Citadel's Griffin pays for talent — including US soccer coach

NEW YORK, June 26 : As the United States men's national soccer team advances in the World Cup, fans from Wall Street to the wider world have an unexpected patron to thank for some of the American team's recent success.

Billionaire investor Ken Griffin, best known for running hedge fund Citadel and a lifelong soccer fan, made the largest financial contribution to hire Argentine coach Mauricio Pochettino as the U.S. national team's coach nearly two years ago, a Citadel spokesman confirmed.

Pochettino, who previously coached prominent soccer clubs Tottenham Hotspur, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea, was recruited to rebuild a U.S. squad that had been eliminated from the Copa America in 2024 but has now advanced to the knockout rounds in the 2026 World Cup.

The U.S. team is set to play Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 1 in the round of 32 and has generated so much excitement that some Wall Street portfolio managers, bankers and lawyers have been flying across the country to attend games, and have instructed colleagues not to contact them during three hours of critical play, several of them said.

Griffin built a large and profitable investment firm by paying top dollar for traders and portfolio managers, Wall Street recruiters said, and he did not flinch when a fellow hedge fund manager, Scott Goodwin, asked him to help pay for Pochettino's two-year contract, a Citadel spokesman confirmed.

The 57-year-old hedge fund manager began playing soccer at age 6, competed on a high school team that finished second in the state and continued to play and coach as an adult, the spokesman said. 

Reuters could not learn how much Griffin paid.

HEDGE FUND'S PERFORMANCE

Miami-based Citadel oversees $68 billion in assets and was named the most profitable