Amazon angst, summer showdown and a squad gone stale - the inside story of Mauricio Pochettino’s downfall

Mauricio Pochettino’s belief was always that winning one trophy with Tottenham Hotspur would be the equivalent to lifting 10 with any of their top-four rivals.

Not because of any inferiority complex, but, rather, because of the circumstances under which he was, in the eyes of Pochettino and his staff, asked to produce miracle after miracle.

In the end that one trophy proved elusive and the circumstances under which he was asked to try to pull rabbits out of hats are what he will largely blame for his five-year reign being brought to an end.

Pochettino referenced “circumstance” when he famously suggested he could quit if Tottenham won the Champions League and a friend of the 47-year-old pointed to the fact that his final weeks and days will have been captured by an Amazon documentary team.

“You have to ask yourself is which of the other top clubs would have agreed to the documentary in the circumstances in which Tottenham were working?” said the friend.

“Manchester City did it in the full knowledge that they would fight for the title and with input from Guardiola’s own family. Jurgen Klopp said he would quit if Liverpool put cameras in his dressing-room and Chelsea have turned down documentaries before.

“Mauricio wasn’t in a position to refuse to let the cameras in and just had to work with it. Just like he worked with the smaller budget, fewer signings and less sales. The circumstances have always been different for him.”

Many will use the summer as the point at which Pochettino’s five-year reign started to turn sour, but he had flagged up all of the warning signs a year earlier. He knew what was coming, he knew the risk it presented to the club and, ultimately him, but he could do little more than make recommendations and hope chairman Daniel Levy listened.

As Spurs fans were celebrating a thrilling 5-4 victory over Leicester City in May 2018, which guaranteed Champions League football ahead of the move into the club’s new stadium, Pochettino was already worried.

The Argentine could see the squad was growing stale, that individual performances were beginning to dip and that a rebuild was needed 12 months before this turbulent summer.

He believed the time was right to sell the likes of Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen Danny Rose and even possibly Christian Eriksen, who was refusing to sign a new contract.

Recommendations were made in public and in private, as Pochettino told the media after the Leicester game that he needed to hold talks with Levy.

“We need to talk a lot between us and the club,” he said. “They have a clear idea of what we need to do and I don’t know if the club will agree with me or not but we need to talk next week to create the new project or what I think we need to do together again to try and improve.

“We cannot think we are the cleverest people in the world winning trophies spending small money. We need to think our reality is different. I have crazy ideas. You need to be brave. In this situation you need to be brave and take risks. It is the moment the club need to take risks.”

Levy placated Pochettino and managed to convince his manager, together with Harry Kane, to sign a new lucrative contract but it did not take long for the warnings to be repeated.

Following the long delays to the move into the new stadium, Levy held his first press conference for the best part of a decade to officially unveil Tottenham’s new home.

He spoke proudly for around an hour, answering questions and even revealing that he was proud with the positive feedback on the toilets. Then, in just 10 minutes, Pochettino completely upstaged his chairman.

“Now it looks like a big club when you arrive here. Before you could say ‘But the stadium only holds 36,000’,” said Pochettino to a huddle of journalists. “But now, when you arrive here, there is no point in thinking like a small club. You must think like a big club if we want to challenge the big clubs in Europe.

“To be close to the big clubs, you must think the way that the big clubs think. If you want to compare to Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus or Real Madrid, you can’t think you are Tottenham with 36,000. We need to think like a big club and that is the most important step that we need to make.

“Of course, you say to me ‘With you? Without you?’ I don’t know. That is about Daniel. But I think my responsibility, like it was five years ago, is to tell the club ‘Now, we’ve finished the new stadium, we are going to think like a big club. What does it mean to think like a big club?’ That is what we have to discuss about the project.”

Levy would not have been delighted to have had the rug pulled out from under his feet in such a manner and he was even less impressed when Pochettino used the press conference before the Champions League semi-final second leg against Ajax to float the idea he might quit were Tottenham to go all the way.

It was this particular reporter who asked Pochettino if he was joking about the prospect of walking away and he replied: “It’s not a joke, why? To win the Champions League with Tottenham, with this circumstance, this season, maybe I need to think a little bit. Maybe to do something different in the future, for sure.”

Unfortunately for Pochettino, despite reaching the final, the circumstances did not change. None of the players he had wanted to sell the previous summer departed and only three first-team players were signed.

In a series of summer pot-shots at Levy, Pochettino claimed his title should be changed from manager back to head coach, something that did not go down at all well as the stress levels rose and the communication between the pair decreased.

A clear-the-air dinner was called at the end of August, when Pochettino resolved to get on with the job at hand and keep his misgivings private, but the circumstances he had managed to succeed under were finally proving too much.

Players were sensing the end-game had started and it has been evident over the course of this season that commitment levels have dropped, amid talk that Pochettino himself had become more distant with his squad and less involved on the training field.

The latest international break, which Tottenham went into in 14th place after the draw with Sheffield United, allowed Levy to take advice and work out the best course of action.

The idea of Pochettino quitting was understood to have been floated in one meeting, but he was never going to walk away while Tottenham were struggling.

Levy had to push him and Pochettino will now have to watch from the outside to see if another man can deliver the one trophy that would be worth 10. The name on the manager’s office will be different, but the circumstances under which he will have to work are likely to remain the same.