Foreign intrigue: Why it's OK for non-citizens to coach in World Cup, and why USMNT, Brazil and England are doing it

Tim Ream, the left-footed defender who will serve as United States men’s national team captain at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, was born in St. Louis and spent the whole of his youth and college years there. Star forward Christian Pulisic was born in Hershey, the Pennsylvania town that is the nation’s capital of chocolate. Tyler Adams spent his early teen years in a New York town with an indelibly American name: Wappingers Falls.

Mauricio Pochettino grew up in Argentina, remains an Argentine citizen, played for his country at the 2002 World Cup, has worked for clubs in Spain, England and France and only lived part-time in the U.S. the past couple years. And yet he is the USMNT head coach.

It’s a little curious, no?

A World Cup player must be a citizen of the nation he represents, but there is no such rule for the coaches involved. Thus do we have a majority of coaches in this tournament – 26 out of 48 – who are foreign to the national teams they’ll run.

That’s especially notable given some of the teams that have chosen this circumstance. Two of the three host nations have foreign coaches: Pochettino with the U.S., American Jesse March with Canada. And so do two of the most powerful soccer nations, both previous World Cup winners: Brazil with Italian legend Carlo Ancelotti and England with German Thomas Tuchel.

“There’s a debate to be had about whether this should even be allowed,” said David Mosse, a researcher and writer for Fox Sports who serves as co-host of the State of the Union soccer podcast. “I understand why FIFA allows it; because they think it helps the smaller nations develop. You have a case at this World Cup where Uzbekistan are coached by Fabio Cannavaro, a World Cup winner as a player with Italy. So there’s this notion that if you’re a smaller country and you hire a coach from a nation with pedigree that brings the sort of know-how, it can help you.

“But I think if you gave FIFA a truth serum, they don’t expect the elite soccer nations to go that route. International soccer, on some level to me, should be a referendum on the ability of countries to produce not only players, but coaches.”

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Brazil led by a European head coach is jarring

Mosse was born in Brazil, raised there until he was 10 and retains a passionate connection to its national soccer team. He knows the history: five World Cup titles won with Brazilian head coaches, from 1958 with Vicente Feola to 2002 with Luiz Felipe Scolari.

He’s also well aware none of the 22 World Cup champions were coached by a foreigner, from Alberto Suppici with Uruguay in 1930 to Lionel Scaloni with Argentina in 2022.

So if Brazil (or England, or Portugal) is to win the 2026 trophy, they will need to break nearly a 100-year precedent.

“Brazil has gone that route since 2019; there has been this foreign-manager invasion in the domestic league. The majority of big clubs in Brazil are now managed by foreign managers, so on a positive level that laid the groundwork that it was a little bit less of a culture shock,” Mosse told SN. “A lot of the fans in Brazil have now grown accustomed to their favorite clubs being managed by foreigners, so it felt like the national team going that route was just an extension."

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Ancelotti is an easy sell in that respect. He has coached some of the biggest brands in the club game: AC Milan, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. He won six league titles and five Champions Leagues.

"There's not a Brazilian coach that would have the respect -- not just of the players, but everybody, and who is big enough to handle the Brazil job," ESPN analyst Steve Nicol, a member of Scotland’s 1986 World Cup team, told SN. 

At 66, this is Ancelotti's first time managing a national team, though he did finish third as a player with Italy and reached the 1994 final as an assistant with the Azzurri.

“I do find it all incredibly damning that Brazil is incapable of producing top managers, that they even have to contemplate going this route," Mosse said. "There are people in Brazil that are firmly against it, and there are people OK with Ancelotti managing, but even the people who are OK – and I guess I would sort of fall into that camp – it’s kind of sad that this is the best route to go if we’re going to win a World Cup.”

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The Three Lions have a German accent

This is not the first time England has attempted to succeed with someone from the continent, as they say. Sweden’s Sven-Goran Eriksson was hired in 2001, rescued their World Cup qualifying effort and then led them at the tournament in 2002 and 2006, both resulting in quarterfinal exits.

England found his successor in Italian Fabio Capello, who had managed such club giants as AC Milan, Juventus and Real Madrid. Sepp Blatter, then FIFA president, criticized “the motherland” of the sport for “ignoring a sacrosanct law or belief” that a national team should be coached by a citizen. At the 2010 World Cup, Capello’s England finished second behind the U.S. in group play and was eliminated in the round of 16.

It was Englishman Gareth Southgate who led England to its first World Cup semi in 28 years when the Three Lions lost to Croatia in extra time at Russia 2018, and it took reigning champion France to eliminate them from the quarterfinals in 2022. Southgate also led the Lions to consecutive European Championship finals. Following his resignation in 2024, though, given England’s hunger to at last end a major trophy drought that’s lasted since 1996 and the relative absence of accomplished English coaches, Tuchel was deemed an attractive choice, having won the 2021 UEFA Champions League as Chelsea manager and three combined league titles as Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich.

Warren Barton, now a Fox Sports analyst for World Cup games who earned three caps as a defender with England, told SN, “I haven’t got a problem with it. I think with Thomas Tuchel, at a time in the Premier League when foreign coaches have come in and succeeded, the culture of the Premier League then transfers to the national team. I’m one of that mindset: They could be from Timbuktu, if they can get it over the line.”

There is no doubt some foreign coaches have succeeded. Under Serbia’s Bora Milutinovic, the United States defeated heavily favored Colombia and made an unexpected trip to the Round of 16 at the 1994 World Cup, even though it was only their second trip to the tournament since 1950. When South Korea hired Guus Hiddink in 2001 in advance of their home World Cup, they hadn’t won a single game in five consecutive appearances. He got them to the semifinals.

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Of the past 20 semifinalists, however, from 2006 through 2022, only two were not coached by citizens of that particular nation: Belgium in 2018, run by Spain’s Roberto Martinez, and Portugal in 2006, with Brazilian Scolari in charge.

So if the goal is the title, there’s a 0 percent success rate for foreign head coaches. And if it’s making the semis, the rate over the past five World Cups is 10 percent.

“The teams that generally win the World Cup, the huge nations, let’s be honest: generally the game is so big and powerful and important in these countries that they produce coaches that have the tools and the wherewithal and tactics to handle the teams,” Nicol said. “And obviously, they know the culture. I think that’s the major part of it.”

Nicol does acknowledge being "absolutely, 100 percent" proud Scotland's entry in this event is managed by a Scotsman, Steve Clark, who also was one of his former teammates with the national team.

England has not been able to produce a long list of top managers in spite of – or perhaps because of – the prominence of the Premier League. At the highest level there, the biggest clubs and aspiring big clubs are searching for any advantage wherever they can find it. So Arsenal’s 2026 title was achieved with a Spaniard in charge (Mikel Arteta) and only three English players in the primary starting lineup (Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Myles Lewis-Skelly). The season began with only three English managers in charge of Premier League clubs.

The England squad won all eight games in qualifying for this World Cup. They’re 10-2-1 since the start of the 2025 calendar year, when Tuchel took over the program. For nearly all the key players, adapting to a German coach after years of playing for Southgate was no different than what might have occurred with their clubs.

“I really like his mindset, how he’s really gone about his work and his business,” Barton said. “They’re a little bit of a machine at the moment: keep winning games, keep grinding it out. And now comes the big test at the World Cup.

“Being English and watching England play, you do take it really personal. You can’t help but get emotionally involved in the game, or if a decision goes against you. Maybe with Thomas Tuchel or Capello or Sven-Goran Eriksson, they can come away from that emotion. When I think of that, I get emotional, because that’s what I wanted to do as a kid. You do get very protective about your nation, and I think sometimes as a coach, you’d better have a cool head. I think that’s one of the pluses.”

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Mauricio Pochettino offers a different perspective to American soccer

There is a segment of U.S. fans convinced any coach with a U.S. background isn’t sufficient. There were loud complaints about Gregg Berhalter when he was hired and even as he was winning the CONCACAF Nations League and Gold Cup in the summer of 2021.

And even after the young American team qualified for Qatar 2022 and allowed only one goal in group play, by far the fewest in modern national team history, Berhalter remained widely unpopular. Critics seized upon a comment from Louis van Gaal of the Netherlands that was meant as an explanation of the U.S. approach, not a condemnation, and used it to emphasize their belief that Berhalter was a poor strategist.

“I would assume that the stronger the country is, the less they’ll be adjusting. And team USA didn’t adjust, didn’t adapt,” Van Gaal said after a 3-1 Round of 16 victory. “We based a tactical plan on that, that probably allowed us to win.”

The translation of this into a rip against Berhalter was the last piece of evidence necessary that if he were to be removed at some point, his replacement would need to be a big-name foreign coach. When the U.S. failed at Copa America 2024, that moment arrived. And with time spent at Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham Hotspur, Pochettino fit that qualification.

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Pochettino's pre-Cup approach has been vastly different from what Berhalter did four years ago. The USMNT then were encouraged to play a specific style – a 4-3-3 with a midfield of Adams, Weston McKennie and Yunus Musah controlling or dominating possession – and create a cohesive unit. “Poch” has experimented with different lineups and formations up to the doorstep of the World Cup; there was considerable success with a three-man backline in last autumn’s exhibitions, particularly a 5-1 victory over Uruguay, and then a complete switch to deploying two central defenders in March. That did not go as well.

It will be fascinating to see if Pochettino’s techniques produce World Cup success. That could determine who will succeed him when he inevitably departs after this tournament: an American coach, someone from Europe or South America, or possibly someone with Pelligrino Matarazzo’s varied background. He grew up in New Jersey, played at Columbia but since has been in Europe as player or coach, most recently leading Spain’s Real Sociedad to the Copa del Rey title.

“Obviously, the tension here is: Do we have anybody in American soccer that is ‘good enough’ to take us to a level that will satisfy us? Whatever that is,” Jason Davis of SiriusXM’s Wynalda Talks Football and The Best Soccer Show podcast. “You go back to ’94 and Bora, he was a guy who understood the landscape of international soccer in a way the institution of American coaches didn’t yet. And I can understand why you do that in ’94.

“I would love it to be an American. Not necessarily for patriotic reasons, but more because of what it would indicate about American soccer moving forward. I never really think about, ‘Oh, we need a foreign manager’, or ‘We need an American manager’. I don’t like thinking in those general ways, because you’re boxing yourself in. I think it has to be the right one. But I do think there’s a value for the U.S. international team in particular to have those outside perspectives and to have people who have a different culture to come in and push us in different ways.”

There is the persistent threat, though, that believing Americans aren’t equipped to succeed as coaches on the biggest stages will prevent them from ever gaining the support necessary to lead the USMNT to greatness.

“There will always be a group of American soccer fans who don’t think Americans can do soccer but still want our national team to be excellent,” Davis told SN. “That’s a problem that we have, that there’s a large group of people with an inferiority complex. It’s simply a belief that we won’t get to where want to go unless we tap other cultures … We need those guides to pull us along because we don’t have the institutional knowledge.

“I think that’s, frankly, nonsense.”