Why USMNT coaching target Mauricio Pochettino could turn to lemons in quest for World Cup glory

If and when Mauricio Pochettino moves to the United States and becomes U.S. men’s national team head coach, he’ll be in for an adjustment.

Atlanta, Georgia — the future site of U.S. Soccer’s headquarters and training center — is a far cry from Barcelona, Paris or London. Atlanta is, by most accounts, cosmopolitan, but it’s likely missing a bit of the Old World charm possessed by some of Pochettino’s previous stations in life.

Maybe he’ll work to decorate his office to give it a touch of those places. A photo of his former roommate and teammate at Newell’s Old Boys, Diego Maradona, might get thrown up on one wall. Maybe a jersey from his time at Paris Saint-Germain, or La Liga side Espanyol, the club that formed him more than any other.

And, of course, there will be lemons.

You see, in at least one sense, Pochettino is already uniquely equipped for life in America.

The 52-year-old Argentine has a bit of an obsession with the types of motivational techniques and borderline supernatural beliefs that many Americans are obsessed with.

If you’re an insomniac, you’ve probably seen the late-night infomercials. Pochettino will speak of auras, of self-determination, of bravery. He’ll walk you over hot coals, or walk you into a wall with an arrow pressed to your throat. Spend enough time around the guy and you might end up in a trust fall.

And then there are the lemons. Walk into Pochettino’s office in Atlanta once he gets settled and you’ll surely see the lemons.

“An Argentinian friend told me that lemons absorb negative energy and cleanse the air,” Pochettino writes in Brave New World, a book which documents his five years as head coach of London-based Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur. “Which is why I have a tray of them in my office.

“We all have the potential to see the energy that surrounds objects and people, although not everyone has honed that sense. For whatever reason, I’ve been able to develop an ability which allows me to see others’ auras.”

Indeed, Brave New World, a breezy, 267-page read produced alongside Spanish author and journalist Guillem Balague, is full of motivational buzzwords. Search for the word “brave” and you’ll find some version of that word used on 18 different occasions. “Energy” is in there 40 times, “aura” a half-dozen. Lemons, well… they get just the one mention.

(Julian Finney/Getty Images)

Pochettino is famously thorough in how he prepares his teams for play, both from a tactical standpoint and from a fitness perspective. Equally as important, though, are his motivational beliefs and the faith he puts in his players. Those beliefs underpin everything Pochettino does as a manager. And in a way, many of those beliefs were formed with the help of Xesco Espar.

Espar first met Pochettino while the Argentine was finishing his playing career at Espanyol in the mid-2000s. A few years later, when Pochettino became that Barcelona club’s head coach during a fierce La Liga relegation battle, the two reconnected. Pochettino had read Espar’s book Jugar con el Corazon (Play from your Heart) — and felt it closely mirrored his own philosophies. Espar, a former handball player and coach who led FC Barcelona’s handball team to a European championship, was happy to help.

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Years later, when Pochettino took over a promising Southampton side midway through the 2012-13 Premier League season, Espar remembers his friend feeling frustrated.

“The first time we talked (after he arrived) he said, ‘These players are much better than they think’,’” says Espar. “‘We have to do something to make them realize this’.”

Espar and Pochettino pulled their solution right out of an American corporate retreat.

In the following preseason, the squad went to Espar’s home base in Spain for a few days of seminars and motivational talks. And then they all filed outside, where they saw a bed of hot coals laid out in front of them. Pochettino went first, calmly and cooly traversing the briquettes without a hint of hesitation. Newcomer and current CF Montreal midfielder Victor Wanyama had a tougher time, as did 31-year-old striker Rickie Lambert, who approached with clear hesitation. In the end, they all passed over the coals, egged on by their teammates and by Pochettino himself.

“It was just a metaphor for breaking your own beliefs about yourself and what you can do,” says Espar. “And they had an amazing season. They were safe (from relegation) very quickly (and finished eighth in the 20-club English top flight, Southampton’s highest final placing for 11 years). He trusts the players. This is one of his main characteristics.”

Pochettino used motivational techniques on his Southampton players (AMA/Corbis via Getty Images)

Espar picked up the hot-coals trick from Tony Robbins, who is maybe the poster child of self-help and motivational techniques in the United States. Pochettino also had his players do something a little bit more terrifying — place the shaft of an arrow on the soft tissue around their throat and lean against a board until it snapped.

His motivational beliefs, though, extend well beyond the Robbins-inspired team-building exercises. There’s his belief in the power of a handshake — at Spurs, Pochettino required players to shake his hand every morning as they entered the team cafeteria, and do the same with each other as well.

“When you touch some people, you feel the energy,” Pochettino once said in a podcast appearance. “You feel if it’s good, if they need love, if they’re upset, if they sleep well. You can have a lot of information that is so important afterwards to manage — you are not managing a robot, you are managing a person that you’re going to ask for the best form. You are going to try to get the best to try to achieve all that you want.” 

Instituting mandatory handshakes was likely just a bonding exercise at Spurs, but to Pochettino, he may have been after something more. While the Argentine relies on sports scientists and analysts for performance data, he relies on personal contact with players to gauge another metric: their aura.

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“I believe nothing happens by chance,” Pochettino writes in Brave New World. “There is a reason for everything.

“Since those early days, I’ve had the ability to notice something powerful that you can’t see, but that does exist. A vital force, an energy field that makes the world go round, an aura that accompanies people, which gives lots of information about them. It’s in my skin, I feel it. (Wife) Karina and I call it ‘universal energy’. My wife helped me get to grips with it and gain a more in-depth understanding. Others helped me explore those feelings further. It isn’t superstition or black magic. I believe there is science behind it.”

American soccer fans are not unfamiliar with team-building or motivational quackery.

Previous USMNT boss Jurgen Klinsmann is German but was as close to a native Californian as he could be by the time he took the head coaching job in 2011, having lived there for the preceding 13 years, and it often felt like a lot of his remarks about players and his coaching philosophy felt steeped in West Coast self-help jargon.

If Pochettino’s trip over the hot coals feels like a scene out of The Office, Klinsmann took things a step further by having his players watch a 55-year-old dude in a tracksuit tear up a few phonebooks and bend a frying pan in half.

USMNT legend Tim Howard spoke about Klinsmann’s approach recently. He did not hold back.

“I don’t remember a time when there was a bigger disconnect between the players and the manager than under Jurgen,” former goalkeeper Howard wrote in the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper. “He organized a lot of team excursions. He specialized in fluff and philosophical rhetoric. But there was zero soccer.”

Such is not the case with Pochettino, of course, who would bring an extensive coaching resume with him and a reputation not only for man-managing but also managing the game itself. “He uses very advanced analytical techniques as well,” adds Espar. “He is not just a ‘motivational guru’ or something like that. He has a strong playbook, a strong model and methodology of the game and training and physical conditioning. It’s not just motivational stuff.”

The Argentine is explicit with players about positioning, almost micromanaging that aspect of the game, and about building play from the back. He also puts an extreme emphasis on trust and relationship building. Pochettino, famously, does not fine players for minor infractions and he never enters the changing room at the training facility. In many ways, he delegates much of the responsibility for leadership to the players themselves.

“He balances leadership and management,” says Espar. “Management is talking to the player’s head, leadership is talking to the player’s heart. He is very good at balancing those things. He has a strong structure in training, with practices, assistants, all of that work. And then he also trusts the players more than most other coaches. He gives the power to the players. He gives recognition to players, but he also gives accountability to them.

“For both of us, the difference between a championship team and a team that wins multiple championships is who holds the accountability. In a championship team, the coach holds the accountability. But in a multi-championship team, it is the players who hold each other accountable. That is one of the main philosophies for Pochettino. He sees the players better than what they already are.”

But let’s not forget about the lemons.

Because after all of this work, after forming a deep well of knowledge and crafting his own unique vision for his team, Pochettino still relies on a citrus fruit — at least a little bit — to turn the ship around.

The USMNT is in a bit of a low moment right now after having crashed out of this summer’s Copa America on home soil and is seeking a turnaround ahead of the 2026 World Cup, which they’ll co-host with Canada and Mexico. If Pochettino has anything to say about it, the lemons will probably play a part in that.

“They started to work after two years at Tottenham,” he said during his tenure at Spurs’ London rivals Chelsea last season. “Give time to the lemons. It is a thing that we all believe… They need a long time, they are not magic, but more than ever, I still believe in them.”

(Top photo: Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty; additional photo credit to iStock; Design: Dan Goldfarb)