Mauricio Pochettino’s USMNT farewell was inevitable but it hurts all the same: ‘A big thank you from my heart’

Two weeks after the U.S. men's national team failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, an in-depth look at the man who would become the team's head coach seven years later was available on bookshelves across the U.K. and, eventually, everywhere else. "Brave New World" by Guillem Balague is just as much a glimpse at the 2016-17 Tottenham Hotspur team as it is at a manager on the rise in Mauricio Pochettino, who cut to the chase in a handwritten note before the first chapter.

"Football is," he wrote, "or at least to me, a context of emotions."

There is supposed to be something ruthless about a sports team at the peak of its powers, and Pochettino's are no exception. He has built high-intensity, attack-minded teams for the better part of two decades, now on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, but he has never tried to strip humanity out of a profession that unnecessarily demands an emotionless approach to the job. It is why, at U.S. Soccer's national training center in Atlanta on Friday, he began to cry.

"The human being is in front of everything," he said, "and that is why that is a really difficult decision…

Original source: https://www.cbssports.com/