We will stand tall, face it all together
The Argentine was warned the club’s supporters intended to strike against the sacking of Nigel Adkins, the man he had succeeded at St. Mary’s, while the external question marks against him felt ceaseless.
“What does he know about our game? What does he know about the Premier League? What does he know about the dressing room, does he speak English?,” went one line of enquiry.
“The decision was not the hard part, but the adjustment. There were many nights when I could not sleep. I remember the first night in the hotel at Southampton, it was a Friday and the next day was going to be the first training session.
“I was so restless, tossing and not able to close my eyes. I took my phone, it will have been just before 4am, and I sent a WhatsApp message to [his assistant] Jesus [Perez]: ‘Are you awake?’. Immediately there was the response ‘Yes’ so I told him, ‘Ok, come to my room, we talk.’ He came and I looked at him and just said ‘Jesus, tomorrow!’
“I did not know what to do. I couldn’t say one word in English and I needed to put myself in front of about 50 people, including the chairman. I was shaking.”
“She found an English teacher for me and the first session – two hours long – was so boring and the tutor said: ‘Ok, we are going to try something a little different, let’s learn with a song,’” he grimaces.
“She put on Adele’s Skyfall, which is so tricky – as you can imagine – if you don’t know anything about English.
Pochettino had originally planned to spend five months studying English after leaving Espanyol – his first managerial job – in November 2012, while enjoying a period of reflection with his trusted lieutenant Perez.
The pair had turned the home office at Pochettino’s residence in Barcelona into a football bunker, where they endeavoured to refine their philosophy and collate training dossiers at the turn of the year.
The designs for their working future were shredded by the ambitious blueprint of Southampton’s chairman at the time, Nicola Cortese.
It was on May 13, 2012, when Pochettino’s career trajectory altered without him knowing it. Stationed in the Espanyol dugout as the on-loan Philippe Coutinho secured a 1-1 draw against Sevilla, the manager had unwittingly thieved attention from his goalscorer.
Cortese was in attendance to watch the Brazilian playmaker, who was Southampton’s premier transfer target. Coutinho dazzled, as anticipated, but it was Pochettino’s mannerisms in the technical area and the positive aggression his side displayed that left the biggest imprint on the Italian-Swiss banker.
Cortese immediately got to work. Dynamo Kiev and Olympiacos had already sounded Pochettino out before he left to spend the festive period in Argentina.
Now back home, his plan to relax and reset would again be interrupted by an approach: an agent called on behalf of Cortese with the message that Southampton wanted to overhaul the club and they felt him to be the perfect candidate to oversee their reconstruction.
Soon after, the chairman personally rang Pochettino to reinforce that message and a meeting was arranged at a hotel in London for January 6, with Les Reed, Saints’ executive director, also present.
The three-hour conversation which began at 4pm, translated through Perez, extensively detailed Pochettino’s core footballing principles: building from the back, dominating the ball, being aggressive without it.
It also underlined his passion for youth development, his focus on fitness – and significantly, a devotion to helping players grow as people.
“I believe people can perceive what you are about and that first impressions are big – you need to be strong and honest and people will relate to that,” the 46-year-old explains.
‘A great manager, an even better man’
There is a picture of two-year-old Pochettino, sitting in front of a shed that his father built on their farm in Murphy, Santa Fe. He is shirtless, sporting a broken shoe with part of his nappy protruding from his shorts. He is tightly clutching a ball under one arm, his face coloured by a gigantic grin with typical farm machinery painting the background.
That image serves as his reference point: the foundation of who he is, of how he was brought up, of his strong connection with football even before he was out of diapers.
This interview has materialised in the middle of a torrid week for Spurs, who have been beaten by Burnley and Chelsea with the North London derby against Arsenal to follow on Saturday, and yet Pochettino glows like he did in that memory while talking about pressure, expectation, rises and declines.
“When I thought for the first time, around the age of 27, that I wanted to be a manager, I knew it wasn’t a joke,” he emphasises. “It’s not because I woke up one day and decided ‘okay, now I want to be a manager – easy!’. Or ‘I’m bored, what can I do? Oh, be a manager.’
Here, as the afternoon sunshine peeps in through the blinds of the floor-to-ceiling windows, it is Pochettino who chooses to address his confrontation with referee Mike Dean following the final whistle at Turf Moor – which has already publicly apologised for – that led to an improper conduct charge from the FA.
Pochettino and his backroom team have a mantra: When something has happened, it is gone. You can’t change anything about that moment, you can only make it worse. Do not make it worse.
“My responsibility as a manager is bigger than whatever I feel. That must always come first.”
One of Pochettino’s strengths as a leader is trust, loyalty and a willingness to be collaborative rather than dictatorial. D’Agostino, his former defensive partner at Newell’s, has joined him in the technical areas of Espanyol, Southampton and Spurs, where is he is first-team coach.
“I arrived with those three, but my stuff is Simon, the chef, the doctor, the kitman. It’s 25 football people, but also everyone that works in the canteen and everyone who gives their time to Spurs
“We’re lucky to have been here five years now and to work with passionate people. If, after all this time, the staff didn’t feel like they were mine or I didn’t feel like they were mine, we’d be doing something very wrong.”
Pochettino rushes to point out, though, that the support structure away from football should never be under-appreciated.
“At Espanyol, after we secured our safety from relegation, we gathered the families of everyone – players and staff – together.
“You cannot create something you don’t believe in. You cannot put on an act every day, you have to be natural.”
“If you’re not playing tomorrow, I know the day after that you’re going to be upset. I’m going to give you your space. I’m not going to put my arm around you and say ‘you are going to play next time, don’t worry’. The player would think ‘fuck off, I don’t need this’. After three or so days, I can check how they are doing and if they say they are disappointed, I’ll say ‘show me more’.
“I never justify my decisions, but if a player comes to me asking why he didn’t start, I will be honest with him and tell him what he needs to work on. You need to treat them with respect and understand their emotions in different situations – it is about them not you.
One example of Pochettino paying attention and uncovering an underlying issue was with Adam Lallana at Southampton. He explains: “When we arrived there, we watched all the analysis videos of him and it was ‘phwoar! What a player!’. But why was he always injured? We needed to do some assessments.”
The backroom team arrived at the conclusion that Lallana’s training schedule and his game – quick switches in direction, high energy and control in tight spaces – were at odds with each other.
It is the story of Ryan Mason, though, which underlines Pochettino’s desire to go above and beyond. “Five years ago when we arrived here, he had been on loan at Yeovil, Doncaster, Millwall, Lorient, Swindon. On loan, on loan, on loan,” the manager relates.
“He was injured at the time, but John said ‘a few years ago, he was one of the most talented players I had in my hands’. We asked what happened and he explained ‘he was always injured, or on loan, with no-one really believing in him’.
“When we arrived in Seattle for [2014-15] pre-season and were waiting by passport control, I was next to Mason and we starting talking – shame for him because my English was still not too good. After 20 minutes of conversation with him, I told Jesus, ‘I like Mason as a person – I think he needs our help’.
“So that was Tuesday and on Wednesday, we played Nottingham Forest at White Hart Lane and we were 1-0 down in the first half. In the second half, I was so upset with some players and I turned to Jesus and said, ‘get Mason ready’. And you know what happened? He goes in, first ball – boom, boom, boom, in the top corner, massive goal! And then 3-1 for us.
“If you care about the person, you find out many more things about them and yes, afterwards you can still think it is not possible that it will work, but at least you took the time to find out, you checked the possibility.
It saddened Pochettino when Mason requested to leave Spurs in order to play more regularly at Hull City, but that was nothing compared to the devastation he felt when the player had to cruelly retire aged 25 after fracturing his skull against Chelsea in January 2017.
Success takes many shapes
Despite their self-imposed shackles in trading, despite their rivals operating in a different stratosphere with world-record signings, and despite the financial burden of a new stadium, Spurs remain hugely competitive.
Pochettino has not won a trophy in a decade as a manager, but that is not the overarching indicator of success, especially in the situations he has been in.
There are quantifiable reasons that some of the biggest clubs in the world – Real Madrid, Manchester United and PSG – have coveted him. They know Pochettino is a winner, they have seen his magic, they know it is real and they realise the countless possibilities with far greater resources.
But how long can he keep Spurs exceeding expectations in a climate that will not get any easier?
“I care about the people who know us, share values with us, have dinner with us, who spend time with our families.
“I don’t care too much about the people who don’t know me, or see me from outside. I care for the people that know me. That is for me the most important, that is why I don’t have a social media or an agent.
“Nowadays, people are doing more for those who don’t know them. They are concerned about how many likes they are getting from people that don’t know them instead of paying attention to the people next to them.
“I remember because there is honesty, it is natural. You need the staff and players to feel how you work and trust in you. It’s not only about talking, you need to show them with actions.