[ad_1]
We’ve become as a country largely uneducated when it comes to our national sport. Football fans in the modern era have wrongly become obsessed with the concept of spending money to buy success.
The mentality is this: if you don’t spend, you don’t win anything. That is the mentality: spend, spend, spend – rather than coach to improve.
Everyone seems to be telling Pochettino that he has got to win something, but everyone is forgetting there is only so much a club like Spurs can win.
READ: The Warm-Up: The disappearing Pochettino mystery
Someone the other day even called him a bottler. How on earth is he a bottler? He is brave enough to manage Tottenham, and he is doing some superb work there.
Some fans out there, the sneering ones who hide behind laptops, iPads and phones, want to slag someone off without really knowing about the job he is doing.
If you are an honest Spurs fan, you would appreciate and respect everything he is doing. Forget headlines like the one in this morning’s Daily Mail, a proper, educated football fan will know he is doing a quite magnificent job.
Because when you look at Manchester City, their Abu Dhabi money and what they are spending, you respect Poch even more because City are not building a new ground in the background.
Without a ground, Spurs have to remain grounded
If it says on the tin a stadium is going to cost £400m to build, you know that is not going to happen. Things are going to go wrong, problems are going to occur. It is no surprise to see costs double in London. Even if you build a house for 300 grand, you know it is going to cost £350,000.
Everyone is using the stadium as something to mock Spurs over, but they have spent a season at Wembley Stadium and finished third in the table to secure Champions League football under their manager. This comes after finishing fifth, third and second – consistency of performance and his methods.
Tottenham are laying down good foundations in what they are trying to achieve. They have achieved great things so far.
Nobody was having a go at Arsene Wenger when he was trying to juggle his squad with their new stadium being built at the Emirates over a decade ago.
It was only in the latter stages when Arsenal were in the ground for a few years that people questioned Wenger.
Mauricio Pochettino at Newcastle.Eurosport
Spurs are not even in the ground, and people are having a go at him. Liverpool and Chelsea have spent fortunes to get to the level where Tottenham are at.
Chelsea will say they’ve won the Premier League, but Tottenham have done a double by winning the national title before 1992 when it was not called the Premier League. There is a lot of history there at Spurs, and they are building a sound, solid foundation.
With someone like Daniel Levy in charge, they are going to go on, be successful and I believe they will go on and start winning things.
Sir Alex Ferguson didn’t go into Manchester United in 1986, and start winning things. It took a while, but he won the FA Cup after four years in 1990, then the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1991 and the floodgates opened.
Spurs knew they needed to grow, but the ground had to grow first. What Pochettino has achieved has been more then steady going into a new ground. It has been a minor miracle achieved by common sense.
He has improved the team, he has improved the club. Nobody else in football could have achieved what he has achieved at Spurs in four years.
Real Madrid already have a manager: Sergio Ramos
I wonder how much Pochettino would want to go to Real Madrid because he knows that Real Madrid job only has a maximum lifespan of 48 months – even Zinedine Zidane only had a little more than two years and left after incredible success.
I believe it is a 50-50 call, but I don’t think he will go to Real Madrid. I think he has too much intelligence.
Everybody links him to Real Madrid because he is Spanish speaking. If you are an out-of-work English manager, learn Spanish and someone on the radio will tout you for Madrid. It is incredible.
I’m looking at Poch, and judging the way he handles himself, I believe he is looking at the long game. I really do. Does he want to go to Real Madrid, a club run by Sergio Ramos? Does he really need that?
Would he want Ramos, does he need someone like that in his dressing room? Even if he went there and brought his own players in, they will have to listen to Ramos otherwise it is his way or the highway.
Sergio Ramos and his Real Madrid team-matesImago
Everybody in football and outside of football knows that Ramos runs that dressing room.
How can any manager go into that dressing room, and accept that? It doesn’t make any sense. You are not going there to manage Real Madrid. You are going there to listen to what Ramos is telling you.
Ramos, a man with no coaching badges or managerial experience, is running that team. For me, it is a job that people take on just to get on their CV and the money that goes with it.
If you really want to go to manage, and take a club on and really achieve something, you don’t manage Real Madrid.
Zidane has not been truly tested as a manager because he hasn’t managed another club. Nobody knows what he is like as a manager despite winning three Champions Leagues. There is no way he has been tested. He oversaw a team ran by Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Sergio Ramos and Zinedine Zidane (Real Madrid)Getty Images
It was a great time for him to go when he did last season. Real Madrid needs an overhaul.
But what is Poch going to do afterwards if his reputation has been torn to shreds? They would expect him to challenge Barcelona for the La Liga title immediately. They will never be happy with second or third.
Spurs deserve credit not wild criticism
This criticism of Pochettino is typically British: When someone is up they are up, but when they are down we absolutely drag them down. We are trying to drag Spurs down when they deserve enormous credit.
It amazes me when Spurs lose a game, how many people turn around and say Pochettino is going to go.
Video – Euro Papers: Arsenal and Spurs on red alert as Malcom demands Barca exit
01:13
He’s never suggested he is going to go. I don’t think Levy will have told him any lies. He would explained the club’s business plan, and he would have left it open for him.
Any manager obviously feels a little bit down when he is losing games, but how else is he supposed to look? It is a bit like if you are sitting with your mates and they all go out to buy Ferraris.
You are still driving around in your Mercedes. You are going to be pleased for them, but will feel a little bit down because you haven’t got a Ferrari yet.
He is in that kind of mode because everybody else near him in the table can go out to spend money and he knows how close he is to really competing.
But I think he is patient enough to wait and let it happen. Those same people who are shouting and screaming about a lack of spending will have a go at him if he spends and it doesn’t work out.
He wants to be meticulous. If he suddenly gets handed £200m, and Spurs draw, he will get questioned for spending. If Spurs draw these days, he gets questioned for not spending.
It is crazy how people talk about the game. You can’t call many people coaches any more because they all want to spend and spend and spend.
They all want to buy the finished article. That is not a coach, that is a general manager sitting on the bench or a bench director. You are not coaching.
But Pochettino is a proper coach.
Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino, right, thinks striker Harry Kane, left, is pricelessPA Sport
He uses young players, and he used young British players which is a bonus. To reach Champions League football, to be consistent and to be deemed one of the top sides in the country without spending a great deal of money, has been as close to a miracle as you will see.
He has made big name players by coaching them. He has made Harry Kane, he has improved Eric Lamela and has made Harry Winks a future international.
Dele Alli has committed his future to Spurs because he believes in the manager.
Kieran Trippier and Danny Rose have flourished under Poch. Rose would be elite now if it wasn’t for his mouth.
Toby Alderweireld has improved immeasurably under him.
The perfect man manager
When I sat in his press conference in Eindhoven a few weeks ago before the Champions League fixture, I was hugely impressed by the way he carries himself.
Everything about him is absolutely perfect. He is perfect for every club. If he was running your business, you’d want him on the front door to go and speak to him.
This is the best Spurs have looked as a team and a club for 40 years. Nobody has credited them with doing their business properly. We are talking about what the Manchester clubs and Liverpool are spending, but Poch has done that little bit more with a net spend of under £30m while a new stadium is being built.
People out there need to look at their own life and relate it to how a football club is run. Football is meant to be a business these days. Look at your life, and your work. Give Spurs a little bit respect about what they are doing and why they haven’t spent.
Mauricio Pochettino and Daniel LevyEurosport
If your wife or husband came to you suddenly and asked you for money to buy a car, would you hand it over if you were struggling for money and had to work out where best to spend it?
Arsene Wenger knew his limitations when the Emirates was being built. He didn’t go shouting and complaining about having no money unlike certain managers these days.
Pochettino talks about his squad like it is the best he has got, and nobody is better. It absolutely perfect man management.
I believe some great times for are just around the corner for Tottenham if they stick to the game plan in developing talent and spending wisely.
Paul Parker –
@realpaulparker2
[ad_2]
Source link
