THE BRIDGE TO HAPPINESS

Mauricio Pochettino’s time at PSG was largely joyless, after an equally sad end to his Tottenham era. Now the Argentine wants to smile again and remind everyone of the talents that transformed Spurs and Southampton

- Chris Flanagan

Coaching Les Parisiens, in many ways, is the impossible job – by season’s end, Pochettino’s exit was inevitable. Ever since, the Argentine has felt he has something to prove.

TEARS AND WHEELIE BINS

When Pochettino was offered his first job in management, aged 36, some warned him not to accept it. Espanyol were third bottom of La Liga and had already burned through two coaches during that 2008-09 campaign. “Many told me that I’d be crazy to take over a side in crisis, it would go badly and I’d disappear from the map,” he later explained in Guillem Balague’s book Brave New World. “But I followed my gut.”

Taking over a club with whom he’d had two spells as a player, the Argentine secured a surprise draw against Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona in his very first game, in the Copa del Rey. A month later, Los Pericos claimed their first league win at the Camp Nou since 1982. Not only did they avoid relegation with ease, they ended up finishing in the top half of the table, rising to an impressive eighth by 2010-11.

Financial problems eventually forced him to sell players and he departed in November 2012, frustrated, having previously turned down an approach from Sampdoria to remain with the Catalan outfit. “We dream of his return one day,” his biographer Balague, a lifelong Espanyol fan, tells FFT. “We fell in love with him very early on, the kind of love that when he disappeared, it created a big gap. After him, no one is good enough now!”