Tottenham’s playing philosophy is ‘impossible’ to change now, says Mauricio Pochettino

Pochettino was much happier with Spurs losing 2-1 to Inter than losing 2-1 to Liverpool because Spurs tried to play their way through Inter’s pressing at San Siro

Mauricio Pochettino will not change the way Tottenham play (Getty Images)

At the top end of football, nobody has a Plan B. Certainly not managers who believe in their style of play with religious conviction, and who have given over their lives to perfecting it. Look at the last two Premier League winners, Pep Guardiola and Antonio Conte, two men whose faith in their own “idea of football” is utterly unshakeable, and who would rather resign their posts than ever compromise it.

Mauricio Pochettino aspires to the same level and even now, in the worst run of his Tottenham tenure, he is not budging. How Spurs build up from the back has become a contested issue, with the defence in the dock like never before. Pochettino has even been told that if he could just water down his ideas, sit deep and knock it long, then Tottenham might start to get results again.

That would be anathema for Pochettino. Speaking at his press conference on Thursday afternoon, he explained why it would be “impossible” to change his philosophy now, impossible for Tottenham to become a counter-attack team. He is a great admirer of Diego Simeone, but he will never play like him. The only thing you can be is yourself.

“If we put the ball in the air, and we are going to fight for the ball, we are going to lose. Every time the team played well, kept possession and play in the way that we want to play, we were close to winning. We are not a team that can play fighting like Atletico Madrid, who are so comfortable playing deeper, going on counterattack and when it is 1-0, and in the last five minutes they’re impossible to penetrate.”

It has taken Atletico years to play like they play. A possession team like Tottenham cannot change that way overnight. To even try that would be to betray years of hard work to get to this point, and even worse, it would betray the convictions of Spurs players and staff.

“[Atletico] have experience playing like this. We are a team who are comfortable in possession, in the opposition half. That is the team we have, the players we have, and how the squad is. It is impossible to change. To change that is to change your identity, and it will be so tough to win games in a different way. The teams plays how we feel. I don’t feel to play like Atletico do. We feel different, and cannot translate a different idea. Sometimes you lose but in general, after four years, we have more positives trying to play and develop our ideas.”

Mauricio Pochettino has tried to find the positives in defeat (AFP/Getty Images)

That is why playing out from the back is still so important to Pochettino. And why he was much happier with Spurs losing 2-1 to Inter than losing 2-1 to Liverpool. Because, as he explained in his press conference, Spurs tried to play their way through Inter’s pressing at San Siro on Tuesday night, and even gave an “amazing example” in how to do it.

Against Liverpool at Wembley three days before, Spurs had been allowed to build up, but had been so poor on the ball they had either gone long or given the ball away. “Liverpool allowed us to play from the beginning. They never pressed us high. We were so slow moving the ball. It was many actions that you can see and we made a lot of mistakes because we moved the ball so slowly. And then we wanted to accelerate when we needed to be calm. It was difficult to find good positions for our offensive players.”

Pochettino was angry after the Liverpool defeat with how his back four that day had been “scared to play from the back”, and of course Kieran Trippier and Toby Alderweireld did not make the trip to Inter to play in midweek. But Pochettino insisted he was far happier with how the back four that day did try to build up, under intense first-half pressing, even if it did not always work. “The difference is Inter provoked and forced us to play quick because they pressed so high, and we made some mistakes of course. But always the team tried, tried, tried. I think it was an amazing example of building from the back during the game. The problem was different: when we arrived in the offensive situation, in an amazing position to accelerate the game, we reduced the pace.”

Detailed analysis, according to Pochettino, would show the difference, and show why, even after three straight defeats, he senses performances are starting to turn his way. “We played so many long balls against Liverpool. How many long balls against Inter Milan? If you want to do the exercise of putting the two games together, you’re going to find a lot of mistakes against Liverpool and a lot of positives playing from the back against Inter Milan. That was the difference of why we played much, much better.”