Former Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino says in an interview with BBC Sport he “misses” the Premier League and would like to return sometime in the future. Pochettino, who is currently preparing for the 2026 World Cup as national team manager of one of three host countries the United States, has had three different spells in the English top flight.
The Argentine manager switched to Southampton after leaving Espanyol, then took over Spurs, whom he led to the Champions League final in 2019, and went on to manager Chelsea.
Read: Ronaldo “knows” when Erling Haaland takes over the Champions League throne
“The Premier League is the best league in the world”
“Of course I miss it. I love America so much, but I’m also thinking about coming back to the Premier League one day. It’s the most competitive league.”
Apart from an 18-month stay at Paris St-Germain, where the club won Ligue 1 and the French Cup, his critics will point to the lack of trophies on his CV. It is clear after speaking to Pochettino that this particularly annoys him from his time at Tottenham.
The 53-year-old spent five years at Spurs between 2014 and 2019, leading the north London club to a second-place finish in the 2016-17 Premier League season, the 2015 EFL Cup Final and the final of Europe’s elite club competition.
“I think we were so close at Tottenham, we almost touched it [winning the Champions League and the Premier League]. That’s something I want to achieve,” added Pochettino, who is still in contact with the man who fired him, Daniel Levy.
Levy, 63, surprisingly left his role as executive chairman of Tottenham in September after 24 years. During that period, the club won the EFL Cup in 2008 and the Europa League in 2025, and also moved into a new stadium.
“I was very surprised [by Levy’s departure]. His legacy is there. It’s amazing what he did for the club,” Pochettino added.
“My relationship with him was always good. During my time at Tottenham and after I left.”
“He was a very important person because he gave me the opportunity to manage a club like Tottenham. For me, it’s one of the best clubs in the world, with a fantastic fan base.”
Read: ‘Talks’ between Jürgen Klopp and Barcelona revealed, while Hansi Flick ‘expected to leave’
‘The language of football is universal’In September 2024,
Pochettino was given the challenge of leading the United States into a World Cup that they will host alongside Canada and Mexico.
Still, not everything has gone smoothly.
Pochettino has won 11 of his 20 games at the helm, and losses to teams such as Mexico (twice), Panama, Canada, Turkey, Switzerland and South Korea have imagined criticism.
He has also, according to reports in The Times, encountered problems around changing the culture and mindset of his players, and has been dissatisfied with arriving at home games only to find that, according to Talksport, the visiting fans significantly outnumber the American fans.
And all this has happened while he is adapting to the different demands placed on a national team coach.
“The intensity is completely different because you have to arrive for a few days to prepare the match and play, prepare for another match, play, and go back,” Pochettino continued.
“After November, we will have three months until March to prepare for a new match. In a national team, you’re desperate to train the players.”
“You feel empty because after the second game you can’t have communication and you can’t keep working on improving things.”
The United States has only reached the quarterfinals of the World Cup once, in 2002.
MLS was formed in 1995, one year after the United States hosted the 1994 World Cup, and has improved and grown significantly since then, with Lionel Messi’s arrival in 2023 as evidence of a changing landscape.
“I think players like Messi help the kids, not only when the kids want to play basketball or American football or baseball, they now also want to play soccer,” added Pochettino, who stressed that his employers have asked him to use the term soccer instead of football to avoid public confusion.
He added: “The motivation is massive. Sometimes you feel like people don’t understand too much.”
“You find some coaches saying, ‘oh, you know, you have to know the American player’s culture.’ I say, ‘No, I know the most important thing – the culture of football and soccer. We have to translate the football culture into the American player.'”
“I think after one year we are making great progress. We build [ideas] with people that the language of football is only one and that it doesn’t matter if you’re American, Brazilian or English. Our football is about competing the way you have to compete, if you want to win.”
Read on Time People World: The 30 Best Footballers in the World (2025)
