There’s an interesting piece in L’Equipe in reply to the Pochettino to Tottenham rumours doing the rounds, and one that sheds light upon what the French outlet has termed a ‘lying poker game’.
We live in an increasingly hungry age for the next click, the next headline, and it would serve fans well to note that nobody loses when their name is linked with anyone with any cache about them.
Certainly, Daniel Levy is staring at an undignified mess, no Champions League football is not only absent from his job offer, but instead, he has this new third circle of hell tier of European football to try to apply lipstick too.
L’Equipe spoke to the Argentine camp at PSG and by 11am French time on Thursday, as if underlining the immediate denial, Mauricio took to Instagram, holding a cold drink in the sunshine, whilst clearly sporting a PSG branded top. As if a reply.
Next L’Equipe asked the Ligie 1 club about the rumour and received not just a swift rejection, and didn’t want to give credit to what was perceived to be unrest.
A point here, by the way, divisive language is being employed in reports around Pochettino and PSG. Let’s throw light upon them. Anyone who knows anything about that club and many others will tell you it is a political business and Leonardo is a formidable figure. This is not news, and it is not something Poch has only just discovered.
The Argentine is 6 months into an 18-month deal, after which Leonardo will offer the man more months or replace him. This is the way PSG operate. Furthermore, there is the business of Poch living in a hotel. To the average person, a hotel room is something one might book for a week or two. For life’s higher flyers one might stay in a suite for months, even years on end.
No big shocks in any of this unless you are of a fragile and unworldly disposition.
To extricate Pochettino from the Qatari owned club – after 6 months – would be no more fascinating than watching a dinosaur stamp on a Morris Minor. L’Equipe believes that Mourinho’s sacking cost Tottenham £30million. How much money and how many lawyers does the now beleaguered Daniel Levy have on-call these days?
I take a view that few things in life are impossible, but this looks to be a very small, shoddy little rumour that for a few days got out of control, and I value what L’Equipe’s thoughts above the English reporters than have blown this up.
He can stay there & I’ll start a ‘go fund me’ to pay the bill.
& another to, (with any luck), pay Antonio Conte’s private jet from Italy.
Don’t forget his wife is still in UK as is his youngest son Maurizio who’s now on the books at Watford so a ‘family home’ maybe isn’t a priority?
But don’t forget, its those that view everything with sentimentality or romanticism or blind acceptance that feed off all the waffle & believe it is actually true that keeps these journalists churning out whatever they want.
8.5 million a year Botchy was still getting paid until last Christmas when he took the PSG job.. He can surely afford a decent abode.. Perhaps he doesn’t expect to stay very long.
The romantics among us may abhor the correlation between total wage bill and league table position, but sadly it is statistically irrefutable. Spurs should finish on average 6th, City 1st, Man Utd 2nd, Chelski and Liverpool 3rd/4th and the Gooners 5th. Outliers like Leicester will come and go and you will get some swapping of the top positions as clubs cope with injuries and spend their wages more or less wisely, but you cannot fight regression to the mean.
Levy seems to be increasing the wage bill by making our total manager costs the highest in football (if you add severance costs, sign-on bonuses, wages, buying out contracts etc). Perhaps he believes this will ‘cause’ qualification for the champions league next season?
The tragedy in all of this, is his complete lack of feel and judgement about what it takes to succeed in football and what ‘glory’ means. The insult, is when he then tries to pretend that the club has a ‘DNA’ which he has been put on earth to protect.
Is it really that difficult for him to realize that getting 11 players on the pitch who are better than the other lot is slightly more important than who the coach is?
Apparently, Poch is staying in a hostel and this is also adding to woes
And yet this story seemingly refuses to die, with headlines now like “Poch has personally asked Kane to stay” and “Poch has demanded 2 conditions to return”, and how Levy has now “made his move” to get him back.
The internet’s rumourmongers are in overdrive!