Mauricio Pochettino would have been fast asleep in his hotel room in the quirky American town of Trilith when Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox sat down with Michael Carrick at Carrington Thursday morning and confirmed the worst-kept secret in football.
It was time for Carrick to vacate the head coach’s office at Manchester United, and safe to say Pochettino will have his feet under the desk this time next week.
Carrick arrived at 7.50am but, unlike the last two days, he was no longer wearing his United training gear.
The agonising wait to be put out of his misery was over, and the club’s chief executive and director of football duly administered the last rites before Carrick left at 10.18am.
The decision was communicated to staff and Under-21s boss Adam Lawrence took training with the players who have remained at Carrington during the international break.
The first reports of Carrick’s sacking broke at 9.30am, but United insisted that they were premature and it wasn’t until 10.37am that the news was confirmed in a 142-word statement.
Michael Carrick finally left Carrington on Thursday morning after an agonising wait to be put out of his misery
Staff at Manchester United believe that the former club captain’s treatment at the hands of their Ineos paymasters has been ‘disgusting’
It’s understood that his backroom staff – assistant Steve Holland, coaches Jonathan Woodgate, Jonny Evans and Travis Binnion, and goalkeeper coach Craig Mawson – have also gone. When Evans left on Wednesday night with his car piled high with cardboard boxes, it didn’t bode well.
The treatment of Carrick and Evans, in particular, has upset staff. Two highly-respected figures at United, whose association with the club goes back more than 20 years, have been left hanging while their employers stumble over a succession plan.
Members of staff share Gary Neville’s view that Berrada and Wilcox meeting with Sir Jim Ratcliffe in Monaco, and making a move for Pochettino while Carrick had to keep driving past the cameras on his way into Carrington for the last three days, was ‘disgusting’.
It has also reignited anger over the 450 job cuts carried out by Ratcliffe and Ineos over the past three years while pouring millions down the drain in compensation.
The £10million to buy Pochettino and his staff out of their contracts with the US Soccer Federation, and the pay-off owing to Carrick and Co, will push the cost of hiring and firing coaches in the Ineos era close to £50m.
No wonder eyebrows were raised when Berrada spoke at Sir Alex Ferguson’s 40th anniversary dinner at Old Trafford on Friday night and talked about building a culture at the club.
The feeling is that changing United’s head coach won’t make a shred of difference if there isn’t significant change higher up the chain.
It has once again turned the spotlight on the relationship between Ratcliffe and the Glazer family, who from February can force him to sell his 28 per cent holding to a third party for less than the £25-per-share he paid in 2024 unless he can match the offer and buy the club himself.
However, United sources say they had little choice but to sack Carrick with the club in the relegation zone, having decided to give him a stay of execution at the end of last month.
Since then, the club had carried out a comprehensive review and come to the conclusion that a record of one win from 10 Premier League games was unacceptable.
The sources indicated that the United board shared the frustration and anger felt by fans over the situation, and believe that a change of head coach will bring about an improvement from a squad that is far better than results would suggest.
While United praised Carrick for his ‘highest degree of professionalism’, there was only silence from the players on social media.
Many of them are on international duty, including Bruno Fernandes whose criticism of Carrick’s tactics after the Champions League defeat to Como proved so damaging.
Following the announcement of Carrick’s dismissal none of his former players – including Bruno Fernandes – were quick to say their goodbyes publicly
Meanwhile, his would-be successor Mauricio Pochettino is set to face the media on Friday
Pochettino will inherit this squad of players once he has completed his duties as US national team coach with the upcoming CONCACAF Nations League double-header against Haiti.
The former Tottenham and Chelsea boss is due to speak at 2.15pm Friday ahead of the first leg in Miami on Saturday night when he will face questions over the United job for the first time.
Pochettino is expected to stay in charge for the second leg in Cincinnati in the early hours of Wednesday morning before flying to Manchester to meet the players and prepare for the crunch clash with Liverpool at Anfield a week on Sunday.
The US have been staying in Trilith, near their new training headquarters in Fayetteville south-west of Atlanta, where they were also based before the World Cup.
It’s a unique place designed for the film industry and built around the Trilith Studios which are the largest outside Hollywood. The ideal place for Pochettino to prepare for life at Old Trafford.
He has embraced the American lifestyle since he was appointed US coach in September 2024, a few months after leaving Chelsea, and will be sorry to leave.
Pochettino is said to have developed a love of bourbon whiskey, country music and Nashville, with Ella Langley’s Choosin’ Texas one of his favourite tunes.
He has admitted crying over Miracle, the movie about the US hockey team made up of college kids famously beating the Soviet Union to the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics.
But the pull of Manchester United was always going to be too great, and very soon he will be swapping Trilith for Old Trafford.
