ER, MEMORY LANE?
State-sanctioned execution of spouses and allies (Henry VIII), the Marian persecutions (Mary I), and enslavement and branding of the unemployed (Edward VI). During the 15th and 16th centuries, assorted monarchs from the House of Tudor were responsible for visiting no end of dread and terror on their subjects but it is the 44-day reign of one of their more contemporary counterparts at Tottenham that local subjects found truly unforgivable. Enthroned last February to secure Spurs’ safety following the dismissal of Thomas Frank, Igor Tudor took just one point from 15 available in his five top-flight games in charge. His subsequent deposition heralded the arrival of Roberto De Zerbi and ultimately last-day Premier League survival, but may also have denied the club’s fans a reunion with Mauricio Pochettino, a comparatively beloved former monarch who was tasked with focusing on other conquests in the Americas at the time.
“The problem was that the timings were never the best,” tooted Poch of the game of thrones played out in the kingdoms of the Seven Sisters and the New World that he claims dashed his hopes of coaching at the Geopolitics World Cup and then returning to a club he had managed for more than five years. “When I was free, I never received a contact. And then when I was working [with USA USA USA], I received a contact but I cannot make the decision to come back. It was a little bit unlucky. Maybe one day the stars will align and it can happen. If I was free, of course, I come. But I wasn’t free.” Having since signed a new four-year deal, he remains with the USA USA USA, while De Zerbi is tied to Spurs until 2031. Or possibly November.
A man who famously keeps a bowl of lemons in the office to help soak up negative energy, Pochettino might have needed several silos of the citrus fruit if things had worked out differently and he’d returned to coach a Spurs side muddying their spats in the Championship. However, it is a role the former manager of Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea insists he would not have considered beneath him. “Tottenham … it’s the only club that always I am open to help in whatever division,” he cooed, when quizzed about his appetite for the grind of midweek trips to Lincoln City, Bolton and Stoke.
In a wide-ranging interview staged in That There Big London to mark the beginning of his second cycle as USA USA USA head coach, Pochettino stated that Chelsea should be stripped of the Premier League title they won in 2016-17, having since been found guilty of multiple and serious financial shenanigans at that time. As luck would have it, in such a scenario the honour would almost certainly be bestowed on a Spurs side that finished second in the league that season and happened to be coached by him. “If that [Chelsea’s chicanery] was true, then we deserve to be champions that year, for sure,” he parped. “They were punished, they admitted it? So that’s it. The title should be for the team that was second.” While Poch might well have an excellent point, Football Daily can’t say we recall him being such a stickler for the fastidious application of the rules when his USA USA USA team’s star striker had a ban controversially shelved by Fifa following the intervention of Donald Trump at the recent GWC.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“At that time it was quite big money. I could have bought a flat in my home town; it was a very difficult period there and they were almost free. But my plan was to go to England and follow my dream to become a coach, and that’s how it started” – Valdas Dambrauskas gets his very entertaining chat on with Nick Ames about his remarkable journey from an appearance on the Lithuanian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? via pub work in north London, to becoming manager of Azerbaijani champions Sabah.
Given that Mauricio Pochettino believes the Premier League title shouldn’t go to the club that finished first in the table, he truly is a Spurs manager at heart. And, given he also says that if he were Chelsea manager at the time, he’d admit that ‘we don’t deserve the title because we broke the rules’, it also conclusively proves he was the completely wrong man for Chelsea” – Noble Francis.
Just because Amazon now co-owns Liverpool FC doesn’t mean it can command
AlexaAlexis to score a match-winning goal in European competition, does it?!” – Peter Oh.
Please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Noble Francis, who gets a copy of The Mbappé Project by Philippe Auclair. Copies are available in the Guardian Bookshop if you are not the lucky scribe. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.
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