Poch, Bielsa...and Wexford!
Murphy from Kilrane’s links to Spurs and Leeds bosses
THE CURTAIN has officially been drawn on Tottenham Hotspur’s majestic new home, and the man standing centre stage, Mauricio Pochettino, has an unusual link to a townland pocketed away in Ireland’s south-east.
When Wexford’s John James Murphy introduced the erection of ‘wire fencing’ to the yawning pampas of Argentina in the mid1850s, it was the beginning of the end for the gauchos.
Until then, these feral cowboys posed a sinister threat to those striving to live a civil existence, trespassing with blind indifference to any law, and slitting the throats of livestock whenever and wherever they saw fit.
Murphy’s method was a welcome display of farm management brilliance, an innovation that would eventually pave the way for an immigrant Irish community to anchor permanent roots, laying the foundations for the town that is simply named ‘Murphy’ in his honour today.
Fast forward almost a century and a half, and that same sleepy town of less than 5,000 people situated in the Santa Fe province, 411 km. west of Buenos Aires, would produce one Mauricio Pochettino, currently one of the world’s most coveted football coaches.
And then there is Marcelo Bielsa, the incumbent manager at English Championship side Leeds United, known globally as ‘El Loco’ or ‘The Crazy One’.
At 2 a.m. on a chilly morning in the early months of 1985, fledgling coach Bielsa, and Jorge Griffa, head of the youth academy at Newell’s Old Boys, spluttered into the town of Murphy in a clapped out Fiat 147.
At a barbeque held earlier that evening, they had heard about an exciting young football talent who was about to sign for Rosario Central, their closest rival. The boy’s name was Pochettino. Bielsa put down his salad plate, and told Griffa to start the engine.
Several hours later, they arrived at a sleeping cattle farm, and knocked on the owner’s door. Hector and Amalia Pochettino were startled to be roused from their beds in the middle of the night.
‘We are here to see Mauricio,’ Bielsa said with a smile, and explained the purpose of their trip.
Hector explained that his three boys were sleeping, but agreed when Bielsa asked if he could take a look at the resting Mauricio. Without waking the teenager, he asked Amalia to pull back the duvet cover.
Amalia did as asked, and Bielsa chirped, ‘What legs, Jorge! A footballer’s legs!’, and he agreed to sign the 13-year-old on the spot.
The Pochettinos had farmed this patch of land for three generations. The inhabitants of Murphy are well versed in the history of the town, and the role that John James Murphy played in its prosperity.
In 1844, 22-year-old Murphy, from Kilrane, near Rosslare Harbour, set sail from Wexford Quay, arriving in Buenos Aires, via Liverpool, three months later.
With little more than the clothes on his back and a pound in his pocket, he headed west from the Argentine capital, to the famed and fertile pampas (grasslands), the lands of endless opportunity for a farmhand with a thirst for hard labour.
Within a couple of years, he was in charge of minding flocks of over 2,000 sheep. Murphy made best use of a worker-friendly renting system to build up his flock over the next decade, until he eventually broke out as an independent farmer. He also paid the fare of his brother, William, to come out and join him.
Eventually a team of workers from Wexford would follow him across the Atlantic, as his enterprise expanded.
He amassed up to 40,000 hectares of the finest grasslands, and set an example for the indigenous people on the best way to farm them.
With the gauchos no longer at liberty to roam the lands, Murphy was credited with being ‘the man who tamed the pampas’. He died in 1909, and is buried in the famous Recoleta cemetery, in the heart of Buenos Aires city, just metres from the final resting place of Eva Perón.
One of Mauricio Pochettino’s earliest memories is the summer of 1978, when three football-mad brothers sat around a crackling black and white television watching Argentina claim their first World Cup.
Having the television powered up by the farm tractor battery was a treat, something that Hector only permitted on special occasions. Mauricio would have time to play football with his brothers and friends, but his father insisted he had to help with the cows and pigs, or do tractor work, outside of school hours. It was the instillation of a work ethic that would stay with the boy for life.
Once Pochettino teamed up with Bielsa, his footballing career soared from strength to strength. His playing days took him from Newell’s Old Boys to Espanyol in Spain, then north to France where he spent time with PSG and Bordeaux, before returning to Espanyol to wind down his career.
He began his managerial career by overseeing the women’s side at Espanyol, before taking over the men’s side in 2009.
From there, he left for Southampton in 2013, replacing Nigel Adkins. Such was his impact on the Premier League, that a year later Tottenham came calling. Since taking up the reins at White Hart Lane, the north London side have enjoyed a series of best-ever finishes in the Premier League, while they have also reached the last four in the Champions League for the first time.
His former coach and managerial mentor, the man who plucked him from the clutches of Rosario Central while he slept all those years ago, is also currently flying high towards the top of the English Championship. Bielsa has Leeds United fans dreaming of the big time again, after 14 years outside the Premier League.
Aged 63, he has a vast amount of managerial experience under his belt from managing clubs in Argentina, Spain, France and Italy to overseeing the fortunes of the Argentine and Chilean national sides.
Leeds supporters could be forgiven if his two-day stint as coach of Lazio in 2016 stirred memories of Brian Clough’s 44-day disaster at the helm of their club back in 1974.
From the moment he walked through the Elland Road door, however, ‘El Loco’ was quick to lay down his marker.
Before their first game of the season against Stoke, he ordered his players to pick up litter outside the stadium for three hours, to show them how long it takes one of their fans to work, just to afford a ticket to come and watch them play.
He sits on a blue bucket on the Elland Road sideline, because the dug-out is below pitch level and being perched on the upturned bucket gives him a better vantage point. He has also had a bed installed at the ground.
Players are weighed every morning to ensure that their focus is not slipping, and that their bodies remain tuned to his gruelling physical demands. A couple of months back, he emerged unscathed from the ‘spygate’ controversy, where he admitted sending someone to report on Derby County’s training practice.
During his spell in charge of Atletico Bilbao, Bielsa once visited a local convent and asked the nuns to pray for his team; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
In 2009, and with Espanyol eight points from safety at the foot of the La Liga table, manager Pochettino donned his hiking boots and walked twelve kilometres from Barcelona to the Benedectine Monastery at Montserrat.
He prayed to the famous blackfaced Madonna, asking for her help. His prayers were answered, as Espanyol avoided relegation.
Pochettino is fiercely loyal to those close to him, and remains extremely proud of his roots. His second choice goalkeeper at Spurs, Paulo Gazzaniga, is the town of Murphy’s second most famous export.
When asked if he would ever manage Barcelona, Pochettino quipped, ‘I would prefer to go home and work on my farm,’ while also ruling out ever managing Arsenal or Rosario Central in the same breath.
Wexford’s John James Murphy is long gone, but not forgotten, in the town he created. In a letter home to his brother in 1864, he wrote ‘in this country we live like fighting cocks’.
If he could see the cockerel emblazoned on Mauricio Pochettino’s chest as he leads the relentless cavalry charges at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, he might surrender a smile at how over 150 years down the line, and though an ocean apart, some things haven’t changed.