Column: Mauricio Pochettino spurs Tottenham to uncommon success in the English Premier League
When Arsene Wenger retired after 21 seasons as Arsenal’s manager in May, it also marked a milestone for Mauricio Pochettino, making him the dean of English Premier League coaches in terms of continuous service with one team.
That Pochettino needed just four seasons at Tottenham to achieve that honor says a lot about the pressure of managing in the Premier League. The fact he lasted four seasons without winning a single trophy says a lot about both the work of Pochettino and the patience of Spurs chairman Dan Levy, who signed his manager to a new five-year contract in May.
“For us it’s a different purpose, different vision, different capacity to do things. No worse and no better. Different,” said Pochettino, whose team opened the new English Premier League season with a 2-1 win over Newcastle on Saturday.
“We need to follow our own way.”
Tottenham’s way is a decidedly uphill one, though, since the North London club can’t hope to match the lavish spending of league rivals Manchester City, the defending champion; Manchester United; Chelsea; and Arsenal, all of whom spent at least $100 million more than the Spurs on payroll last season. That gap grew wider this month when Tottenham became the first EPL team to not make a summer signing since the current transfer-window system was adopted in 2003.
The other four clubs spent more than $400 million combined on new players. As a result, the new season could look a lot like the old one with the two Manchester teams fighting for the title, with Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool battling for the remaining European tournament berths.
Don’t count Tottenham out, because even though the Spurs have not won a title under Pochettino, they have finished in the top three in each of the last three seasons. Only City has won more games during that span than Tottenham’s 68, part of the reason Pochettino has survived in a league where the average lifespan for a manager is less than three seasons.
“We’re still Tottenham,” Pochettino said in a phone interview. “We didn’t win trophies and that is the most important. People recognize our success. Football people recognize us and the way that we play.”
They also recognize the team’s financial situation.
“We are,” the coach said, referencing his deep-pocketed rivals, “in two completely different realities.”
Not to say Tottenham isn’t spending money. In addition to extending Pochettino at a reported $10.8 million a season, the team recently re-signed England national team captain Harry Kane, the World Cup’s leading scorer, to a bonus-heavy contract that could pay him as much as $115 million over the next six seasons. The team also moved into a new state-of-the-art training facility this summer and next month will play its first game in a lavish 62,000-seat stadium that could wind up costing more than $1.25 billion before the ribbon is cut.
Eventually, the team hopes, all those investments will pay off with players wanting to come to Tottenham — part of the reason Levy extended the stays of both his coach and his captain, giving the franchise a stable foundation.
“The new facility will be one of the best in the world,” said Pochettino, who coached his first three Tottenham seasons at White Hart Lane, an iconic but outdated 118-year-old stadium with fewer than 37,000 seats.
“In the last few years Tottenham was fighting with the best teams in the world. But at the same time we were fighting with our facility.”
Pochettino, a 46-year-old former Argentine international player who got his managerial start in Spain with Espanyol, is counting on the new digs to help guide Tottenham to a 10th straight winning season, if not its first championship in more than a decade. But there will be other challenges to overcome.
Seven of the 11 starters Pochettino used in Saturday’s league opener played in the World Cup, with five reaching the semifinals. That left them with less than a three-week break between tournaments. With Tottenham likely to play more than 50 games in less than 40 weeks, fatigue will be a factor.
“Our players were fantastic in the World Cup,” Pochettino said. “But at the same rate we are a little bit worried because it is not going to help from the beginning of the Premier League to perform the way that we want. They need rest. They are human.
“We need to adapt ourselves. That is the reality and we cannot change the reality.”
After taking a moment to reflect on that reality, Pochettino grows upbeat again. Success, he decides, is measured by more than just the size of a team’s trophy case. It’s also measured by beating the odds, something at which the longest-serving coach in the EPL has become adept.
“All that the club is doing and that the team is going, fighting for the third time in a row for qualification in the Champions League, I think it’s fantastic,” he said. “If that is not success, I think we are wrong.”
kevin.baxter@latimes.com | Twitter: @kbaxter11
