Taking on Messi is ultimate ego trip
MAURICIO POCHETTINO wants his Tottenham players to stop worrying about facing Lionel Messi and instead bank tales to tell their grandchildren.
While the world waits to find out how they will cope, Pochettino has told his men to savour the moment just as he did lining up alongside Maradona for Argentine club Newell’s Old Boys.
Spurs host Barcelona tomorrow in a mouthwatering Group B affair. The Spanish champions are wounded animals, winless in their past three matches after draws at home against Girona and Athletic Bilbao either side of a defeat at Leganes.
All eyes will be on Messi to lift them out of their mini-slump. The fivetime World Player of the Year was rested against Bilbao on Saturday before coming on in the second half to help rescue a 1-1 draw.
The Argentinian will now be primed and ready to continue Barca’s Champions League charge but Pochettino, right, is confident he will have Christian Eriksen and Hugo Lloris back in action, and said: “I am not going to try to find a solution.
“I am going to say to the players, ‘Enjoy playing against Messi, because you are going to have the opportunity to play against one of the best players in the history of football’.
“More than it worrying you, it needs to excite you so you can say, ‘Oh, I played against Messi’, or ‘I played against Maradona’, or ‘I played against Ronaldo’.
“This is the type of player that you are going to remember. For your ego, it’s a thing you are going to tell your kids and grandkids. Sometimes, my kids say to me, ‘Ah, you played with Maradona, you played with this or you play with that’. And they are so proud.
“So enjoy. Enjoy playing against Messi. It’s difficult to find solutions to try to stop him, I promise you.
“I think it’s impossible. So you must only enjoy it, be close, help the players that are going to face him.
“When he has the ball we have to try to play in the opposite half, to try to push Leo to play far from goal. Because if not, it’s terrible – if he is close and takes the ball.” At 31, Messi is still considered one of the world’s best but Pochettino reflected on playing for Espanyol when, as a 17-yearold, Messi became the youngest player to represent Barcelona in an official competition. Despite the buzz around him, Pochettino said: “I don’t remember him. Messi would start to become a great player but in the moment that he made his debut, it was like just another youngster that had arrived to the Barcelona team from the academy.
“For me, Ivan De La Pena, it was like an explosion of, wow, excitement when he started to play. People called him ‘Little Buddha’.
“When De La Pena started to play in the first team, it was massive noise.
“But, look, you say to me, ‘You played in Messi’s debut’! No, I don’t remember it.” NORTHAMPTON have appointed Keith Curle as their new manager.
The League Two strugglers parted company with Dean Austin on Sunday night and have moved swiftly to bring in Curle, right, on a deal until the end of next season.
The 54-year-old has been out of work since the end of last season when he stepped down as Carlisle manager.