Mauricio Pochettino believes the success of England’s youth teams proves there are prodigious talents on these shores – and he is proud that eight 16-year-olds from Tottenham’s academy trained with his first team this week.

Pochettino has been instrumental in developing homegrown players at Southampton and in north London, helping 12 players to reach the Three Lions’ senior side – Harry Winks being the latest debutant.

England’s junior sides are now showing great promise too. The Under-17s and Under-20s have won their respective World Cups this year, while the Under-19s triumphed at the European Championship and the Under-21s were beaten on penalties in their semi-final.

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For Pochettino, it underlines what he already knew – that it is entirely possible to achieve success with an English core to his side.

“That is why we are working this way. We believe in the English talent,” he said. “I think now with the results of the Under-17s, Under-19s and Under-21s it makes people believe more in English talent.

“We believed before, but now everyone starts to realise ‘oh we have good talent in our boys’. That is really important, to see that.

“Of course we can build a very good core of English players with our identity, with players coming through our academy and other players coming outside of England, and English players too coming from different clubs. I think it’s a good challenge for us and a very exciting philosophy for us to develop in the next few years.

“We have the talent. We need time to be focused and help them achieve the level we want, but when you see the academy and the teams, we have a lot of talent.

“We were talking yesterday with Glenn Hoddle, Steve Perryman and Graham Roberts. There were eight 16-year-olds training with the first team yesterday.

“Five years ago when we arrived here in England, at 17 or 18 [years old] they were [seen as] a kid and training with the first team? That was crazy.

“Now, yesterday, eight 16-year-olds were training with the first team, and that is fantastic because it’s a massive experience for them. Maybe they are not close to the first team, but maybe they are closer than at other clubs.”

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