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Mauricio Pochettino 'open' to walking away from Tottenham after Champions League final
Mauricio Pochettino once again suggested that his future could lie away from Tottenham Hotspur following next month’s Champions League final, with his most outspoken demand yet that the club come up with a plan to compete with the elite for the next five years.
The Spurs manager, speaking for the first time since returning from their semi-final triumph over Ajax, said anyone who believed his club could compete with the Premier League’s strongest clubs, operating the same way Spurs had for the last five years, was “very naïve”.
He said that the final in Madrid on 1 June would “close a chapter” and that chairman Daniel Levy would dictate how Spurs went into a new era having, in the same season, reached their first Champions League final and moved into a new stadium.
Asked whether he could walk away after the final against Liverpool, perhaps even for a sabbatical, Pochettino said he was “open for anything”.
“What I think I am not open to is starting a new chapter with no plan, with no clear idea, with not being transparent,” he said.
Speaking about his future, Pochettino said it was not just a question of investment or retaining players and buying others but being clear about what the club wanted to achieve.
He said: “If we believe that if we operate in the same way that we have in the last five years we are going to be in the Champions League final every season, and we are going to be every season in the top four and competing against projects like Liverpool or Manchester City or Manchester United, I think we are very naive.”
There was also the warning that the euphoria of the final that awaits after the last league game of the season at home to Everton on Sunday could soon disappear if there was not a plan for the road ahead.
“Of course we are all excited now and it's difficult to see the future but the future arrives quickly,” Pochettino said. “And if you are not focused, and if you don't start to work, and if you do not make a plan; if you don't anticipate things, when you crash, you crash.”
After the final league game of last season the 47-year-old embarked on a similar speech, demanding the club “needs to be brave and take risks”, and also called for transparency as to what was possible.
Eleven days later he signed a new five-year contract and in the two transfer windows since Spurs have not signed a single new player.
Pochettino was the subject of clear interest from Manchester United until they appointed Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on a permanent basis. While that option, as well as Real Madrid, is closed for now, leaving Spurs for a sabbatical is a possibility. It allows all sides to save face and could mean Pochettino leaving at the high watermark of the club’s history.
The Spurs manager said he has ambitions to win a trophy, but that what had been achieved with his transformation of the club.
“Winning trophies is one of my objectives but it is not only to win a trophy,” he said. “I know very well for many people it is only about winning trophies. For me it is winning trophies and to create a special project.
“Our history is different. We have an amazing history but I think we need to create the most exciting [part of that] history.
“And we have the possibility. When you assess how we arrived here [at the Champions League final] it is more than winning a title, it is more than winning three titles, it is more than winning five or 10 titles for a team like Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Juventus. Maybe it happens [only] once in the history [of Spurs]. That is why my motivation is to create something special in football and Tottenham gave us that possibility.”
He joked that when he arrived at Spurs in 2014 the club was so low on confidence that even games against Queens Park Rangers and West Ham were a source of anxiety.
“We were scared to play QPR because the manager was Harry Redknapp. ‘Oh, Harry is coming, he knows us. He knows the players and White Hart Lane’. That was the feeling of the club. ‘Oh, we lost three derbies against West Ham. Oh the first game we are going to play West Ham’. [In his own mind he thought] We are Tottenham. Tottenham is a big club. Why don’t you believe inside?”
He added: “I need to know what we need to achieve or for what we are going to fight and then who is going to assess the tools that we have to achieve what we plan to achieve. That is the most important.”