U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker leaves his job two months before the World Cup
The timing startled fans, as did word that he's going to Saudi Arabia. But it might not be such a big deal, given what Crocker already did hiring coaches and building the new national training center.
U.S. Soccer Federation sporting director Matt Crocker suddenly left the job on Tuesday, just under two months before the U.S. men’s soccer team’s first game of the World Cup.
Fox Sports and The Athletic reported that Crocker is headed to Saudi Arabia’s national federation to take a similar job there, and outlets in Saudi Arabia had floated the possibility a few days ago. U.S. Soccer’s announcement didn’t confirm that, but chief operating officer Dan Helfrich effectively did in an interview with Fox.
“I anticipate zero impact on World Cup preparation as a result of Matt’s decision,” Helfrich said in that piece, which was published a few minutes before the official word came down. “Mauricio and his staff have full control of the preparations for this summer’s tournament, and we have full confidence in them. This transition in no way impacts those plans, which have been long-established.”
As startling as the move was — and as chaotic as the moments after the announcement felt for many fans — the move isn’t as bad as it might seem.
Yes, it’s an ugly look to leave two months before a World Cup, especially hosted on home soil. But Crocker had already achieved three big things that will outlast this moment.
One was the hiring of Emma Hayes to manage the U.S. women’s team. The deal was struck in November 2023 and tailored so she could leave her previous job at Chelsea when the season ended. It allowed Hayes a dignified move to a job she’d dreamed of for many years, and that paid off when the Americans won gold at the Olympics in Paris.
Since then, Hayes has embarked on a major overhaul of the program, with structural developments behind the scenes that will easily last beyond Crocker — and perhaps Hayes herself.
» READ MORE: The USMNT, USWNT, and your kid’s youth team are all different. U.S. Soccer is fine with that.
Second was the hiring of Mauricio Pochettino to manage the U.S. men’s team. It was a huge gamble, but Gregg Berhalter’s failure at the 2024 Copa América had plunged the program into another crisis — mere months after Berhalter had been invited back to the job in the wake of the scandal with Gio Reyna and his family.
Crocker took the moment to clean house, and called someone who was not just a big name, but an old friend from when they worked together at English club Southampton in 2013. Pochettino was convinced, and Crocker and U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson used college sports-style fundraising to get hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin to fund the $6 million salary.
Pochettino has been popular with some fans, and less so with others. The ultimate verdict, of course, will come from how the team does this summer. But it was always hard to believe Pochettino would stay on past then. Now it feels impossible.
Pochettino was a hired gun from the start, a short-term move to shake the U.S. men out of complacency on the field and the Reyna scandal off it. Though he has done some helpful things with the future in mind, it was always going to make sense to have someone else take the job after the summer for a full four-year cycle.
At the same time, Pochettino has been publicly courted by big clubs in Europe, including England’s Tottenham Hotspur and Spain’s Real Madrid, in recent months.
Crocker’s departure makes it even easier for Pochettino to leave this summer, and leave a clean slate behind. There’s no lack of candidates to take the job next, whether domestically or around the world. (Former Union manager Jim Curtin is certainly one of them.)
The third achievement is by far Crocker’s biggest: overseeing the construction of U.S. Soccer’s new national training center in suburban Atlanta.
It has 19 pitches of various kinds, from grass to turf to hardwood for the futsal (indoor) and power soccer (wheelchair) teams; plus a raft of top-of-the-line locker rooms, fitness facilities, and work spaces for the governing body’s staff.
The place drew inspiration from national training centers around the world, including one Crocker knows especially well. In 2013, the now-51-year-old left his first stint at Southampton to become England’s technical director, just a few months after the nation’s Football Association had opened its first national training center.
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When Crocker hosted a media tour of U.S. Soccer’s facility last month, he acknowledged that St. George’s Park was “massively” in his mind with this effort.
“There’s never one silver bullet, but there’s a lot of things that are resonating with me that happened in and around the St. George’s Park time, or in and around the FA time, that are in and around the time here,” he said. “Building a facility, changes within the ecosystem, focus on player development, more infrastructure and finances going into our youth national teams programs, more connections with the major leagues. Those things were happening in 2012, 2013, in and around England, and there’s a sense that we’re doing those things now.”
That absolutely will outlast him, Pochettino, Hayes, Helfrich, president Cindy Cone, CEO JT Batson, and a whole lot of other people.
As for where U.S. Soccer goes from here, for the time being the sporting side will be overseen by a trio of Helfrich, vice president of sporting operations Oguchi Onyewu (a former Union player), and women’s youth national team head of development Tracey Kevins.
» READ MORE: U.S. Soccer needs your kid’s youth club to help its national teams. Will it happen?
All three have deep soccer backgrounds, including Helfrich — who played at Georgetown, then worked in broadcasting and served in a range of advisory roles in American soccer while a consultant at Deloitte.
Their biggest challenge might come not from the senior level, but in the youth game. Crocker was the first U.S. Soccer leader in years to make serious inroads with what feels at times like a youth soccer-industrial complex. Leaders at that level were listening to him and willing to work with him on simplifying things.
Crocker was often frustrated by the scale of that challenge. It mixed the nation’s big population and geography with small-scale personal fiefdoms held by youth coaches and administrators.
But when Crocker laid out his “U.S. Way” philosophy this year, he earned strong backing, including from leaders of some of the Philadelphia area’s biggest youth soccer entities.
He also struck a deal for U.S. Soccer to take over some behind-the-scenes operations of U.S. Club Soccer, a separate entity that’s one of many private, national-level youth soccer entities. (That alone is a hint of the scale of the challenge.)
» READ MORE: Matt Crocker’s call for the youth game to help U.S. Soccer draws support from Philly-area leaders
Now it will be up to Helfrich and his colleagues to continue that work, and try to get everyone into the game’s big tent — all while preparing for this year’s World Cup, the 2028 Olympics, and the 2031 women’s World Cup on home soil.
“Matt helped guide important steps across our sporting organization, and we’re grateful for his contributions,” Batson said in a statement. “We’re confident in our strategy, leadership team, coaches, and technical staff. We will continue building the right structure for the future, and we’re well positioned to make the decisions needed in the short, medium, and long term.”
