite as worried about this as you are, but I do think the answer more likely lies in how you set up the defense and midfield than just a personnel conversation. We had our games where this was an issue (Colombia) but it isn't like we weren't capable most of the time.

It will be interesting to see if he introduces more patterns to free up players, or can instruct Tyler or someone to be more effective in this, rather than doing what Berhalter ended up doing with Dest out, which was to shift Reyna back.

 

I don’t think this is true of his previous stops but the biggest concern in terms of last season at Chelsea was chance prevention.



And the concern would be that his pressing system takes time to install and get right (and his first season at Tottenham was also his worst season there until the last year when he left).[/img]

 

I am absolutely curious what is going to be Poch’s most eyebrow raising decision. He’s obviously going to put his stamp on the team. We can surely expect one unorthodox decision or change , right?

 

We were not going to get a coach with a better cv.

Lets see how he can advance the team with no real games for 2 years…

This would have been perfect before the Copa America

 

I mean you could run the same 11 in either formation. Say your starting midfield in a 4-3-3 is Adams, Reyna, and 1 of McKennie/Musah, switching to a 4-2-3-1 just means dropping the latter deeper and freeing Reyna from some of his defensive responsibilities.

A 4-2-3-1 while pretty similar is I think a better fit for our player pool, especially given Adams' constant health issues. With the emergence of Johnny, Tessman, and to a lesser extent Busio and Morris we suddenly have a glut of players who can play the 2 CM roles. Mix and match those 3 guys along with Adams, McKennie and Musah as the situation, tactics, opponent, and player chemistry dictate. As long as both are defensively sound I do like the idea of pairing one guy who can hit a long pass with another who is more of a ball carrier....so I'd like to get a look at Moose paired for a game or 2 each with Johnny and Tessman.

 

Should be really interesting, Im definitely curious to see what players or two he over/under values compared to us. I can definitely see a couple surprise roster decisions, and Im most curious to see how he handles Concacaf matches vs real matches.

The biggest obstacle he will have is our really weak back line, he could really use a top CB to develop and let him press high.

 

We're lucky to have the Gold Cup next summer, that's a good opportunity to iron out some of the kinks ahead of the WC.

I'd be interested to see Tessman get a look at CB.

 

96% in Central Progression, the inverse of crosses per pass. This should please most on here.

 

It's always been his weakness. He attacks with numbers and relies on a counterpress to slow down counters and the opposition. And his teams will get burned at times.

It will be very interesting to see if he does that without a stacked team of talent, or if he adjusts as Berhalter clearly did. How many come up in attack? How far do CMs commit? Who is playing CB? Poch loves attacking FBs -- are we still doing that?

We're getting someone used to having strong talent that knows what they are doing. It's going to be very interesting to see if he can elevate some of our players, or if he can adjust without losing the positives, or if he has to simply fall back, as Bob did, as JK did, as Berhalter did.

 

What players stand to gain and who stands to lose under poch?

 

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/24...pochettino-psg-tottenham-hotspur-southampton/

From 2021.

The positional play elements are something he has in common with Berhalter (and like 70% of modern coaches) but the pursuing numerical superiority is something Berhalter gave up on somewhere between Summer of '21 and Summer of '22. So that should be a big change.

Watching this goal from Tottenham, listed as the ideal of Poch in the article, will look a bit familiar:

Again, a lot of similarities but I think the difference might be in the last line -- can Poch help unlock the offense by helping our players find more aggressive positioning and spacing?

This part is again familiar ... except we dropped the pressing part. I will be happy if Poch decides it's time to get back to it. It seems like we kept the positional discipline but dropped the counter press.

There's also this: a positive for some, but a negative for those that are concerned about the transition to national team coach:

He's hard core on positioning, communicates well and is very detailed. The team will like the last two -- I think that's a big part of what they liked about Berhalter. I don't suspect that guys will find this more freeing, but if Poch can improve results, they will go along.

Very touchy feely but it seems to work. I like the confidence angle -- but again, I don't think we're going to see someone who is tearing guys down.

Sounds suspiciously like crossword puzzles...

He's also had his team walk on coals!

Some of you are not going to like that. It does go on to mention that no spots are assured and that he doesn't even like it when people ask why they aren't playing.

There's more! Lots of talk of tracking player improvement -- saliva tests? Gio's not doing that shit! -- but also detailed development plans, etc. I wonder how much he plans to bring and how much he truly can. But clearly this was a positive for US Soccer.

Lots of talk about crazy intense practice schedules and workouts -- I'd love if he would push players away from camp to basically need to be in pressing shape.

He also gets into mentality management -- focus, believing in oneself and all being part of a spiritual whole, which will be interesting to see.

 

I think our tactics overall are about to take a major step forward.

 

The interesting thing is that a lot of the high level stuff isn't going to change. The biggest high level thing that will likely change is that (a) we'll likely be more aggressive offensively to the potential detriment of the defense and (b) we're almost certainly going to counterpress again.

Where it will be really interesting is in the small details -- certain positioning, certain patterns. Can he add the small things that can make a real difference but that are hard to fans to really see if it's a tactical issue or an executional one.

It could be that Poch is better at identifying those, but you've also got to be better at teaching them and better at helping players get better at them, even from a distance. I always got the impression that Berhalter gave up on a lot of stuff, and whether that's failure to teach or failure to learn or just simply not enough time, I hope Pochettino can find a way to overcome that.

 

This is the snag. If I were one of the people that thought Berhalter’s system was too complicated (I’m not), buckle up. Also, his teams have historically been more loose at the back than others.
Personally, I don’t worry about the team learning his system, there’s time for that, and I’d rather be a front foot team with some questions at the back than the opposite, but that’s just personal taste.
Also, I’m not a fan of some intricate pressing system, but if I read it right, he’s about pressing to get the ball back after losing it, which to me is just good soccer, not necessarily a system thing.

 

If Dest gets healthy he will do really well under Pochettino. Attacking fullbacks do well under him.

 

He also has strong ties to Biesla who gave him his debut in Argentina, and who he later played for both for the national team and in Spain. Was literally scouted at the age of 14 by Biesla and convinced to move to Newell’s Old Boys (where Biesla was then the reserve manager).

This is also pretty good from the Athletic on his approach https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/57...cs-world-cup-2026/?source=user_shared_article

 

Poch just needs to address two problems in Gregg’s system:

1. Able to break down an underdog team’s mid and low block. Gregg cannot do that because his team moving too slow, too predictable, and two uninspired.
2. Able to play quick transition game vs. better team. Previous US teams did this by high working rate and solid defense, with quick, fast transitional attack.
We have all players, so I think he can make it happens.

 

Our coach is now better than our players.
That's a good thing.