Mauricio Pochettino may have lost Wednesday’s derby on Tuesday, when he set his team up for another self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. Maurizio Sarri may struggle to motivate Chelsea, but at least he does not actively undermine them.
Mauricio Pochettino is one of football’s best man-managers and team builders 95% of the time. Maybe even 98%. The remaining few moments, though, are enough to ensure Tottenham remain the top-six’s premier banter club.
Most Chelsea fans will never admit it unless they are extremely inebriated or bound by the sanctity of confession, but Tottenham and Pochettino have done much of what Chelsea fans claim they want for their club. Tottenham have allowed Pochettino to develop individual players and his vision for the club over five years. A steady progression of academy graduates have made their way into the squad and the starting XI. He has made Tottenham a feeder for the English national team.
If Tottenham were to win the Premier League, it would be a watershed akin to Leicester City’s win. Whereas the Foxes showed that the top-six are not perfectly impregnable and the title is available to teams with no-name players a few years out of the Championship, a Tottenham win would prove that, yes, it can be done *that* way. The way fans claim they want to see a club run, right up until the moment when they realize clubs run in such a manner don’t win Premier League titles. That would be the message of a Tottenham win.
It’s not going to happen. Football will need to wait for another club and another manager to show whether a long-term manager developing players in-house and not spending hundreds of millions of petro-pounds to buy 18 of the world’s best 100 players can win a trophy. Any trophy, not just the Premier League.
Pochettino’s defining flaw as a manager is his habit of minimizing the ultimate goal of his players and club: winning trophies. He will do absolutely everything right, and then at the most inopportune time – that is to say, this time of year – will talk about how a top-four finish is more important than a title, how trophies are only an ego boost and how his club may need 5-10 years to become title contenders. He reinforces the belief that such clubs don’t win titles, first through his words and then through his team’s actions.
Tottenham arrived at Stamford Bridge four days after losing to 15th place Burnley. Whatever Pochettino had been telling them in training, the last thing they heard from their manager in public was how he – or someone else – would need double or treble the amount of time he has already spent in the club to make them true Premier League title challengers. That was the mentality they took against a club that has won two titles in the last five years and three in the last ten. Spurs went to the home of a team that wins multiple titles in the span of time they must still wait before they can simply challenge just such a team.
No wonder they lost. No wonder they looked sloppy, disorganized and headless. No wonder they looked like they were the team who had played 120 minutes of emotionally and physically draining football three days before, while Chelsea looked like the squad who had played only one game in the preceding two weeks.
Maurizio Sarri may not know how to motivate his Chelsea side and he may not have any more personal experience with winning trophies than Mauricio Pochettino. He is certainly a victim of self-fulfilling prophecies, particularly when it comes to keeping his full squad match-ready. He may be undercutting Chelsea tactically on the pitch and may be losing the locker room as a leader.
But at least Sarri knows what not to do. He inherited a team and a club of winners, and he is letting them maintain and propagate that mentality while he figures out how to be one himself. He will not to shatter or steal a core part of his club’s and his players’ identity. It’s the one post in Chesterton’s fence he knows not to remove.
A year without a trophy is aberrant for Chelsea FC and their men in Blue. Full credit to Maurizio Sarri for not even hinting that it may ever be the norm.