Poch'd in space

Mauricio Pochettino is back at Paris St. Germain, the club where he was a regular starter and captain between 2001 and 2003. Some are surprised: the job, the city and the club may feel a touch too big in scope for the Argentine. But is that true? Pochettino was never going back to another “from the ground up” project like Southampton.

As an aside, it’s in vogue right now to be at a football club in a non-playing role and refer to that club as a ‘project’. As in “I’m not sure what my next project will be,” or, “they have a beautiful project at that club.” It’s haughty, but in some ways it makes sense. And for Pochettino the PSG project does too.

He's reaching the summit of his managerial career.

At this point I beg you to consider Mauricio Pochettino’s managerial journey through the lens of the first three Star Wars movies. To do this we must ignore the fact that his first managerial gig was actually at Espanyol. It doesn’t help the analogy, and no one really cares.

Now then...

A New Hope (Southampton)

Southampton in 2013-14 represents Poch’s ‘A New Hope’ project. He was an unfamiliar protagonist (with next to no command of the English language), that left most in doubt as to whether his pedigree was as a decent ex-footballer with an uncertain future, or a promising manager with the world at his feet. As an acolyte of the secretive Marcelo Bielsa from his time in the Argentine national set up, only vague were the signs of Pochettino's potential as a bench boss.

Against the odds Poch took a freshly promoted Southampton, his “rag tag group of rebels,” into the competitive upper half of the Premier League table, with an eighth place finish in his first season in charge. He quickly grew a target on his back, though happily, to be sure, one not pursued by the maniacal, persistent horror of a screaming tie-fighter fleet.

The Empire Strikes Back (Spurs)

In no time, Daniel Levy’s Tottenham Hotspur lured Poch - hardly, it must be said, to the Dark Side, because Spurs are tidy - to the promise of something greater: a movement; an upheaval. And while the ramping up took time, Spurs grew to become Pochettino’s ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ project: the most exciting, potent and action packed instalment of his managerial career.

It’s one that ends with an improbable surprise and an uncertain conclusion - Lucas Moura’s (Lucas Mourrrrrrrraaaaa!) third goal against Ajax, which launched Spurs into the 2018 Champion’s League final, is Darth Vader’s paternal revelation to Luke; Spurs losing to Liverpool in the final, despite outplaying the winners, is Luke’s defiant “I’ll never join you” before he lets go of the railing and free falls into that weird leviathan-ish funnel before basically landing on the Millenium Falcon and getting rescued (I have a problem with this part of the film), and snaking a free robotic hand out of the deal.

Paris Saint Germain - Return of the Jedi

It’s possible, then, that the move to Paris Saint Germain (PSG) is the last notable part of the Poch trilogy: his Return of the Jedi project. Everyone knows what’s going to happen. PSG are unfathomably rich, popular and French (it helps) - the Champions League is their destiny, and Pochettino is the protective ghost hovering over their far-flung swamp.

PSG’s squad is packed with weapons. They have the belief of the underdog, having been in the CL finals last year. That they’re in third place in Ligue 1 just now only speaks to the pathos of the inevitable: vanquishing the monolithic horror of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich to a bottomless fissure, the sordid triad still freely spitting magic (in this case money rather than energy rife with midichlorians) from its fingers.

With that out of the way, my bet is that Poch gets PSG over the line in the Champions League in the next 18 months, and then just starts getting boring: a bit of punditry here, a Scudetto or two with Juventus, maybe one with one of the Milanese (you choose), before a final, sinister dalliance with one club or another that lurks, as yet unnamed, deep in the Manchester darkness.