The USA are set to see Mauricio Pochettino leave for Manchester United but have set their sights on Pep Guardiola as his replacement

The USA will make Pep Guardiola their top target if, as is expected, Mauricio Pochettino leaves his role and heads to Manchester United.

The Argentine is set to take over from Michael Carrick with the Premier League side already striking an agreement to buy him out of his contract with US Soccer.

As a result those in the States have been drawing up a list of candidates to replace Pochettino and Guardiola, who left Manchester City in the summer, is their ideal candidate, reports the Athletic, and has already been discussed internally.

The Catalan has already turned down the opportunity of a swift return to management with Italy showing an interest in him, only to be rejected by the former City boss. Italian chief Giovanni Malago told La Repubblica: “Pep was honest. He took a sabbatical, partly for family reasons, but if he’d done anything, he would have done it with us.”

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Guardiola has had dialogue with US Soccer in the past and has history in America. He lived in New York City during a year-long sabbatical after he left Barcelona in 2012, living in a luxury apartment close to Central Park with his family.

Guardiola has also previously said: “The USA is fascinating to try to build a project for many years and being able to get the national team to the next step. The potential with the USA is there for the amount of people and sports and so on.”

US Soccer contacted Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp at the beginning of the federation’s last managerial search, which ended with the hiring of Pochettino in 2024.

The Argentine is now poised for a return to the Premier League, where he's previously coached Tottenham and then Chelsea. In north London he saw his stock rise and that's when he was first linked with a move to Manchester, but he was overlooked for the role in 2018 as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer got the gig.

Since then he won the first honours of his managerial career, doing so at PSG. He led the USA in their home World Cup in the summer, but they were knocked out by Belgium in the Round of 16.

Pochettino is set to oversee the USA's two upcoming games, both against Haiti, and that would delay his move to Old Trafford, where he is due to replace Michael Carrick.