Manchester United Agree Pochettino Deal After Sacking Carrick
Manchester United have agreed a two-and-a-half-year deal with Mauricio Pochettino to become their new head coach, a day after sacking Michael Carrick with the club sitting in the Premier League relegation zone. Sky Sports reported on Friday that the agreement is in place, with the formal announcement expected later in the day, and that the 54-year-old Argentine will sign a contract running until the summer of 2029.
The move would take the current United States men’s national team coach to Old Trafford at one of the lowest points in the club’s modern history, and it leaves US Soccer searching for a new manager less than four years after handing Pochettino a contract extension through the 2030 World Cup.
A deal agreed, an announcement to come
The reporting around the appointment has converged quickly. Fabrizio Romano said on Thursday night that the deal was done, with a green light from the US Soccer Federation, while The Athletic’s David Ornstein also reported that a two-and-a-half-year agreement had been reached. United had not officially confirmed the appointment by Friday morning UK time, so the club’s own announcement is still to come, but the terms are now reported consistently across outlets.
Pochettino would become the eighth permanent appointment since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013, a turnover that underlines how little stability United have found in the dugout over the past thirteen years.
Carrick’s short reign ends in the relegation zone
Carrick was informed on Thursday morning that he was leaving, less than six months after signing a two-year contract. He had been appointed head coach in January 2026 after Ruben Amorim’s sacking, initially until the end of the 2025-26 season, and earned the permanent job in the summer.
The results never followed. United sit 18th in the Premier League, inside the relegation zone, with one win from their first ten league matches — the club’s worst start to a Premier League season. The final blow was Sunday’s 4-4 draw with Aston Villa, a match in which United twice surrendered the lead.
In a statement on Thursday, the club said: “Manchester United can confirm that Michael Carrick has departed his role as men’s first-team head coach.” It added that the club intends to appoint a permanent successor “as quickly as possible”. A separate passage in the statement was blunt about the reasoning: “After a disappointing start to the season, the club has come to the extremely difficult conclusion that a change is necessary in order to achieve our ambitions.”
Sources close to the decision told ESPN that the league position was “not acceptable” and that the squad is “far better than results and performances so far this season have indicated” — a verdict on the coaching, in other words, rather than on the players.
Why Pochettino, and why now
Pochettino arrives with the strongest CV of any United appointment since Ferguson. He took Tottenham Hotspur to the 2019 Champions League final, managed Paris Saint-Germain, and had a spell at Chelsea before taking the United States job. United had considered him before, in 2022, and his high-pressing, high-energy style has long been admired by the club’s hierarchy.
He also brings a reputation for improving players rather than simply buying them, which matters for a squad that has spent heavily without finding consistency. The club is expected to back him in the January transfer window, with plans to be active at the start of 2027, according to reports.
The USMNT wrinkle: Haiti first, then Anfield
The complication is Pochettino’s current job. He will stay with the United States for their two Concacaf Nations League quarter-final legs against Haiti, on Saturday 14 November and Wednesday 18 November, with United happy for him to complete those fixtures out of respect for US Soccer. He is then expected to fly to Manchester on Wednesday and take training for the first time on Thursday.
United will pay about £7.4 million to trigger the release clause in his US Soccer contract, with the total cost of the move — including his four backroom staff — reported to exceed £10 million. TEAMtalk reported that the overall package will be in excess of £10 million, and that Pochettino’s deal runs until 2029 at a salary above the one Carrick enjoyed.
It is a sharp turn for US Soccer, which only announced a contract extension for Pochettino in August, keeping him in charge through the 2030 World Cup. He guided the United States to the round of 16 at the expanded 2026 World Cup, which the country co-hosted, and his departure now leaves the federation to find a successor with the next World Cup cycle already under way.
Across the Atlantic, American sport has produced its own dramatic week, from Cade Cunningham’s career-high 52 in a double-overtime win to Stephen Curry’s injury absence for the Warriors and the Lakers’ seventh straight win. But no American story this week carries quite the same cross-border weight as the US national team coach leaving for the biggest job in English football.
The task ahead
Pochettino’s first match in charge is expected to be one of the fiercest fixtures in the English calendar: Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday 22 November. He will have barely a week of training with his new squad before it, and the international break means several of his players will return from national duty only days beforehand.
The scale of the job is stark. United are in the relegation zone in November, their worst start to a Premier League season, and the club has burned through managers at a rate of almost one a year since Ferguson. Pochettino’s task is not simply to climb the table. It is to stop the cycle.
If the formal announcement lands on Friday as reported, his first week at Carrington begins next Thursday — and the Anfield trip that follows will be the first, brutal measure of whether this reset is any different from the ones before it.
