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Mauricio Pochettino

skiathospurs

skiathospurs

Well-Known Member
Founding Member
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The best way to understand Mauricio Pochettino is to observe him in action as a player, a coach at the training ground, or, better still, both. A few years ago, Southampton released a video in which he takes on Luke Shaw in game of two-touch football tennis. While Shaw is casual and light-hearted, Pochettino is engrossed, vocal, competitive. One ace merits clenched fists and cries of ‘Vamos! Vamos!’. A failed attempt at chesting the ball over the net triggers a despairing ‘Nooooo!’. When he wins the match, he sinks to his knees in celebration. This is the real Pochettino—a man of fervent ambition, discipline and dedication—whose temperament infuse teams that fight tooth and nail. His composed touchline persona can deceive. In one press conference, in which he admitted to having lost his rag with the players at half-time, it was put to him that such behaviour might seem out of character. “Really?” he replied. “I don’t really see myself in that way. I’ve kept up appearances quite well.”

On weekdays, Pochettino typically arrives at 7am and leaves at about 8pm. “My life is to go from the hotel to the training ground,” he once told the BBC. “In football there is not really a timetable; we just work all day long.” His players speak of a gruelling fitness regime that can feature up to three sessions a day. Pochettino has been known to organise drills of fifteen-minute intervals in which he pretends to forget the time, so that the players work harder and for longer than they think. Jack Cork said it felt like you needed two hearts to play for him. “He makes you suffer like a dog, and at the time you hate him for it,” Dani Osvaldo said. “But by the Sunday, you’re grateful, because it works.”

Success has followed Pochettino in all his jobs—Espanyol, Southampton, Tottenham—but he has sought no credit. In March, the Argentine magazine El Gráfico ran a rare interview in which they asked him why he so rarely did press. Even in his home country, people knew little about him. But Pochettino has no need to be appreciated or understood. “Praise isn’t something that moves me, because in truth, the most important thing is the collective—it is about the team, the club,” he once said. “Awards and hype are not important for me.” Whereas other managers indulge in the cultivation of their own image, Pochettino does not even have an agent. There are no endorsements, no public relations, no social media. “I don’t need five hundred thousand followers to feel good,” he told El Gráfico.

One of the most illuminating parts of the Gráfico interview came not from Pochettino, but from Lorena González, a journalist who had followed him since his time at Espanyol. “He is methodological about diets and time-keeping,” she said. “He is very detailed, keeps fit and has a fanatical relationship with work and discipline, punctuality and seriousness; and this is why he clashes with the more casual style that we sometimes show in Argentina… He has a very strong character. He’s suspicious, but once you win his loyalty, he’ll never let you down.”

One of the first people to gain his trust was Marcelo Bielsa. They first met when Bielsa turned up at his family’s house with his colleague Jorge Griffa. At that time, Pochettino was a fourteen-year-old boy living in Murphy, a small town situated a four-hour drive west of Buenos Aires. “What I did every day was go to school and play football all day long with my friends,” Pochettino would tell the BBC. “We didn’t have a TV in the house.” His parents did eventually buy a black-and-white set that his dad would power with a tractor battery, so Pochettino watched Daniel Passarella and Mario Kempes lead Argentina to their first World Cup triumph, on home soil, in 1978.

That day when Bielsa and Griffa appeared, Pochettino could hardly have contemplated the prospect of turning professional. It was one o’clock in the morning, and he was fast asleep.

“He looks like a footballer,” Bielsa is supposed to have said. They decided to sign him. Packing his bags, Pochettino left home to live in a pensión, shivering through sleepless nights as his friends were tucked in by their mothers. “It was very tough, but I was lucky,” Pochettino later said, according to The Sunday Times. “I had good people around me who helped me at that stage of my life. It’s important, because you need to learn the good from the bad. When you experience good things in your career it makes you not just a better player, but a better character.”

The nocturnal visit will not have surprised those who knew Bielsa. Nor would much else. Born into a family of lawyers and politicians, he had chosen football as the subject to which his obsessive nature and enormous work-rate would be applied. Having closed the book on an unspectacular playing career, at twenty-five, he moved to Buenos Aires to coach the university team. According to a piece written by Jonathan Wilson for Eight by Eight, hescouted three thousand players before selecting a squad of twenty. When once asked how he would spend his Christmas holiday, Bielsa outlined a daily schedule that contained two hours of exercise and fourteen hours of video analysis. Two years later, when taking a role at the Newell’s youth academy, he embarked on a crisscross scouting tour of Argentina, clocking up five thousand miles in a Fiat 147.

In 1990, Bielsa took charge of the Newell’s first team. Shaped by the Ajax school of the 1970s, he introduced a radical formations and a style of vertical passing and constant pressing. Those principles would inspire fellow managers to such an extent that Bielsa would become more known for his tactical influence than his trophy collection. Pep Guardiola and Jorge Sampaoli would seek his counsel, while Eduardo Berizzo and Gerardo Martino played for Newell’s at the time. One of the players that would pay tribute was Gabriel Batistuta, an academy graduate. Pochettino would draw on his erudition both as a player and a manager. Having debuted at sixteen, in 1988, he entered a thriving learning environment in which Bielsa instructed youngsters to draw up tactical dossiers on future opponents and read newspapers. This was not conventional coaching, but nor was Bielsa a conventional coach. In one game, Pochettino netted a header, only to receive an earful for having been in the wrong position.

The Bielsa years were memorable for Newell’s. In 1991 they won the Argentine championship; in 1992 they claimed the Clausura. That year they also reached the semi-finals of the Copa Libertadores, in which they faced América de Cali. For the second leg, in Colombia, the players were bombarded with batteries from the stands. One player needed stitches in his head. At other away games, rival fans would smash the windows of the team bus as the players took cover on the floor. “Sometimes, you are worried for your life,” Pochettino would say. But it steeled him for the future. “When I came over to France, England or Spain, people told me it was difficult to play,” he said. “But when we arrived, it was nothing. They shout when something goes wrong, but nothing else. This is easy.”

That night in Colombia, Pochettino scored to secure a draw as Newell went through on penalties. They later lost the final to São Paulo in the same manner. That year, Bielsa resigned.

While Bielsa’s tactics have reverberated in the work of several top coaches, his mentality has also been influential. Pochettino shares many of his traits. Consider the shouts from the bench on match days, the apathy towards press and praise, the herculean demands of himself and his squad. In his Eight by Eight piece, Wilson writes that “both Bielsa’s apologists and his critics agree that he is relentless, a workaholic who expects others to work as hard as he does”. This attitude hit Pochettino in a formative period and might well have shaped the kind of player he would become after leaving for Espanyol in 1994—a strong and aggressive centre-back of great leadership and fortitude. “There is no doubt that he had an effect on me,” Pochettino told FIFA.com in 2011. “He helped me to mature when I was starting my career at Newell’s, he helped me in the national team, and he’s even helped me since I took over at Espanyol.”

When Pochettino joined Espanyol, at twenty-two, the club had just been promoted to La Liga. Over the next six years, he became a mainstay and played with profiles such as Ismael Urzaiz, Raúl Tamudo and Iván Helguera. Coaches included José Antonio Camacho and Paco Flores. There was also a brief reunion with Bielsa in 1998, but he soon left to take the Argentina post. (Bielsa would lead Argentina for six years, during which Pochettino earned all his twenty caps.) At Espanyol, Pochettino became captain and guided the side to the Copa del Rey trophy in 2000. Half a year later he moved to Paris Saint-Germain, where he played with Mikel Arteta, Laurent Robert, Jay-Jay Okocha, Nicolás Anelka, Ronaldinho. After a sojourn at Bordeaux in 2003, he returned to Espanyol, first on loan, then permanently, in the summer of 2004. In 2006, they won another Copa del Rey. By that time Pochettino had made more than three hundred club appearances and, the same year, at thirty-four, he announced his retirement in a tearful press conference.

Listening to his former colleagues and coaches, a character emerges that seemed suited to management. “Pochettino had great charisma in the dressing room,” Flores said, according to The Guardian. “He never, ever accepted defeat and there was a huge amount of respect for him, almost like the hierarchy when you’re doing military service.” At PSG, he was made captain within a year. “We used to discuss tactics a lot,” Flores continued. “There would be debates, and you always got something out of it. He was meticulous and above all very ambitious. On the pitch, he was the coach’s arm.” A similar sense of leadership was noticed by Pablo Zabaleta, a team-mate in his second spell at Espanyol, who said: “I knew he was going to become a good manager.” So dominant was Pochettino, on and off the pitch, that the fans had nicknamed him ‘The Sheriff of Murphy’.

After retirement, Pochettino was never likely to opt for golf and punditry. He later spoke of how it was important for him to step outside the surreal bubble in which footballers live. He did a master in business management. (No wonder Daniel Levy would hire him.) As a player, he had prepared his next move. “I was a coach, but from below my neck I was still a player,” he said, according to The Sunday Times. “I wasn’t making notes or anything like that. I was not organised enough, but I always had the idea of being a manager and I was always making mental notes. I knew what I wanted to do. I didn’t just stop playing and think, ‘Now what?’”

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skiathospurs

skiathospurs

Well-Known Member
Founding Member
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In January 2009, Espanyol parted ways with José Manuel Esnal, who had failed to win any of his six league games since succeeding Bartolomé Márquez in early December. The board decided to take a punt on Pochettino. The club were eighteenth in the league, five points from safety, and while the initial plan had been to hand Pochettino control of the second team, the situation was so dramatic that they took the risk. The stakes were high on both sides. Having played for the club two-and-a-half years earlier, Pochettino now walked into a dressing room full of old friends. According to The Guardian, he had received his coaching badges just two months ago, and his only managerial experience had come as assistant manager of the Espanyol women’s team.

“It doesn’t matter who the person is,” Pochettino said as he took charge, according to the same paper. “As a player I was demanding; as a manager, I will be too.”

The start was slow. With ten weeks to go, Espanyol were bottom, eight points from safety, with four wins. As the story goes, Pochettino hiked twelve kilometres to Montserrat and begged the Virgin to save his team. Espanyol duly won eight of their remaining ten games, including a victory at the Camp Nou, and came tenth.

Over the next three years, Pochettino would implement his beliefs. According to The Guardian, he ordered that all sides in the academy play 4-4-2—in his view the best formation for player development—and that each age group face older teams in order to steepen the learning curve. A series of youngsters debuted under his reign. At the first team, he supervised punishing fitness work and introduced a high-pressing 4-2-3-1. Over the three seasons, Espanyol were among the teams with the poorest discipline. In the final campaign, they were the very worst, racking up a hundred and forty-three yellows and twelve reds. “There are teams that wait for you, and teams that look for you,” said Guardiola. “Espanyol look for you.”

In his handling of players and staff, Pochettino merited his sobriquet. The decisions were ruthless. Tamudo, the club’s all-time top scorer, was shown the door. According to The Guardian, Pochettino also flogged the fitness coach within weeks, despite Pochettino being his son’s godfather. “He wanted to control everything,” said Moisés Hurtado, according to the same paper. “The first season was fine: he’d been a player and he understood, he connected with us well. But then things changed. He seemed to see conspiracy where there was none, and some good people had to leave out the back door, and not just players. He wanted everyone to dance to his tune, people entirely committed to him. The atmosphere ended up not being so good. In purely sporting terms, though, there was no problem: he got great results and we played well.”

Over the three full seasons, Espanyol came eleventh, eighth and fourteenth. But in the fourth, retrenchment had forced the sales of players such as Osvaldo, Álvaro Vázquez and José Callejón, and Espanyol took one point off their first six league games. That cost Pochettino his job in November. Yet most observers acknowledged the tricky conditions, and he left with a solid reputation based on attractive football and admirable work with youngsters.

Pochettino had initially planned to rest until summer—“I wanted to spend some time getting my energy back, travelling, getting ideas, seeing things in a new light,” he would tell the BBC—but then Nicola Cortese called. An Italian-Swiss banker, Cortese had induced one of his clients, Markus Liebherr, to buy Southampton in 2009. At that time the south-coast club were in League One with a ten-point deduction, but Cortese appointed himself executive chairman and targeted a swift return to the elite. When Alan Pardew failed to reach the play-offs in 2009/10, Cortese replaced him with Nigel Adkins, who delivered consecutive promotions. Back in the Premier League, Adkins struggled at first, but steadied the ship. Indeed, when he had masterminded a 2-2 comeback at Stamford Bridge in January, Southampton had lost just two of their last twelve league games. Cortese fired him anyway.

This gave Pochettino a turbulent start. The fans had been antagonised by the sacking of Adkins, who had left as the Southampton manager with the highest win ratio since the 19th century. In an online poll conducted by local paper Southern Daily Echo, ninety-two percent disagreed with the decision. Pundits and journalist condemned the sacking. The Southampton Independent Supporters Association even planned to wave white handkerchiefs at the next game, at home to Everton. “This is a major gamble and the reputation of the club is at stake,” said Perry McMillan, their vice-chairman. “Do we really want to go the way of Chelsea?”

It was classic Cortese. Steeped in the hard-edged world of top-level banking, he had managed the finances of billionaires and was accustomed to making calls irrespective of emotion and popularity. According to The Independent, he had increased ticket prices at St Mary’s and fired long-serving programme sellers. The local paper had been banned. Matthew Le Tissier described him as “not a very nice human being”, and it surely didn’t help that Cortese had fallen out with the Ex-Saints Association. But Cortese was demanding and impatient, and he answered to no one. “Maybe I need to sacrifice my popularity to get the right decision,” he said after sacking Adkins. “If that’s the case, I’m happy.”

Cortese’s influence was difficult to overstate. Operating in an autocratic role, he essentially ran the club on his own. “I was working seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, whether I was in the office or not,” he would tell the BBC. He supervised the construction of a twelve-pitch training ground that had assorted types of grass. The scouting set-up was one of the best in the country. At one point, according to the BBC, when the team struggled on the road, Cortese demanded to know why, handing out questionnaires to the players about their daily habits. The club started to book hotel rooms for two nights instead of one, so that their own cleaning staff could be dispatched in advance. They brought mattresses tailored to each player, plus duvets, sheets and pillow cases washed by the club with the same washing powder. That way, sleeping would feel and smell the same wherever they played. Chefs travelled ahead to prepare food. No matter was too trivial for Cortese. According to the Southern Echo, he once intervened over the shape and size of the stadium lobby’s Christmas tree.

Recall how some Espanyol colleagues described Pochettino and you see the congeniality. It is tempting to call the appointment the closest Cortese could come to appointing himself. “He is a very pragmatic and direct person…” Pochettino said. “He tells me things straight to my face and is tough when he has to be, because he is the figurehead.” They also shared a similar sense of ambition. When Southampton reached the Premier League, Cortese drew up a five-year plan that asked not if they could win the title, but how.

At his introductory press conference, Pochettino said he had been researching the team for weeks. After a reasonable draw with Everton, he got down to work. He did not have a house, and his family had stayed behind in Barcelona for now; towards the end of the season, he said half-jokingly that his daily life had been limited to twelve hours at the training ground and hamburger meals in the hotel restaurant. Much was also made of his use of an interpreter. Pochettino did speak decent English, but feared being misquoted or misunderstood. “I don’t see it as an excuse, but I do spend from 7am to 8pm at the training ground working all day long,” he said. “So that doesn’t give me much time left to have extra English lessons.”

Southampton proceeded to lose 2-1 at Manchester United, but won at home to Liverpool and Chelsea. They finished fourteenth. “Our style of play is to win back the ball as soon as possible and then play it,” Pochettino had said in February. “We moved forward our lines and play more upfield. When we lose the ball we must have the mentality of winning it back as soon as possible.” This came with a risk, but Pochettino accepted it. Against Liverpool, he exploded at half-time after the players had shipped a goal in established play. “We are an attack-minded team and always want to push forward, and it’s not such a big deal if we concede a goal when we are pressing really high to get a goal for ourselves as well,” he told the press. “But to concede a goal when there are ten of my players in my own area, in my own box, and concede a goal like that, I can never tolerate that.”

The following pre-season was always going to be tough. According to The Daily Mail, Pochettino organised days of training from 10am to noon, 2pm to 4pm, 6pm to 8pm. On a tour abroad, amid an eighteen-day conditioning phase, Pochettino made the players walk barefoot over burning-hot coal. “That was the easy part,” Rickie Lambert told The Telegraph.

Armed with newfound endurance, Southampton finished the next season in eighth place. They had the most possession in the league—58.4 percent—but only the eighth highest pass completion—81.1 percent—which underlined the frequency with which they recovered the ball. The aggression Pochettino had demanded was on display: they made the third most tackles, the fourth most fouls. An analysis by Michael Caley at SB Nation found that no other side had forced their opponents into a lower pass completion average. “The effectiveness of Pochettino’s press at breaking up play is unrivalled,” Caley noted.

Parallel to this, Pochettino again promoted youth. Blossoming academy graduates included Shaw, Morgan Schneiderlin, Adam Lallana, James Ward-Prowse, Calum Chambers, Nathaniel Clyne. “He’d have us pressing high, keeping a high line, receiving the ball in difficult situations, keeping possession and basically having the confidence to play football rather than being afraid,” said Clyne. “The understanding in our defence was down to our training. Personally, it took my game to another level.” Older players also improved. “Tactically he’s very, very good,” José Fonte told The Guardian. “He gives you a lot of advice in terms of positioning, in terms of aggression, anticipation, interceptions, play, be brave; and he gives you the confidence to go on the pitch and give everything for him.”

The triangle of Pochettino’s regime consists of high pressing, fitness work and young players. Stamina is fundamental to make the system work; just ask Bielsa, whose teams have sometimes made fast starts before tiring. Bielsa once said that if football were played by robots, he would always win. Accordingly, Pochettino seems to try to make his players as close to robotic as possible. Youngsters are ideal for this because they are easier to manage, receptive to new ideas, and bring energy and enthusiasm. As such, all three factors are interlinked.

The 2013/14 season would be Pochettino’s last at Southampton. In January, Cortese resigned over differences with Katharina Liebherr, who had inherited the ownership after Markus had died in 2010. Pochettino stayed until summer, but considered quitting immediately. “I would not understand a Southampton without Nicola being here,” he said.

Tottenham moved quickly to sign Pochettino. Since he had no agent, he negotiated directly with Levy. “He offered the contract and I say yes or no or I want more,” Pochettino said, according to The Guardian. “He has a reputation as a very hard businessman? It’s true. I can feel that.”

If players aversive to labour feared his appointment, they had every reason to. “Our philosophy is ‘suffer in training so you don’t suffer in the game’,” Pochettino said in his first interview, now in English. Mousa Dembélé soon spoke of being “tired every day” and how training had become “much harder”. Christian Eriksen said there had been days where he had gone to bed pretty early. By August, Danny Rose had lost weight without even noticing. “Seriously,” Rose said, recalling Pochettino’s message about suffering. “He wasn’t joking either.”

The denominator for these players is that they spoke in a positive sense. “We do have to work hard in training and I do suffer, but it’s an enjoyable kind of suffering because I’m benefitting so much,” Rose said in October. “I’m far more tactically aware and more consistent.”

There was also another side to Pochettino. Behind the scenes, he can be affectionate, warm, tactile. The respect he enjoyed as a player has been retained as a manager. Discipline is interspersed with humour. In late August, Rose had been called up to the England squad, but was unaware of this when Pochettino called him to his office one morning.

Pochettino: “I’ve got something to tell you…”

Rose: “What is it?”

Pochettino: “We’ve accepted a bid. We’re selling you.”

Rose: “No you’re not…”

Pochettino: “Yeah it’s true.”

Pochettino stayed serious. Then one of the coaches walked in and said: “Oh, have you told him he’s got to go?”

By December, Tottenham had suffered few injuries and won three league games thanks to stoppage-time goals. “We try to work very hard, and now it’s easy to push them to the limit,” Pochettino said. “To arrive in this moment with the squad fully fit is very important for us.” One of the stories of the season would be Harry Kane. “I feel the fittest I’ve ever felt and the best shape I’ve ever been in,” Kane said in February. “The gaffer did a lot of work on getting us fit and it’s really starting to work. In pre-season there were double sessions, times when you were pushing yourself to the limit, but you’re doing it for a reason. This is the reason that you’re seeing now.”

Tottenham eventually came fifth, and would outrun their opponents in forty of their first forty-five league games under Pochettino. On a more fundamental level, Pochettino had tried to change a mentality that had given Spurs a reputation for being complacent and mentally fragile. “We did a lot of work in groups and as individuals on the training ground, in meeting rooms and in my personal office,” he had said in October. “But always you need more time to change the habits. We talk about mentalities and changing habits. It is harder to work on. The mental process is always more slow than the physical or tactical. We know that our challenge is to change this mentality.”

There were victims. Pochettino initially made Younès Kaboul captain, but dropped him in November and sold him in summer. Others were weighed and found too light, such as Paulinho, Michael Dawson, Étienne Capoue and Vlad Chiricheș. Pochettino also told Emmanuel Adebayor he could go, but the striker stayed and retained his £100,000-a-week contract. Pochettino responded by withdrawing his squad number and banning him from training. When Aaron Lennon joined Everton on loan in February, Pochettino said: “It’s easy to identify the players who aren’t happy because they’ve not played much in the last few months. But we are a club. And when you sign a contract as a player, you need to understand that you don’t sign to play, you sign to train. And then the club signs a manager or head coach to pick the players. This is football.”

Another example was made of Andros Townsend, who clashed with fitness coach Nathan Gardiner after a game against Aston Villa. Pochettino banned him from the squad. “When you behave in the wrong way, you always need to pay,” he said. “It’s always my decision when he is available again to be part of the squad. Discipline for me is very important. I can understand the player—we have a young squad and a player can make a mistake—but when you cross the limit it is important to stop that.” Townsend later apologised, but Pochettino said: “Football is not only about taking the ball in your feet and playing. You have a responsibility as a professional.” He added: “All players have a future. It’s up to them to have a future here.”

The players cast aside were replaced by youngsters. Dele Alli become part of the line-up in 2015/16, while roles have been given to Ryan Mason, Nabil Bentaleb, Tom Carroll, Eric Dier. “The young player, if he deserves to play, why not give him a chance?” Pochettino said, according to The Sunday Times. “You have to build the player. A good example is Dier. He played centre-back, full-back and this season we train him as a holding midfielder. He learns because he’s young.” Last September, Tottenham beat Manchester City 4-1 with an average age of twenty-four years and forty-days, according to The Guardian; the youngest of the season up to that point.

There is an argument that Pochettino deserved more credit for finishing fifth and reaching the League Cup final in his first season. In his second year, however, more praise has arrived. “In my role as an England coach, I have noticed the difference in psychology and application when Tottenham players come into the camp,” Gary Neville wrote in The Telegraph. “They now arrive prepared for the battle, ready to play, ready to work. They look like they want to partake in the meetings. All the things you would want from responsible players are there. It seems to me that Pochettino has given the younger players the confidence to express themselves, off the pitch as well.”

The psychological work seemed to be working. By November, Tottenham had not lost in the league since the opening day. One particularly resounding victory came at home to West Ham. “They were quicker than us, physically stronger, scored goals and grew in confidence,” Slaven Bilić said. “It was 4-1, a massive defeat, but we have to admit it could have been more after 3-0. It was a shock.” Later that month, Dembélé reflected on the new regime. “Pochettino is trying to change the culture of the club, and that was needed,” he said. “The mentality has changed and you can see the difference. We play more pressing and we try to be sharper, whereas in the past we were two goals up and then we’d draw. This season, people talk more. You have to be awake. There has been a big change.”
 
skiathospurs

skiathospurs

Well-Known Member
Founding Member
When I first went to spurs Bill NIc had just retired,this man with massive respect to some who followed Bill,(Burkinshaw,BMJ,redknapp) Pochettino is the closest incarnation of our greatest manager (since Bill Nic.I wont go up against some before Bill ;)

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Coolio as anyone,what a leader for us.
 
Don Diaz

Don Diaz

Zero tolerance of Numpty's
Founding Member
I had also heard that Poch had been in touch with Kane by text and phone throughout the tournament....he's a special kind of manager Pochettino. I really want us to be successful for him as well as us lot and the players, feel like he deserves it.
 
Yid

Yid

Well-Known Member
Founding Member
He's go a fookin tough job next season.

Hopefully the knee jerk cunts won't follow us and spout their shite every time we don't win six nill
 
skiathospurs

skiathospurs

Well-Known Member
Founding Member
He's go a fookin tough job next season.

Hopefully the knee jerk cunts won't follow us and spout their shite every time we don't win six nill
Someone I know visiting asked me last night what I thought about this season,I gave my usual truthful answer that I dont care if we win everything,just that we play well and do ok.Some would aim at me that because i dont set the bar higher I and fans like me are the problem.Never understood that argument,cos i dont slag us off for not beating sides to cups&titles that spend 100s of millions more than us I am the problem apparently.I truly would follow the club if it was liquidated and started again as non league,i love the fellow fans i spend time with at the lane (and some of them online),i love going the whole day out,its never result dependant though obviously good times when it comes off.I can feel despondant during bad times but even with that muppet Ramos i will never turn on the team,club other fans,its always just hope for the next better set of results.
But @Yid you are right this season after last a tough act to follow,and no doubt coming 5th will have some throwing things from prams.FFS some would have sacked him after a couple of months of either of his first two seasons,mindboggling.
 
skiathospurs

skiathospurs

Well-Known Member
Founding Member
Poch in pre-season training today
"Harry,Ball....goal,Ball...goal,no corners put ball in goal"
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"that fcuking hodgson,I told him make harry take all the dead balls heheheh"
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Don Diaz

Don Diaz

Zero tolerance of Numpty's
Founding Member
That Poch training top is the one for me this year me thinks....
 
skiathospurs

skiathospurs

Well-Known Member
Founding Member
Hotspur Related ‏@HotspurRelated 4h4 hours ago
Mauricio Pochettino believes Tottenham Hotspur are at the beginning of a successful era for the club. #THFC

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"What we can now go on to achieve in the Champions League is very important.This is the beginning of a successful era, because of the potential we have."

http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/foo...e-beginning-of-a-successful-era-a3292691.html
Mauricio Pochettino: Tottenham’s potential means we are at the ‘beginning of a successful era’
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Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino believes the club is at the ‘beginning of a successful era’ as they prepare to return to the Champions League.

Spurs missed out on the Premier League title last season as Leicester City upset the odds to win the coveted trophy. His side would lose their way in the final matches of the season, before a crushing 5-1 defeat away to Newcastle United in their last game of the campaign saw them slip below rivals Arsenal.

But Pochettino, who signed a new five-year contract in May, insists there’s plenty of reason for optimism at club, despite their disappointments from last season.

“We have to put that to one side, and focus on all the things that we achieved – which was a lot,” he told Fifa TV. “Now we need to think about how we can improve as a group.”
“I think the most important thing apart from the results is that we have grown as a team. There’s a new level of togetherness.
“What we can now go on to achieve in the Champions League is very important. This is the beginning of a successful era, because of the potential we have.”
Pochettino’s success since arriving in England back in 2013 has seen the Argentine become regarded as one of the Premier League’s most intelligent coaches, and the Spurs boss insists that development is all about retaining experiences, both in life and football.
He continued: “When I was younger, I thought I knew everything. I thought I was already too good for anyone to teach me. If I could say one thing to a 20-year-old Pochettino it would be to ‘listen to your coaches, listen to the people with experience, and you’ll become a much better player and person’.
“As a coach I’m always thinking about how I can get my point across in the right way. I say what I feel, and that’s life, but it’s also football as well.
“You can’t separate the two. The way you are as a person, and the things you want to say to someone – what you feel, your passion – that’s what you transmit onto the pitch.”
The influence of legendary Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa on Pochettino is well documented, and the Tottenham manager was quick to praise the 60-year-old’s influence on his career, working with him at Newell's Old Boys, Espanyol, and the Argentine national team.
 
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skiathospurs

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Video of the Poch interview from above post
 
skiathospurs

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Mauricio Pochettino has insisted he is very happy at Spurs and will not be leaving for the Argentina vacancy.Pochettino: "There a lot of rumours that appear in the media but I am happy at Tottenham Hotspur,For that reason this is not the right moment."

Good,maybe some people will stop wetting the bed now,was never likely given his age,moment in his career,contract length,the group he has assembled,new stadium,champions league.......but some media/spurs fans like to soil the sheets oh dont they.
 
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Liam

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Mauricio Pochettino has insisted he is very happy at Spurs and will not be leaving for the Argentina vacancy.Pochettino: "There a lot of rumours that appear in the media but I am happy at Tottenham Hotspur,For that reason this is not the right moment."

Good,maybe some people will stop wetting the bed now,was never likely given his age,moment in his career,contact length,the group he has assembled,new stadium,champions league.......but some media/spurs fans like to soil the sheets oh dont they.

I was a little worried when I first saw this rumour going about but then thought it doesn't really make sense for him yet as he hasn't achieved the things I'm sure he'd want to at club level yet and is currently in his biggest managerial job, one which could get even bigger over the next few years. Don't think he'll be leaving anytime soon.
 
skiathospurs

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I was a little worried when I first saw this rumour going about but then thought it doesn't really make sense for him yet as he hasn't achieved the things I'm sure he'd want to at club level yet and is currently in his biggest managerial job, one which could get even bigger over the next few years. Don't think he'll be leaving anytime soon.
So for you was more of a sex dribble,than a wetting :D
 
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Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino: I was staggered Harry Kane was taking corners for England... but he shouldn't be made a scapegoat, he can be a star in the Champions League
  • Mauricio Pochettino was staggered to see Harry Kane take corners
  • Kane was on set-piece duty in England's doomed Euro 2016 campaign
  • The Tottenham boss has been surprised by criticism of Kane
  • Pochettino says he can be a star for Spurs in the Champions League
  • The Argentine opens up on his summer of holiday pain
  • Pochettino has also ruled out managing his country Argentina
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It turns out that it was not just the English public wondering what on earth Harry Kane was doing taking corners and free-kicks at the European Championship.

Watching on television during his holiday in the Bahamas, the frazzled striker’s club manager was also scratching his head.

‘I don’t want to criticise,’ says Mauricio Pochettino, ‘but I think Harry is a top scorer, so why is he taking free-kicks or corners if his skill is to score?’
Wise words, no doubt uttered with more profanity in living rooms across the country in June.

‘You need to stay in the box, not outside,’ says the former Argentina international, who saw Kane become top scorer with 25 goals in the Premier League last season.

Kane’s designated set-piece duties were not the only thing about England’s miserable campaign that perplexed Pochettino. When he sits down to speak in Melbourne during Tottenham’s tour Down Under, one question is whether he believes the 23-year-old, who is set to sign a new contract at White Hart Lane, was made a scapegoat for another national failure.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I was very surprised about the criticism because there was no reason. No reason.

‘You know that when you are disappointed with the result you try to find a reason why, and find the guilty. Harry was in the same line-up as the other players. Some good, some bad. It’s not just his responsibility. In football you need to share responsibility. It is the manager first, the coaching staff and the players. The responsibility is not one player’s.’
Pochettino does not, however, believe the chastening experience will have damaged Kane’s confidence.

He says: ‘I think he is more mature now and focused on this season. He is very excited to play in the Champions League.’

England’s miserable showing did little to improve the 44–year-old’s family trip to the Caribbean. At the time, Pochettino wisely chose not to speak about the end of season collapse in which Spurs went from challenging for the title to finishing third behind bitter rivals Arsenal, having failed to win any of their last four Premier League matches.
Two months later he admits that the way the campaign ended, culminating in a 5-1 defeat at relegated Newcastle United, ‘killed’ his summer.

‘The feeling after Newcastle was horrible,’ he explains. ‘It is true that after a couple of months you move on, but it put me in a bad mood for the whole of the summer. It killed my holidays. Seriously. I went to Barcelona and the Bahamas with my family, but all the time I was in a bad mood.

‘There was no time to assimilate the defeat at Newcastle because the season finished at the end of the game and I did not have the chance to share my feelings with my players the day after and kill them!

‘Normally when you lose and you are upset with the players you have the opportunity to tell them how you feel on Monday morning when you meet them and have a big discussion and a big fight.

‘But after the Newcastle game it was not possible because many of my players went off to the Euros. So I had to keep my bad feeling inside for the whole of the summer. Even when I was texting my players in France to wish them well I had to hide my real feelings about the Newcastle game.’
Miserable weather in the Bahamas was hardly what Pochettino needed.

‘England has 11 months of winter,’ he says. ‘So when you have an opportunity to enjoy some good weather, you have to take it. I took my bad mood to the Bahamas. In seven days, six days were rain and storms. Unbelievable. It was good because it was the Euros and the Copa America, so I watched football on the TV.’
It does not sound like the ideal trip for Mrs Pochettino. ‘Yes,’ he nods. ‘It was bad — very bad.’
Regardless, time heals and the former Espanyol and Southampton boss was able to take the positives from a season in which objectives were met, despite the way it ended.

He reflects that the feisty 2-2 draw at Chelsea, which featured 12 bookings (nine for Spurs) and handed Leicester City the title, may have been a coming-of-age moment.

‘I felt very proud,’ he says of that seismic encounter. ‘To change history, sometimes you need games like this to happen.

‘Maybe it wasn’t a good example but to change history sometimes we need to fight. Maybe we crossed the line a little bit. But for us, it was good — a lot of players showed big character and personality. It was a game to learn a lot.’
Spurs, who last won the title in 1961, have long been seen as a soft touch away from home. It is not lost on their manager.

‘We hear a lot about Tottenham and it’s always that we’re an easy team to play, who never show enough passion or aggression,’ he says. ‘But we’ve started to change our mentality. To be a winning club, you always need to play on the limit. In football, to compete, to be a winner, you need to play on the limit. Always. For us, the Chelsea match was a good game to know where the limit is.’

Pochettino is sipping coffee in the plush city centre hotel. He needs it — jetlag has been waking him at 4am each day.
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skiathospurs

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http://www.90min.com/posts/3724747-...-lane?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=share
Mauricio Pochettino Is Proving to Be a Real Leader at the Lane
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And so the 2016 summer transfer window concludes, one in which Mauricio Pochettino has once again used to streamline his Tottenham squad into a mould of the key attributes he desires in his teams. They must have pace, possess the tenacity essential for any Spurs player tasked with implementing the pressing game effectively and ideally they are in the formative years of their career where they can be developed and have potential sell-on value, pragmatically speaking.



Make no mistake about it, Pochettino has an unshakeable philosophy on modern day football for which he seeks the right tools to go about putting into practice, and he is ruthless in doing so. Paulinho, Emmanuel Adebayor, Aaron Lennon, Etienne Capoue, Nacer Chadli are arguably the most notable among a staggering 44 players who have been disposed of by the club during the Argentine's three year tenure, for not being either willing or able to adapt to his rigorous demands.



With regards to incomings, the White Hart Lane hierarchy has sought to address the short-comings of a Tottenham team that ran Leicester City all the way to the most unlikely of Premier League triumphs. Having acquired some of the hottest young prospects on the European stage as well as some more accomplished individuals who are already acclimatised to the pressures of English football , Spurs albeit only on paper, have as good a chance as any to have another memorable season.

process

Victor Wanyama was Tottenham's first piece of business ahead of the 2016/17 Premier League season and after long standing interest, going back to the previous, summer Mauricio Pochettino secured the services of the Kenyan for the second time, having taken him to the South Coast during his time at Southampton three years ago



A tireless tough tackler with over five years of British football experience under his belt at the prime age of 25-year-old, Wanyama was a significant element of the reshuffling process of the Tottenham squad that allowed the likes of Ryan Mason, Nabil Bentaleb and Alex Pritchard to depart. With natural holding midfielders Eric Dier and Moussa Dembele in the ranks, as well as Dele Alli, Tom Carroll and last minute signing Moussa Sissoko all capable of playing this area Pochettino will feel he has consolidated a vital part of the team.



Daniel Levy then parted with a sizeable £17m to bring Dutchman Vincent Janssen to White Hart Lane, pandering to the calls of fans for the signing of another natural forward to alleviate the pressure from Harry Kane who has been a virtual ever-present up front for the last 18 months.

process

On the back of a 27 goal campaign for AZ Alkmaar in the Eredivisie, 22-year-old Janssen comes with a pedigree for finding the back of the net. Unfortunate not to bag winning goals against Everton and Crystal Palace, the early signs are encouraging that he will adjust to Premier League football sooner rather than later. Some might suggest that this arrival enabled the departure of Nacer Chadli, who was at times positioned to play through the middle of the attack, however he did not seemingly possess the persistence required for the Pochettino’s pressing style.



Deadline day saw the conclusion of the protracted transfer of Georges-Kévin Nkoudou from Marseille for £11m and the shock £30m club record purchase of Moussa Sissoko from Newcastle United. Stumbled upon during the scouting of his then teammate Michy Batshuayi, Nkoudou was identified primarily as a speedy and direct left winger who could operate from albeit either flank.



Christian Eriksen would appear to now face real competition to keep hold of his place in the team given he is not a natural winger and he now has somebody who offers width with an eye for goal vying for his starting berth. May it be playing devil's advocate to foresee Nkoudou as the eventual successor to Eriksen in this position?

process

Although Mauricio Pochettino has personally intervened to push through the 24-year-old Denmark international's improved contract terms with the club hierarchy, it could be suggested that Nkoudou is more suited to this position. With Eriksen's stock still high amongst Europe's elite and Spurs in a positioning of bargaining power, given the player shall be on another lengthy contract, it might not be beyond the realms of possibility that he could command a sizeable sum for the North Londoners at a time when they are tightening the purse strings as a result of the impending new stadium.



French compatriot Moussa Sissoko offers great utility in midfield as direct competition to Dele Alli offensively, as well as sound cover in the deeper holding roles. Whilst it is hard to disagree that Spurs have paid excessively to bring him to North London the various utility options he gives to Pochettino could yet prove invaluable for a team challenging on all four fronts.



Mauricio Pochettino appears to have more control at Spurs than any predecessor in recent memory. From being given the go ahead by Chairman Daniel Levy to cull star names, to resolving contractual disputes between the club and player, in addition to being able to acquire a 27-year-old, with little sell on value, in the form of Sissoko and finally receiving the alteration in his job title from 'Head Coach' to 'Manager being the ultimate indication of the high stature he holds at the club.

process

When he took the reigns at White Hart Lane he encountered an imbalanced squad of players and disillusioned fan base, but three years on he has one of the most cohesive groups in the Premier League and fans who are delighted with the transition that has taken place under his stewardship.



As long as Pochettino and Levy are working on the same page together Tottenham can continue to prosper as one of the most ambitious teams in the Premier League during these supposed times of financial hardship, with the emphasis very much on the future in terms of acquiring and developing young and success-hungry players as well as their imminent move next door to their new 60,000 seater home.
 
skiathospurs

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Tottenham Hotspur boss Mauricio Pochettino has revealed a lengthy team meeting has helped forget last season.

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Pochettino: “Our first meeting when they arrived from their holidays was an hour and a half. I told them all my feelings and my emotions.It was a very tough and very good meeting because it is important now to be focused on this season. The past is in the past."
 
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http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/sport/foot...kers_on_the_bench_instead_of_wimmer_1_4700631

Mauricio Pochettino believes Spurs stars MUST be told when they're s*** if they are to improve

The Lilywhites have been behind at half-time in three of their first five matches, including Wednesday’s Champions League defeat to Monaco at Wembley.

“The lack of energy is from the beginning of the season, and the pre-season was difficult, “said Pochettino. “It’s difficult to understand why in every game we have some period in the first half – it’s not all the 45 minutes - where it’s difficult to get the pace of the game, and to manage and handle the game like we normally used to do.

“Then in the second half it’s like we need the manager and the staff to wake [everyone] up and say ‘this is the reality, we need to change’. Then it’s ‘now yes, we are going to do our job’.

“Maybe it’s because the pre-season was difficult and all that happened in the summer. It was difficult because of the Euros. The [international players] came late, we were in Australia and some players started to play with only 10 or 14 days’ training.”

Pochettino also admits there might be an element of complacency in the squad after their success last season, when Spurs achieved their highest ever Premier League finish.

“Maybe. You know always the human mind is a very difficult matter to deal with,” he said. “Yes, I think we need to accept that and work hard to try to recover it on the field.”

Pochettino identified a lack of passion in the first half of Spurs’ European defeat to Monaco on Wednesday, and he would like to see more aggression in future.

“Not to be more aggressive with the opposition, but to be more aggressive with the ball, to be more hungry,” he said. “To be aggressive doesn’t mean to punch someone. It’s being aggressive with the ball - when you have it at your feet you want to score, you are determined to show. We didn’t show in the first half this type of action.

“I watched the game three times and in the last two days I spent 12 hours watching and analysing clips, and I can confirm we didn’t show passion.

“Maybe you feel it inside but you don’t show it. I feel the passion but maybe I don’t show the passion. We didn’t show the emotion of being excited to play in the Champions League in the way that we waited for that – and then for me it is nothing wrong.

“When I tell it is in a positive way - we need to show that we are more excited to play in the Champions League.”

Tottenham’s players may be stung to hear their manager saying they lacked passion for 45 minutes on Wednesday, and that they might have been complacent at times so far this season – but Pochettino believes honesty is the best policy and that it encourages improvement.

“I was a person that liked the reality, that they never lied to me,” he said. “If I was s**t, I was s**t - but I need to know sometimes, because when you are young you need to know the reality, because when you are in your bubble you believe that always all you do is right. Sometimes you need people who say ‘hey, come on, what happened with you?’

“I remember always Marcelo Bielsa when he arrived at Espanyol. He arrived in pre-season and in [the Spanish newspaper] Mundo Deportivo I was [rated as] the best centre-back in La Liga.

“He arrived and said to me ‘how do you judge, analyse, assess your last season?’. I thought ‘the manager has asked me about my season and Mundo Deportivo says I am the best centre-back’ so, ok, from ‘zero to 10, maybe seven or eight?’. I was very humble. In my head it was nine or 10.

“‘You were s**t,’ he said to me, ‘because of this, this, this and this.’ He showed me why, and he said ‘if you perform like this then you cannot play for me and you cannot play in the national team’.

“It was tough for me. I drove to my house crying but, do you know, after time I recognised it was true. I was shit, yes - and then I played in the World Cup when I made the penalty [against Michael Owen] that wasn’t a penalty, I got a big offer from PSG to buy me and it changed my life.

“When I believed I was the star man, maybe from the news or the people, this big offer never arrived for me. But when I changed in my mind and my lifestyle and realised this is the reality, the national team, Paris Saint-Germain and different teams wanted me.

“This is an example that sometimes, yes they are young, but that is why we are here - to be tough but to be right, not to be tough to be horrible and aggressive. We try to give good advice, that is the most important thing.”

There was little wrong with Mousa Dembele’s passion and aggression when he made his last Premier League appearance in April, getting a red card for sticking a finger in Diego Costa’s eye and consequently receiving a six-match domestic ban.

That suspension has only just been completed and the Belgian midfielder is now in line to start against Sunderland on Saturday.

“He knows that one thing is to play aggressive and to tackle and to go always to the ball and be honest on the pitch. Another thing is to do what he did,” said Pochettino. “He paid for that and it was difficult for us because he was an important player and then you miss his talent in the last few games.

“But in the history of football many things happened like this. Remember Maradona in 1982 in Spain, there was big kick to a Brazilian player. He was sent off in the World Cup – Maradona, one of the best players in history.

“I remember I was playing in a game at Paris Saint-Germain and the striker was big and really bad. My team-mate was Gabby Heinze, who played for Manchester United. I said to Gabby ‘the next time the ball comes in the air, please, move aside. Let me challenge’.

“I jumped and put the feet here [in the neck]. When I put the studs here, I closed my eyes and said ‘what have I done?’ Sent off. I said ‘sorry, ok’. I was 27 years old, the captain of Paris Saint-Germain.”

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skiathospurs

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Mauricio Pochettino believes Spurs stars MUST be told when they're s*** if they are to improve
Fuck me all those muppets in the other place,must be delighted with this quote backing up their shitkicking
 
skiathospurs

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http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/sport/foot...m_s_players_to_be_desperate_to_stay_1_4709806

Mauricio Pochettino says it is important that Tottenham’s players are “desperate” to stay at the club and do not need to be convinced to remain at White Hart Lane.

Spurs have lost important figures in the past but, since Gareth Bale followed Luka Modric to Real Madrid in 2013, there have been no high-profile departures.

Instead, Tottenham’s players are queuing up to commit their futures to the club - seven players have signed new contracts this month, with Kyle Walker joining the throng today.

It is another sign of the progress made under Pochettino, but the Argentinean says Spurs must continue to be ambitious and challenge for titles if they are to continue to get the best from their stars.

“It’s important to keep the key players, always under my judgement,” said Pochettino. “We sell a lot of players. It’s impossible to be all agreed [on those] but we need to be clear and I need to be clear that it’s under my judgement to keep the key players, and all the players that I believe can be important for the future of the club.

“We need to provide the key players with a good environment, a solid project and not [have] to convince [them] - the players [must] want to be part of this project. They need to feel that we are in a project where we can win everything.

“Always you know it’s difficult to win, because only one team can win the Premier League, but they need to feel we are serious and consistent and we have a very solid project - and then they need to ask us to stay here, not that we need to convince them to stay.

“That is a very bad way - when you need to convince the players to stay here it is impossible to get success in the future. They need to ask us to stay here. They need to be desperate to be part of us.

“The message [from the contract extensions] is [they want] to try to win titles and show commitment, and they are happy to be part of this project. That is the big message from them all. It’s always important to have stability and the players showing their commitment.”

Pochettino revealed that an eighth announcement about a contract extension is imminent, saying: “In the next few days maybe one more will appear and then we will see what happens.”

Asked if that player will be Jan Vertonghen, the manager replied: “I cannot say nothing, I cannot give names - but maybe yes it is a centre-back.”

Pochettino then joked: “After we finish with all the players we start to negotiate with Daniel [Levy] for me again.”

He added his belief that Spurs will be able to attract some of the best talents regardless of whether or not they are in the Champions League.

“Tottenham is a big club, whether we are in the Champions League or Europa League or not,” he said. “Liverpool and Chelsea are not involved in Europe but they can sign players because they are big clubs, and Tottenham is in this level.

“We are a big team with a big support and you need to be excited to play for Tottenham. It’s important for our business to be involved in the Champions League or Europa League but a lot of players around the world want to come here.”
 
Don Diaz

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Thing with Poch and Spurs now is we're probably going to need to win something in the next few years, it will need a trophy to start getting up there with Pep, Klopp, and Mourinho, even though he hasn't had their resource.
 
skiathospurs

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What a great interview,how anyone cannot love the bloke?anyway 3 things he wants from his team "passion,energy emotion otherwise it`s just a job",his english is clearly good enough and he just really has something about him.It was the international break and Jenas said you are out there coaching the 16/17 year olds as well as the 1st team,it`s just normal was Poch`s attitude,so to those who say he doesnt play nice with some players,he is so inclusive about everyone at the club,( unless you dont have energy,passion,emotion!) so the young players the fans,he just makes you feel part of it all,he isnt just all about the 1st eleven,easy to see why even Davies,trippier and those not playing still really like?respect definatly the man,me too if you didnt guess!
 
Liam

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That was one of the best interviews I've heard from a Spurs manager! His involvement is second to none!!!
 
skiathospurs

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Those with no access to UK tv and the interview above,this article has direct quotes from part of it.

http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/foo...ingle-young-player-at-tottenham-a3368601.html
Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino says he "loves" being involved with the development of young players.

Pochettino took charge at Spurs in the summer of 2014 and has helped transform the club into a Premier League force.

The Argentine coach's willingness to put his faith in inexperienced players has been a key reason behind the club's rise with Dele Alli one of several youngsters to benefit from Pochettino's admirable stance.

Some Premier League managers have struggled to promote from within in recent years, due to the pressure to succeed, but Pochettino is adamant nurturing youth products is crucial.
"I come from a club in Argentina called Newell's Old Boys and always the philosophy was to bring young players through the academy to play in the first team.

"That is a thing that I love. Maybe I can see myself in every single young player because always in my period always my manager or head coach always believe in the youngsters," Pochettino insisted.
Spurs have made an encouraging start to the season and sit second in the table ahead of Saturday's trip to face West Brom.

The north Londoners' form suggests a second successive title challenge is on the cards as Pochettino's players appear to have overcome the "mental" problems that saw them fail to last the course last season.

This also deals with part of the interview
http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/foo...id-wasnt-physical-it-was-mental-a3367896.html
 
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