Mourinho moves in at Spurs
It’s all change at Tottenham Hotspur after a lacklustre start to the season
IT WAS a dizzying fall from grace. Just six months ago he was the toast of the town after taking his team – a lesser player in a game dominated by the bigbucks glamour clubs – all the way to the Champions League final. Tottenham Hotspur had also come third in the Premier League in 2018 and Mauricio Pochettino was hailed for creating an exciting squad and a thrilling style of play that delighted fans.
He did all this on a far smaller budget than many of his rival coaches, which makes his achievements even more remarkable.
But now it’s all over for the 47-year-old Argentinian. Spurs recently announced Poch had been sacked after a losing streak that saw the side sink to the bottom half of the Premier League table.
“We were extremely reluctant to make this change and it’s not a decision the board has taken lightly, nor in haste,” chairman Daniel Levy said.
“Regrettably, domestic results have been extremely disappointing.”
To fans it was a shock – and they’d barely come to terms with his firing when another bombshell was dropped: his replacement was to be none other than José Mourinho, the self-styled “Special One” who’d been cooling his heels since his sacking from Manchester United in December last year.
So just what went wrong at Spurs? And is Mourinho, with his legacy of arrogance and personality clashes with players and management alike, the right guy to take over?
LOSING STREAK
Over the past year, the upward trajectory Spurs had been enjoying took a nosedive. The north London side had just five wins in total since their surprise victory against Ajax in the Champions League in June – the game that catapulted them into the final against Liverpool, which they lost.
At the time of going to print, the side were 11 points adrift of the Premier League top four and a distant 20 points behind leaders Liverpool.
For some, Spurs’ demise comes as no surprise. Pochettino has had to work under constraints not shared by his Premier League colleagues. For starters he was under a budget stranglehold when it came to transfers and wages, as the club had to find funds for its new stadium at a cost of more than £1 billion (R19bn).
A chunk of the past two years saw Spurs operating from a temporary base at Wembley Stadium before they moved into their new 62 000-seater home ground in April.
For 18 months the club didn’t sign a single player, despite Poch pleading for aggressive recruitment. Levy finally coughed up to buy French player Tanguy Ndombele for a club record £63 million (now R1,1bn) in July, and they also took Argentinian Giovani Lo Celso on loan and England’s Ryan Sessegnon in the summer transfer window.
But injuries got in the way of them making an immediate impact. Added to that, players Christian Eriksen, Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen were all entering the final year of their contracts, a situation Pochettino called disruptive.
The result of underinvestment is that “Tottenham have spent the past five months as a part-zombified entity, a squad of putrefied parts,” The Guardian’s sportswriter Barney Ronay says.
“Worse has been the feeling of entropy, of human relationships worn thin and a team grown weary of itself.
“Little wonder the players have simply looked tired, like a high-spec car flogged through its hundred thousand kilometres without a service or a change of cambelt.”
James Gheerbrant of The Times agrees. “A sense of staleness has taken hold. A squad that would once have walked through fire for Pochettino have begun to question him.”
POCH TO BLAME TOO
Pochettino, always an emotional man who was said to be broken by the Champion’s League defeat, is at fault too, Gheerbrant says.
The coach – who once put his fist through a TV after a Champions League defeat to Monaco and kept a bowl of lemons in his office to absorb negative vibrations – had become an increasingly erratic figure.
“He took abrupt decisions without explanation,” Gheerbrant says. “He flew straight to Barcelona after losing that Champions League final against Liverpool and alluded to ‘different agendas’ within his squad. The emotional nature that’s been one of his biggest strengths became a double-edged sword.”
Pochettino, who’s married to Karina and has two sons, Sebastiano (24) and Maurizio (18), is now on the market again – and Mourinho is gainfully employed once more.
Make way for José
Mourinho’s contract will run until the end of the 2022/23 season and he’ll earn up to £15m (R285m) a year – significantly more than Pochettino’s £ 8,5m (R161,5m) pay packet.
But then Mourinho is the Special One, bringing with him vast experience and the ability to bring home silverware – something that was a major factor in Mourinho’s appointment by chairman Daniel Levy. The Portuguese firebrand, who’s been working as a TV pundit since being sacked from Man U, reportedly told Levy winning trophies won’t require breaking the bank. Which is just as well, because Mourinho has been warned there won’t be any money for transfers in January as the club are still paying off their stadium. But Mourinho, whose tenure with Manchester United ended after a disastrous run, will need to prove to his many critics that he hasn’t lost the Midas touch. Arsenal legend Martin Keown has his doubts about the appointment. “We need to see what Mourinho is going to turn up,” he told Metro.co.uk. “He’s an amazing champion but in his quest to win things he can be suffocating. He needs to realise he has to jettison that side of his personality otherwise he’ll bring the whole thing down.” British MP and Spurs fan David Lammy is also a sceptic. “We’ll struggle to contain Mourinho’s ego which is bigger than even our new stadium,” he tweeted. Others think Mourinho’s appointment is the best thing for the club. “Mourinho is an unbelievable manager,” former Spurs player Paul Gascoigne says. “I don’t think it’ll take him long to win round the dressing room. He’s a manager I’d play for.” Mourinho is up for the challenge. “What can I promise?” he said after his appointment. “Passion. Passion for my job but also passion for my club.
“I look forward to the challenge, for the responsibility, to bring happiness to everyone who loves Tottenham Hotspur.”