Mauricio Pochettino has said he feels “really sad” watching his former club Tottenham stuck in a fight against relegation from the Premier League.
Pochettino guided Spurs to a second-placed finish in the league in 2016-17 and reached the Champions League final in 2019 during a five-year spell in north London.
But it is a radically different picture now for Spurs, who sit 18th, two points from safety with four league games remaining.
Appearing on The Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast, Pochettino said: “It’s really sad, I really love Tottenham, it’s going to be a part of my life, an important part of my life as a coach, my personal life too.
“It’s really sad because I know how the people are suffering there, inside the club and also the fans. It’s difficult to accept.”
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‘We missed the last step at Spurs’
Pochettino’s time at the club coincided with the building of the club’s current stadium and training ground, a period which saw them playing ‘home’ games at Wembley while transfer funds were limited given the investment elsewhere.
Pochettino named Sadio Mane and Georginio Wijnaldum as two players he had wanted to sign for the club, but instead they both joined Liverpool and were part of the side that beat Spurs 2-0 in the Champions League final.
He added: “We were in a situation that was amazing because I think the training ground, we finished the training ground, we finished the stadium, we moved to Wembley to play, to Milton Keynes to play many games. At the same time, we were very competitive.
“But this idea of how it can affect the environment and the people outside and the people that make the decision inside… It’s one title, it’s one to win a FA Cup, it’s to win a Carabao Cup.
“It’s a shame. We were winning every season because with all the circumstances that we were fighting, we spent 18 months with not one signing. That was a record in the Premier League.
“We had money to spend but not the type of money to improve, to be close to win or to challenge. We challenged, we challenged to win. But we missed this last step.”
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‘Chelsea have a plan… they need to explain it’
Five months after the Champions League final, Pochettino was sacked by then Spurs chairman Daniel Levy following a poor start to the season, replaced by Jose Mourinho.
After a short spell with Paris Saint-Germain, Pochettino returned to the Premier League as Chelsea head coach in May 2023.
But 12 months later he was dismissed after a sixth-placed finish – experiencing what has continued to be a regular churn of managers hired and fired by Chelsea owners BlueCo, who have just sacked Liam Rosenior after only 23 games in charge.
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Asked if the club was as chaotic as it appears, Pochettino said of BlueCo: “I think they have a plan.
“Maybe it is completely different than it was in the past with (former owner Roman) Abramovich.
“It’s true it’s not easy for people to understand… I think they need to explain the plan.”
Could Poch return to England?
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Pochettino is now preparing to lead the United States into this summer’s World Cup, where they will be co-hosts alongside Mexico and Canada, but the 54-year-old indicated he would like to work in the Premier League again in the future.
“One day yes, because I really like England,” he said.
“I think my profile – my human profile and my coaching profile – match very well with the Premier League.”
Pochettino went on to describe what he looks for when presented with a new project and why his time at Spurs came to an end.
He said: “It was difficult. Now it’s difficult to talk about that because it was a really, really difficult situation. Because one of the things that I always like is if someone offers me a project, the possibility to coach, I want to know the reality.
“I want to know what they expect from me. I want to know what I need to do, which is the reality of the club. And I think what happened in Tottenham is that I understood what they expected from me, from the beginning.
“Of course it was tough, but I think I cannot complain. Only what I wanted to tell them is to say, ‘OK, that is the idea, that is the strategy, the philosophy of the culture that we were creating there’. But if we wanted to be competitive, we need some time to make different decisions.
“The problem is when the assessment is not coming from inside the club, and the assessment comes from outside. And when people start to intoxicate things and say, no, you should win with this team.”
