Mauricio Pochettino’s departure from Spurs: Five years on
Five years ago, one of the most sudden and remarkable turn of events in the Premier League took place.
A day after sacking Mauricio Pochettino, the club’s manager for the preceding five seasons, Tottenham Hotspur made the controversial decision to appoint “The Special One” Jose Mourinho as his replacement.
It brought to an end the most prosperous era in modern Spurs history and led to them abandoning the principles that had made them so successful, despite winning no silverware, in the preceding half-decade.
Successors
Mourinho and his successors, particularly Antonio Conte, represented a change of direction from chairman Daniel Levy.
Fresh off the back of the completion of the new £1bn Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Levy wanted the trophies and tangible success that should come with a stadium of the calibre that Spurs’ is.
That’s why these two pragmatic, defensive, ruthless, but ultimately vastly successful managers came in, to achieve that success.
The stats
Ultimately, this approach didn’t work, and Spurs actually regressed. Under Mauricio Pochettino, Spurs finished in the Champions League places in four out of his five full seasons as Spurs manager, including a second-place finish in 2016/17.
As well as this, they made five semi-finals and finals. This included the 2018/19 UEFA Champions League final, the crowning achievement of Pochettino’s reign at Tottenham.
In the years since Pochettino, Spurs have finished in the Champions League places only once. They finished fourth in 2021/22, one point above Arsenal who now sit eight positions above them in the table.
They have also made one Carabao Cup semi-final and final, losing to Manchester City 1-0 in that final. This is despite hiring serial winners to push the club over the final hurdle they hadn’t been able to reach under Pochettino.
It took until the summer of 2023, almost four years after Pochettino’s departure, for Spurs to return to that ethos of playing attacking football and entertaining the fans with the appointment of Ange Postecoglou.
Players and Systems
It is clear to see, that Spurs post-Pochettino simply haven’t come close to the combination of achievements, quality of player, feelgood factor and togetherness that was felt around White Hart Lane when the Argentine was in charge.
The system Pochettino employed was energy-sapping, soul-sucking and physically painful to play in. However it was also equally ruthless, effective and suffocating for the opposition to play against.
It suited the young contingent Spurs had assembled, particularly in that 2016/17 season where they amassed a club-record 86 points. From goalkeeper to striker, the quality they possessed was awe-inspiring.
The goals of Kane, Son and Alli up top with the creativity of Eriksen in behind them. The power of Dembele, the speed of Kyle Walker, the Belgian wall that was Vertonghen and Alderweireld and the cat-like reflexes of the captain Hugo Lloris.
Now, this is not to say that there isn’t genuine quality in the current Spurs team. However, the overall standard of the team doesn’t hold a candle to the team they had in their prime under Mauricio Pochettino, or indeed any of the teams they’ve had since he left.
Vicario is a great keeper and worthy successor to Lloris at Spurs. Romero and Van De Ven have been formidable yet injury prone and they have a way to go to live up to Vertonghen and Alderweireld. James Maddison has been astounding at times yet lacks the consistency Eriksen once had.
Up top, Dominic Solanke is a great player and works well in Ange’s system, but Harry Kane he is not. The only starting player remaining, current captain Heung Min Son, actually reached his peak post-Pochettino, but has looked a shadow of his former self this season.
Youth and Future
That Pochettino team was the product of some incredibly smart recruitment and finding some hidden gems. As well as this, there was an emphasis on the academy that saw players get regular game time. Besides Harry Kane, some examples include Harry Winks, Oliver Skipp and Kyle Walker-Peters.
It’s only now that the Spurs academy is starting to produce prospects like that again. Strikers like Dane Scarlett and Will Lankshear are promising talents. Lankshear is a player with a lot of the same qualities as Kane, though that comparison should be used tentatively.
He scored his first senior goal in the Europa League in a 3-2 away loss to Galatasaray. That game that was a mixed bag for him, however, as he later got sent off for a second yellow.
The pick of the bunch, however, is 17-year-old winger Mikey Moore. His potential is staggering, and he’s already featured for the first team several times this season.
Spurs are stuck in eleventh at the time of writing with the days of Poch feeling like nothing but a past whisper in the wind. There is potential to amend these failures this season, however, only a third of the way through. They play Man United at home in the quarter-final of the Carabao Cup. They also looki likely to qualify for the Europa League knockout phase with three matchdays to go.
It will, however, take something extraordinary to truly recapture the golden days and bring back genuine optimism to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
