Frustrated Mauricio Pochettino reiterates criticism of Tottenham players after Monaco defeat

He said his team must learn to control their emotions on the big occasions

Pochettino was frustrated by his players' approach in midweek (Getty Images)

Mauricio Pochettino challenged his players to show how much it means to them to play in the Champions League after Wednesday’s disappointing defeat to Monaco at Wembley. Pochettino told his players that they had let themselves down by failing to show any passion on the pitch, despite nearly crying when the Champions League music played beforehand.

Resuming his critique of the players from Wednesday, Pochettino emphasised again that he felt his players had gone into the game with the wrong approach.

“I can repeat every word from my press conference after the game because I can confirm it all,” Pochettino said. “When you watch the game three times and analyse the clips, I can confirm all that I explained to you.”

“We need to learn from that, to be more aggressive and to play more in the way that we usually play. We were the problem and we need to be very critical with ourselves.”

Pochettino was especially frustrated because of how long and how hard Tottenham have worked over the last five years to return to Europe’s top competition. “When we wait for these years, you cannot go into the changing room with this feeling,” Pochettino said. “We had 90,000 people in front of us, waiting for us to play in the Champions League. We nearly cried before when we heard the Champions League song. So it is important to be more regular and consistent in our behaviour. It is early in the season, but we need to compete much, much better.”

One of Pochettino’s themes in this, his third season as Tottenham manager, has been the fact that his players need to sharpen up their mentality to make the final step. He appealed to their intelligence as he hopes that they learn from their mistakes and improve their application next time.

Christian Eriksen and Mousa Dembele after the defeat to Monaco (Getty Images)

“If we are clever, we need to know that we need to play football with passion and desire,” he said. “That’s very important. Then we can speak about a tactical plan for the game, individual performances and mistakes from the manager, and things like this. When you play football it’s all about passion and emotion, always. Without that it’s impossible to analyse things that happen on the pitch.”