Mauricio Pochettino: ‘It’s so easy with Neymar. He’s very humble, he listens’

“I am not an actor,” Mauricio Pochettino says, as he explains how he is handling his superstar cast at Paris Saint-Germain. “Neymar, Verratti, Navas, Mbappé, of course … Di María. There are plenty of talented players, big characters.

“But the most important thing with managing is being natural, genuine, spontaneous. I am a football coach, I am not going to change. I am like I am. I try to empathise, to find out how the players are to create a good emotional link.”

Pochettino stops in his tracks. The former Tottenham manager, who has been at PSG since 3 January and is preparing for Wednesday night’s Champions League semi-final first leg at home to Manchester City, has a confession to make. “Actually, I was acting a little bit because we are doing Amazon here, too …” he says.

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There is laughter on the Zoom call because Pochettino had not wanted the Amazon cameras in at Spurs to document last season. His reason? Because football people are not actors. As it turned out, Pochettino lasted only a few months of the campaign and did not make it beyond halfway of episode one in the eventual nine‑part series.

“I know, I know. We were only in the first episode for 25 minutes,” he says. “It was enough. Too much!”

What Pochettino cannot dispute is that he is made for these kind of shows because drama seems to follow him, particularly in the Champions League. On Spurs’ run to the 2019 final, there were the wins over City and Ajax in the quarters and semis, each featuring impossible-to-script, last-gasp swings, and now at PSG there have been the triumphs over Barcelona and Bayern Munich in the last 16 and quarters – high-octane, high-quality affairs which, in the latter case, went to the wire. With Pochettino, it is not over when the fat lady sings, rather when she has died of a heart attack.

“The Champions League loves us,” Pochettino says. “Any time we are in involved in Champions League games, people are not indifferent. ‘OK, it’s MP coaching staff involved in the Champions League, we need to watch.’ Against Barcelona, against Bayern Munich, we took the attention because both ties were fantastic.”

Bayern had beaten PSG in last season’s final. “It was: ‘Oh, it’s them again, the best team in the world,’” Pochettino says. “No one believed in us but here we are.”

There was also a ghost to lay to rest against Barcelona after La Remontada, the notorious last‑16 tie from 2017 when PSG took a 4-0 first-leg lead to the Camp Nou only to lose there 6-1, conceding three goals after the 88th minute. This time, Pochettino’s team led 4-1 after the first leg, which was away, and at 1-1 in the return it is fair to say nerves were jangling when Barcelona were awarded a penalty just before half-time.

Pochettino stayed cool, as he has tended to do on the touchline – in contrast to his more demonstrative PSG predecessors, Thomas Tuchel and Unai Emery – transmitting assurance to the players. Keylor Navas saved Lionel Messi’s kick and PSG preserved the 1-1 scoreline to progress.

“All the talk here before the second leg was about La Remontada,” Pochettino says. “It was a bit of a strange feeling. Only a few people inside the club and, of course, the players – the most important factor – were not a little bit nervous and paranoid about it. But we were really calm.”

Pochettino looks well, despite the pressures of his new role; no worry lines or grey hairs. “Maybe the secret is that it’s not a stress for me to be a coach,” he says. “I try to enjoy the games. I don’t suffer, I am not nervous before them. I hate it when we’re not playing. I like more to be involved, and especially in the big games, than be in a training session. But I also want to say thank you, for sure, to my mum and dad because I think maybe it’s genetic, too.”

As he did at Spurs, Pochettino strives to create a family atmosphere in which everybody is loved and valued equally, and his human touch was evident during the home game with Nantes on 14 March, when he received the news that Ángel Di María’s home had been burgled with the player’s wife and children inside. Pochettino immediately substituted Di María and remained with him in the dressing room until the player had made contact with his wife. PSG went on to lose 2-1 but to Pochettino the result was of secondary importance.

“In the moment when we knew about this, the game ends,” Pochettino says. “The family is first. We did exactly what we needed to do always to put family first.”

Pochettino was only supposed to be able to deal with malleable young players in England, rather than card-carrying A-listers, so how would he finesse a connection with Neymar, for example? Lightly and easily, it turns out.

“It’s so easy with Neymar because you don’t need to do too much,” Pochettino says. “From day one, he’s been very open to work. He’s very humble, he listens and always accepts all the instructions in a very good way. Brazilian players have something special inside. They love to play football because it’s like a dance. They play like they are dancing. Ronaldinho was my teammate when I was a PSG player and now Neymar. They need to feel good, to feel happy to perform in the best way.”

Pochettino describes Kylian Mbappé as similarly low maintenance, a young man with an insatiable hunger for knowledge and self-improvement. “Kylian loves football, he loves to talk about football,” Pochettino says. “He asks about England – how is the game, the mentality and the culture there? – and also Spain and Argentina. He will watch, every day, games from England, France, Italy, Germany.

“He’s only 22 but very mature, confident in his talent and open. He can speak French, of course, but also perfect English and Spanish. I speak in English and Spanish with him – more English than Spanish. I said to him the other day: ‘I need to practise my French with you, to improve,’ and he said: ‘Sure, but it’s better for me to talk in English.’ He loves to practise different languages.

“Before the first leg in Barcelona, I told him that I’d won there one time with Espanyol and he said, very seriously: ‘OK, tomorrow will be the second time.’ I said: ‘Are you sure?’ And he said: ‘Yes, don’t worry. We are going to win.’ He was laughing after the game and he said to me on the pitch: ‘I told you, I told you, I told you.’”

It has been a whirlwind four months for Pochettino at PSG, after a little more than a year out of work, waiting for the right project. Taking over in mid-season is never ideal but to do so during a pandemic, with all of the extra difficulties that has brought, has been something else.

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Pochettino missed two matches from 15 January after testing positive for Covid-19 and he continues to live in a hotel with three of his assistants – Jesus Pérez, Toni Jiménez and Sebastiano, his son, who is the fitness coach. The fourth, Miguel D’Agostino, has moved into his own house. With France in lockdown and operating to a 7pm curfew, it has been hotel, training ground, stadiums and not much else.

The domestic highs have included the victory over Marseille in the Trophée des Champions on 13 January, which gave him the first trophy of his managerial career, and four wins in the French Cup to set up a semi-final against Montpellier. His record in Ligue 1 shows 12 wins and four losses from 17 games and the team sit second, one point behind Lille and one above Monaco in third – with four to play. It could hardly be tighter.

But it is a first Champions League that PSG’s Qatari owners have craved since they took a majority stake in the club in 2011 and Pochettino does not run from the expectation.

“The target in the last 10 years has been to win the Champions League and the club is working really hard to try to be there and win,” he says. “It is that last step, which is always the most difficult. If you remember at Tottenham, it was always about the last step being the most difficult thing. But Paris Saint-Germain is there and now it is about winning. I love to feel this. I love to feel that you need to win every single game.”

Now for City and a reunion with Pep Guardiola, whom Pochettino describes as “the best coach in the world”. Pochettino says he has learned from the craziness of his Champions League adventures and, “if similar situations happen, they should be easier to deal with”.

Another classic is in store.