Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino plotting Premier League challenge even while in Sydney
Tottenham manger Mauricio Pochettino “won’t stand still” in his pursuit of improvement, even during an off-season trip to face Sydney FC
MAURICIO Pochettino looks younger than his 43 years, but it probably won’t take many more seasons at the helm of Tottenham for the equation to go the other way.
Coaching a team with aspirations to break into the English Premier League’s top four is scarcely for the faint-hearted, but it’s also the sort of assignment he has been building towards since he began coaching six years ago.
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Four days in Sydney gives the Argentine a chance to reflect on the season just gone, and start to plot next year, where the expectations upon him are simple and yet hugely complicated. Spurs, the team beloved of footballing romantics for decades, want to take a step up and challenge the EPL hegemony. Pochettino is the latest to try, but just possibly the most driven to succeed.
“Always you need to try to improve your tactics, your squad, your physical condition,” he told The Daily Telegraph this week, speaking with an intensity surprising in a man less than three hours off a long-haul flight.
“Our challenge is always to improve, every day. The key is to try to develop your own quality as well as the players. It’s impossible to stop, to stand still. We have to improve the players, give them better tools for delivery on the pitch.”
That was always his aim as a player, maximising his ability all the way into the Argentina side. Gone are the long hair and alice band of those playing days, but the determination and single-mindedness are still obvious. Coaching at Espanyol in Spain he fought against an ongoing financial crisis until he walked out mid-season. At Southampton in the Premier League he lifted the side’s ambitions from survival to success, until he decided their ambitions fell short of his own, and answered the overtures of Spurs a year ago.
“It’s true — as a player, I play in big teams, I play for the national team in Argentina,” he said. “When I become a manager, I want to grow and arrive on the top. Tottenham is a good opportunity, it’s a bigger club and a good way to achieve some important things.
“In our first season, when you arrive at a new club, always you try to set down your ideas, your philosophy. If you analyse our first season, we achieved the final of the Capital One Cup, and finished fifth on the table. I think it was a good first year with a lot of young players like Harry Kane, Nabil Bentaleb, Eric Dier or Ryan Mason who aren’t just in the squad but played a lot of games in the Premier League. I think this is very important thing for the club.”
His players speak of the pact he makes with them — they give the physical intensity he demands, and they get success. Memorably his compatriot Dani Osvaldo said that Pochettino “makes you suffer like a dog — at the time you hate him for it but by the Sunday you’re grateful because it works.”
That maybe an exaggeration, but not by that much. “He works us hard — maybe dog’s a big strong,” smiled Harry Kane on Thursday. “But we enjoy it and this season he’s come in and we’ve had a great year. We’ve learnt the way he wants to work and it’s been tough but it’s helped us along the way. You’ve seen our performances and a lot of late goals proves our fitness is very strong.”
Kane’s goal tally was a key part of what Spurs did achieve this year, and of what they hope to achieve. The target remains the EPL top four, but the vicious cycle is that until they can offer Champions League football, they remain vulnerable to raids on their key men from the established elite.
“It’s our dream — to be able to challenge for the top four,” Pochettino said. “But in the same way we have to be realistic because the clubs we have to beat to get there are big sides — Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool. It’s our challenge for the next few seasons.
“In football you never know, but it’s true that with players like Harry [Kane] or Hugo [Lloris], there are always [transfer] rumours. But they are very happy here, very happy at Tottenham. They want to stay here and help the club and the team achieve important things.”
Originally published as Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino plotting Premier League challenge even while in Sydney
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