‘Sometimes you need to be brave’ — exclusive interview with Mauricio Pochettino
This article was first published in Sport magazine in October 2016.
You can trace Mauricio Pochettino’s football philosophy back to an old photograph, and a stranger at the door.
The Tottenham manager grew up in Murphy, a town of some 3,000 people in Argentina’s farming heartland. “I was playing football in the soil — in the fields,” he tells Sport.
“My shoes had a big hole in the toes, and I always remember one picture that I love. I was two years old, with the ball in my arms, and I held it like it was my treasure. It’s an emotional photo for me because that is what represents my life. Everything that happened afterwards in my life is because of this ball.”
Forty years later, Pochettino’s teams pursue the ball with the ferocity of treasure hunters. Tottenham’s young side press high up the pitch and win the ball in dangerous areas. There is also a new solidity at the back and steel throughout the team. Spurs are unbeaten in eight league games this season, and we head to their modern north London training centre the week after a smashing 2–0 win over Manchester City.
It was Pep Guardiola’s first defeat as City boss, and elevates Pochettino into a select band of managers who have got the better of him twice (the Argentinian’s Espanyol side beat Guardiola’s Barcelona in 2009). Understandably, he’s in a pretty good mood. He answers our questions in English, with the occasional glance towards assistant manager Jesus Perez for help with a bit of vocabulary or translation.
“It was a nearly perfect performance,” says the 44-year-old, who joined Spurs from Southampton 18 months ago. “We were playing against a very good team, with a great manager, great players and one of the contenders to fight for the Premier League. It was a fantastic game.”
The result has helped underline Tottenham’s own title ambitions. It’s been a long wait for the White Hart Lane faithful — their previous top-flight league title came in 1961 — but you sense things are moving in the right direction. Could this be the year?
“It’s difficult to guess now, because a lot of things can happen during the season,” says Pochettino. “But it’s very important in football to have this belief. We are an ambitious team, the players want to improve and want to give the best in every game, and every training session.”
It’s hard to square that with the alarming slump at the end of last season. After losing their shot at the title by throwing away a two-goal lead against Chelsea, Spurs seemed to implode in the remaining games. They lost 5–1 to already-relegated Newcastle on the last day of the campaign, and somehow contrived to finish third, behind Arsenal.
“You need to improve and learn from your experience, and that was a great experience,” says Pochettino. “In that moment it was tough, but I think if you are clever you need to show that you improve and learn from the past.”
Young hearts
At Espanyol, where he was a long-serving centre-back and then manager, Pochettino was nicknamed ‘The Sheriff of Murphy’. He has developed a reputation for fearsome double-training sessions. In the past, he has made his players walk over hot coals and even break arrows on each other’s throats.
“He makes you suffer like a dog, and at the time you hate him for it,” said striker Dani Osvaldo, who nonetheless followed Pochettino from Espanyol to Southampton. “But by the Sunday, you’re grateful, because it works.”
Jack Cork, who also played under Pochettino at Southampton, said it felt like you needed two hearts to play for Pochettino. We’re thinking in terms of pumping more oxygen to the muscles to fuel them for the relentless pressing.
But Pochettino interprets it slightly differently: “That was a good metaphor. You know, we always say football is about emotion — me and my staff we feel it like an emotion. If you play without passion, it is difficult to achieve big things.
“He makes you suffer like a dog, and at the time you hate him for it. But by the Sunday, you’re grateful, because it works.”
“Yes, I am agreed that we demand a lot, but it’s not just demanding that the player needs to run, run, run and run. It’s tough because we push them to improve, to think, to give their best in every single moment that we spend together, and that is tough for the player.”
Although Pochettino is stoic and calm in interviews, there are reports of the occasional dressing room explosion — such as after September’s 2–1 Champions League defeat to Monaco. His Jose Mourinho-style sobriquet might be ‘The Passionate One’.
“I am very emotional,” admits Pochettino, who is nine years Mourinho’s junior. “Because today, I never lose what football and the ball means to me. If you keep that feeling, that emotion, you never lose your passion for football.
“Today football, you know it’s a business — football and business are difficult to split. Sometimes we forget that we are not normal people who work in a company. We need to keep the emotion and the feeling that we had when we were boys. If you forget that, you transform your passion into a job, and that is the worst for a player.”
Pochettino is speaking to us to promote Championship Manager 2017, but he says it’s that emotional side of management that’s hardest to recreate in a game: “A big part of management happens off the pitch, because you need to manage the person. They have good days and bad days, and that is impossible to replicate.”
So, his gruelling fitness regime is not about asserting his control or dominance over the squad — it’s tough love.
“I was a player, and we come from a different culture, with different ideas. In the past, I was always the same way and I believed that the important thing was only to play on Saturday and Sunday,” he explains. “Today you need to prepare your body, your mind, every single area. You need to work hard to improve, because the opponent prepares in the same way. If you’re not stronger, it’s difficult to compete. Sometimes when the players meet us for the first time, they feel we are tough. But in the end, we want the best for them.”
Run free
Marcelo ‘El Loco’ Bielsa rolled into Murphy in the dead of night. In the mid-1980s the manager, who had spells with Argentina, Athletic Bilbao and Lazio, was working in youth development at Newell’s Old Boys — the Rosario club that gave us Lionel Messi.
Bielsa hated flying, but he was convinced there was talent in Argentina’s rural interior that was being missed by the bigger clubs. So he divided a map of the country into 70 sections and methodically travelled around — clocking up more than 5,000 miles in his Fiat 147.
It was 2am on a Monday when Bielsa knocked on the door of the Pochettino house with colleague Jorge Griffa. The future Spurs manager was 13, and fast asleep.
Bielsa has a reputation as something of an eccentric figure, and the story goes that he asked Pochettino’s parents if he could see their sleeping son’s legs. “He looks like a footballer,” he declared, and they signed him on the spot.
Pochettino grins. “Yes, that was the reality. I woke up in the morning and my mum explained the story. I said: ‘Yeah come on, it was in your dream. What did you drink before you went to sleep?’”
Bielsa’s influence continued to shape Pochettino’s career — he moved to Rosario at 14 to train with Newell’s, breaking into the first team when Bielsa became manager in 1990, before moving to Europe to play for Espanyol, Paris Saint-Germain and Bordeaux. All 20 of his international caps — including a defeat to England at the 2002 World Cup, where he conceded a penalty for a foul on Michael Owen — came under Bielsa.
“Sometimes you need to be brave,” he says, reflecting on the episode, which was sparked by a tip-off Bielsa had received from a local scout. “Sometimes you need to take risks. In that moment, they trusted in a person who lived in the area. They believed, and they took a risk, and they travelled to my town. And they were very brave, because at 2 o’clock in the morning to knock on the door of a house in the middle of nowhere, you risk yourself — some dog could come and bite you — they were very brave and it’s a special story.”
Pressing points
Tottenham have outrun their opposition in 71 of Pochettino’s 83 league games in charge. That all-action style has Bielsa’s fingerprints all over it. It has been argued, particularly after what happened at the end of last season, that this kind of football is difficult to sustain, but Pochettino scrunches up his face at the suggestion.
“There are a lot of people that talk about things that in the end are old topics,” he says. “If you want to run, you need to work. If you want to play, you need to work tactically with the ball. If you want to press, you need to press on the training ground and prepare your team and organise your team to press. Too many people talk. We have a strong squad, and we can rotate.
“It’s about the balance — we have the experience to manage and push the team. But in football, many things can happen. If in the end you fail, like last season — the reason is only football, not too many competitions or too many games.”
With a young team tasting Champions League football and a new stadium on the way, these are promising times at Tottenham. “We are in a very exciting period at the club,” Pochettino agrees.
“We have amazing facilities at the training ground, we are building a massive stadium — it will be one of the best in the world. We are the youngest team in the Premier League. All these things are positive.”
So, what’s the philosophy? “We push them to play and to be brave on the pitch — to be protagonists, to press high.” He claps his hands together. “With the ball, play always along the grass. The way we play is a fantastic way to achieve things, and all the players will feel that they share our philosophy. You only need to add some luck to win trophies or achieve big things.”
There are big things in store for Spurs’ bright, talented manager. Pochettino asks his players to be brave and take risks, like Bielsa knocking on a stranger’s door — and to play with passion and heart, like that boy in the photograph with holes in his shoes and a ball in his arms.