PSG Moving on From Pochettino, to Reportedly Hire Galtier as Replacement

Despite domestic success, PSG crashed out of the Champions League in the round of 16 and is set for another new leader on the bench.

Mauricio Pochettino is set to be fired as PSG manager after less than two years in the French capital and with a year left on his remaining contract, with domestic success not enough to keep him in the job. 

Pochettino arrived in January 2021 and led PSG to the Champions League semifinals in his first few months. However, the man he replaced at PSG, Thomas Tuchel, went on to win the Champions League title that season with Chelsea. 

Two of Pochettino’s other predecessors at PSG, Carlo Ancelotti and Unai Emery, have gone on to European success as well, giving the Argentine hope for the future. As for PSG, newly appointed football adviser Luís Campos was tasked with leading the search after the departure of sporting director Leonardo, and Christophe Galtier, the manager who led Lille to the 2020-21 Ligue 1 title and spent last season at Nice, is widely reported to be the man for the position. He and Campos have familiarity with one another having overlapped at Lille. L’Equipe reported that PSG and Nice agreed to a compensation package of €10 million ($10.5 million) to pry Galtier free. Zinedine Zidane had also been closely linked to the club, though PSG distanced itself from reports that it had been in talks with the French legend.

Pochettino didn’t find the European success that PSG is desperate to achieve, but he did win domestically. His first trophy at PSG came in his first year in the Coupe de France, but the club did not retain its league title after losing out to Lille. This past season, PSG brought in a flurry of high-profile transfers, including Lionel Messi, Sergio Ramos, Gianluigi Donnarumma and Achraf Hakimi.

The revamped team won Ligue 1 handily by 15 points but dropped out of the Coupe de France in the round of 16 at the hands of Galtier’s Nice after a penalty shootout. 

However, arguably the club’s biggest failure of the Pochettino era came in the Champions League this season. With a 2–0 aggregate lead over Real Madrid and just 30 minutes left in the second leg of the round of 16, PSG blew the lead and crashed out of the competition, thanks to a Karim Benzema hat trick in one definitive 17-minute span.

Unlike Pochettino, who at least took Tottenham to the Champions League final, Galtier arrives without any European bona fides. He has enjoyed plenty of success in France, but in order to take PSG to where it wants to go, he’ll need to achieve European success on the fly.