Poch is just as meticulous as Bielsa.. he even showed me the PowerPoint on Tottenham’s pre-season tour to Australia
Tottenham manager revealed all his scouting secrets to SunSport's Paul Jiggins in an amazing meeting three years ago and it was almost identical to Leeds boss Bielsa
MY fellow journalists and I in the room sat there totally transfixed as the Argentinian gave us the briefing of our lives.
This was tell the grand-kids stuff as one of the most famous football managers on the planet opened his laptop, Powerpoint application and heart to bare his footballing soul.
With his overhead projector, big screen and guard down, he spent almost an hour treating us to an incredible glimpse of his methods and meticulous eye for detail.
It was the like the best Championship Manager tutorial ever and would change the way my colleagues and I would view him and the beautiful game we love forever.
But this was not Leeds manager Marcelo Bielsa’s impromptu, overhyped, excuse-for-cheating Press conference this week.
No this was his self-proclaimed protege Mauricio Pochettino’s conference with the three British reporters - myself included - who had travelled to Melbourne to cover his Tottenham team’s pre-season tour in the summer of 2016.
To set the scene for those of you with a memory as poor as mine, the previous campaign had seen Spurs lose out in the Premier League title race to Leicester and then, even worse, pipped to the runners-up spot by arch-rivals Arsenal.
Those of us who had covered Tottenham regularly in that fateful but fantastic season knew just how peeved Poch was left by this.
Particularly as his team’s capitulation had raised doubts about his coaching capability.
It meant I travelled Down Under to cover their preparations for the following campaign with a fear he would not be in the mood for media work, especially with those of us from home where he had received far more criticism than he deserved.
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But I need not have worried as - and this will explain why Pochettino is so well respected by journalists - he again agreed to have a ‘coffee’ with the Fleet Street hacks who had followed his team halfway around the world, just like he did with us on his previous two
pre-season trips with Spurs.
Yet as my two fellow countrymen and I entered the Melbourne’s Crowne Plaza hotel - where Spurs were staying - none of us were expecting the insight we would be given.
After being shown to a floor which had been commandeered by club as their tactical hub, Pochettino, flanked by his coaching team, took us into his confidence by showing us how he operated - all of it ‘off-the-record’ of course.
The Tottenham chief and his team were the most candid I have ever heard them in his four-and-a-half-year reign.
Being ‘off-the-record’ I have never divulged and will never divulge the finite details of what we were told.
Believe me, it was dynamite stuff. It would certainly make you look differently at one of the most momentous seasons in Premier League history.
But contrary to popular belief, being a trusted journalist is more about what you don’t write that one you do.
What I can reveal safe in the knowledge it would not upset Pochettino and Spurs (I know, I have checked!) is that he is as meticulous in his approach as Bielsa.
That should not be surprising as Poch has always insisted the Leeds manager is his mentor.
And had I not known it before Bielsa’s Powerpoint Presser the other day, I would have realised it afterwards.
What Pochettino showed us privileged few in Melbourne two-and-a-half years ago was almost a replica of Bielsa’s briefing this week.
Using laptops and data, we saw how the Tottenham boss, like Bielsa, has never left anything to chance.
It seemed Pochettino had recorded all of his training sessions, stored on USB memory sticks and kept in easy-to-find chronological order in smart cases.
How do I know it is easy-to-find? Because he showed us footage of first day’s training he had conducted in charge of Espanyol in January 2009.
There were memory sticks full of footage from matches and stats.
Pochettino revealed to us in Melbourne, around 18 months before he spoke about it in public, that the reason Tottenham ended up drawing 1-1 at home to West Brom - the result he believes ultimately cost them the title to Leicester - was not because they did not get the ball forward enough. It was because they pumped it forward too much and did not retain possession.
We also saw how Pochettino walks his players through passages of play in training in much the same way a theatre director does with actors.
If you think football is a spontaneous sport, forget it.
For the most part it is as rehearsed as a West End show.
Poch said then, although they may even have changed now, the only part his players did not walk through was the final third, as apart from set-pieces and shooting practise, nobody can ever prepare for what will happen at that end of the field.
From the stats thrown at us that afternoon, it was also clear Pochettino had as much knowledge of rival teams as his own - although he did not disclose it to us.
But after seeing his idol Bielsa’s press conference this week it is clear Pochettino has adopted his idol’s eye for detail - not deviance.
Let’s hope that continues and the Spurs boss focuses on the players and not the pliers.