The End of Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham
Reflections on an era closing at my favorite soccer club.
For as long as I can remember, the narratives and strategies in my favorite sports have been one of the methods I have used to make sense of the world around me. When I was a child, it was football, baseball, and basketball. I watched the Philadelphia Eagles take the field every Sunday with my family, rushed home from school to eat Elios pizza and watch the New York Yankees, and enjoyed my time in youth basketball while watching the Jason Kidd-era New Jersey Nets.
In my adulthood, my passion for these games has continued. I have even grown to admire a new sport beginning in my college years. The beautiful game, as it is known around the world. Soccer.
This love began during the United States’ World Cup run in 2010, capped with Landon Donovan’s signature goal against Algeria. I knew when I returned to my sophomore year of college that I wanted to take on serious interest in the sport, so I decided to begin following the Premier League along with a few of my friends at Hofstra.
As a Philadelphia fan cursed with I’m sure is a lifelong case of underdog syndrome, if I was going to arbitrarily pick a team in a new sport, the thought of choosing a perennial contender like Manchester United or Chelsea sickened me. I thought about Fulham, as US star Clint Dempsey was currently playing for them, or Everton with Tim Howard, another US legend. But then, a name stuck out to me. Tottenham Hotspur.
My relationship with Tottenham has only deepened since the first match I watched, a preseason friendly with Scottish club Heart of Midlothian I watched from my desk at a summer internship. It deepened with every match of FIFA I played with Tottenham against my dorm-mates who more wisely chose better clubs with stronger players, with every trip into Manhattan with friends to watch matches with the supporter's clubs, and with every player bought, player sold, manager hired, and manager fired.
But perhaps no one man is more responsible for my connection with the club than its manager for the past five years: Mauricio Pochettino.
Mauricio arrived at Spurs with a relatively low profile. He was joining from a lower profile Premier League club, Southampton, after some time of moderate success in Spain. He had made a bit of a name for himself in Southampton for getting a relatively young team to play greater than the sum of its parts, utilizing a high pressing style that sought to intercept the ball before the other team could launch an attack and strike quickly. This profile suited Tottenham well enough to give him a chance.
What followed was the greatest period of sustained success at Tottenham in the Premier League era. Multiple seasons of finishing in the top 4 and securing qualification into Europe’s Champions Leagues, with a few seasons of legitimately hunting for the first place trophy. He trusted the young players at the club and turned them into world superstars and club legends.
Beyond the glory of the club under Pochettino, I empathized deeply with his approach to squad building, management, and life. I saw myself as the same “unknown” who was deeply motivated to prove his place on the world’s stage doing what he loved. Pochettino invested time and resources into growing the players he believed in. He wasn’t looking for an easy win or a quick payday. I devoured a book which detailed this mentality through the story of his first few years at Tottenham, Brave New World, and looked for any insights I could take and apply in my own life and career. His impact on my life has been immeasurable as one of the many role models I look up to.
His attitude manifested on the pitch with a product that matched Tottenham’s motto, “To Dare is To Do”. Pochettino’s teams pressed high, flew around the pitch, and scored in buckets. It was a true joy to watch, but an even truer joy to see the mentality he cultivated at the club and the connections he forged with the players and the fans as he did so.
Like all good stories, they all have a conclusion, and this one lacked the fairytale we all could have hoped for. Pochettino, despite elevating the club’s profile and making them consistent challengers in the world’s most competitive league, failed to earn a trophy in any competition for his efforts. The climax of his time was a dramatic win in the Champions League semi-final against Ajax, but the magic ran out as Tottenham fell to Liverpool 2–0 in the final. Results since that match have been poor and with the financial realities of the club, needed to do something drastic to get the club back on track.
Tottenham Hotspur fired their most successful coach of the Premier League-era on Tuesday, November 19th, 2019.
His replacement is José Mourinho, one of the most storied managers in world footballing history. José has won more trophies in his career than Tottenham has in their lifetime. He hopes to take the team and platform Pochettino worked so tirelessly to build and get it over the trophy hump and into the pantheon of football titans.
But what of Pochettino and his legacy? Was his lack of trophy-earning success due to the storied financial constraints of Tottenham compared to its bigger spending peers in the Premier League? Will his crowning achievement be merely elevating Tottenham’s profile to be in a position to hire a Jose Mourinho?
Or was it more fundamental? Perhaps the challenge is too great for a coach hired to write one story, one of building a club’s reputation, to successfully transition the mentality required to write a more straightforward story: win a trophy at all costs.
One thing is for certain, I will always be grateful for the good times Mauricio provided me at bars in cities across the world, and at White Hart Lane itself, where I saw his 2017 Tottenham Hotspur squad comfortably beat Manchester City 2–0 with my family as we toured England and Ireland. His philosophy and mentality on football and life deserves to be emulated and it most definitely deserves some silverware.
