Pochettino on a familiar course

The last time Mauricio Pochettino met with a major football figure from a rival club he signed a new contract at Tottenham Hotspur a few days later. That was his lunch last summer with Sir Alex Ferguson and Pochettino (left) has been eating out again, this time with Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu. Nothing to see here, say the club and their Argentine manager, and perhaps that is the case. But people at that level of the game do nothing without a reason. When they walk into a restaurant with someone influential from another club, they do so because somewhere along the line it is useful for that relationship to be public knowledge.