Mauricio Pochettino says he feels “really sad” to watch his former club Tottenham Hotspur embroiled in a relegation battle.
Pochettino, who led Spurs to second place in the Premier League in 2016-17 and to the 2019 Champions League final during a five-year stint in north London, reflected on the club’s dramatic decline as they sit 18th in the table, two points from safety with four games left.
Speaking on The Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast, Pochettino said: “It’s really sad, I really love Tottenham, it’s going to be a part of my life, an important part of my life as a coach, my personal life too. It’s really sad because I know how the people are suffering there, inside the club and also the fans. It’s difficult to accept.”
He recalled the difficult context of his time there — building the new stadium and completing the training ground, playing ‘home’ matches away at Wembley and sometimes Milton Keynes, and a prolonged transfer freeze that limited signings. Pochettino said he had wanted to sign Sadio Mané and Georginio Wijnaldum, players who instead joined Liverpool and featured in the 2-0 Champions League final win over Spurs.
“We were in a situation that was amazing because I think the training ground, we finished the training ground, we finished the stadium… At the same time, we were very competitive,” he said. “But this idea of how it can affect the environment and the people outside and the people that make the decision inside… It’s one title, it’s one to win a FA Cup, it’s to win a Carabao Cup. It’s a shame. We were winning every season because with all the circumstances that we were fighting, we spent 18 months with not one signing. That was a record in the Premier League. We had money to spend but not the type of money to improve, to be close to win or to challenge. We challenged, we challenged to win. But we missed this last step.”
Pochettino was dismissed by then-chairman Daniel Levy five months after the Champions League final following a poor start to the next season and was succeeded by José Mourinho. After a spell at Paris Saint-Germain, Pochettino returned to England as Chelsea head coach in May 2023 but was sacked a year later after a sixth-placed finish — one episode in a run of frequent managerial changes under owners BlueCo, who recently dismissed Liam Rosenior after 23 games.
Asked about Chelsea’s apparent chaos, Pochettino said: “I think they have a plan. Maybe it is completely different than it was in the past with (former owner Roman) Abramovich. It’s true it’s not easy for people to understand… I think they need to explain the plan.”
Now preparing to lead the United States at the summer World Cup, which they will co-host with Mexico and Canada, the 54-year-old said he would like to return to the Premier League one day. “One day yes, because I really like England. I think my profile – my human profile and my coaching profile – match very well with the Premier League.”
Reflecting on what he looks for in a new role and why his Spurs tenure ended, Pochettino said he seeks clarity about a club’s reality and expectations. “If someone offers me a project, the possibility to coach, I want to know the reality. I want to know what they expect from me. I want to know what I need to do, which is the reality of the club. And I think what happened in Tottenham is that I understood what they expected from me, from the beginning. Of course it was tough, but I think I cannot complain. Only what I wanted to tell them is to say, ‘OK, that is the idea, that is the strategy, the philosophy of the culture that we were creating there’. But if we wanted to be competitive, we need some time to make different decisions. The problem is when the assessment is not coming from inside the club, and the assessment comes from outside. And when people start to intoxicate things and say, no, you should win with this team.”