Mauricio Pochettino mentioned the concept at a press briefing last December. “Energía universal,” the Tottenham Hotspur manager said, slipping into his native Spanish. It translates fairly literally into English yet the meaning is altogether more profound.
The best way to describe it is as a guiding power, a life force that influences everything. It feels appropriate to consider the Butterfly Effect, which advances the possibility that small causes can have momentous effects, and there is an obvious spiritual dimension to it. Universal energy. It has shaped Pochettino’s approach to life and been at the heart of his psychological transformation of Spurs. It will continue to sustain him and his on-pitch disciples in Sunday’s north London derby against Arsenal at White Hart Lane.
Pochettino first brought it into the public domain as part of a discussion about Harry Kane and how the striker’s awareness of Tottenham’s place and identity in London had helped him to find extra edge in derby matches. Kane has an eye-catching scoring record against his club’s capital city rivals: he now has 22 goals in 31 games.
“I believe in energía universal,” Pochettino said. “It is connected. Nothing happens for causality. It is always a consequence [of something else]. Maybe, it is one of the reasons that Harry always scores in derbies. I believe in that energy. For me, it exists.”
The references had been there, previously, and more have followed since. Pochettino routinely talks of the necessity to “put our energy” into a particular player or “give our love” to another one.
It cuts both ways. The Argentinian is equally sensitive to negative personal energy and he said recently that his team had “spent a lot of energy fighting” Leicester City at the end of last season but also everybody else who had wanted their rival’s Cinderella Premier League title story to come true. “That was a very bad period for us,” Pochettino said. It was a sharp spike in Tottenham’s learning curve.
Pochettino has made it his mission to harden the mentality at Spurs, having found what he felt was a collectively weak one when he arrived in May 2014. To him, everything is related to energy and it not only drives his team’s high-octane style. He demands that his players run themselves into the ground – most notoriously, during his remorseless pre-season training sessions – but, also, that they are prepared to fight until the last breath of every game.
It takes a specific type of player to connect with Pochettino, to buy into his rhythms and motivational techniques, and he inherited plenty who could not. The early months of his White Hart Lane tenure were a trial and the situation was not helped by his previous club, Southampton, having made a flying start to the season under their new manager, Ronald Koeman.
When Pochettino took his team to Aston Villa on 2 November 2014, they were 12th in the Premier League. Southampton were second. But Tottenham won 2-1, having been 1-0 down, and Pochettino would come to consider the result as the turning point. Kane had come on for Emmanuel Adebayor and he scored the winner with a deflected free-kick in stoppage time. Thereafter, he would replace Adebayor in the starting lineup. Of Pochettino’s 18-man matchday squad at Villa Park, only eight are still at the club.
Pochettino had started by giving opportunities to the squad’s more senior players. He believed it to be the correct approach. Had he thrown in the youngsters straight away and it not worked out, it would have been more difficult to turn to the older heads.
But it has long been clear – going back to Pochettino’s first managerial post at Espanyol and then Southampton – that he prefers to work with younger, more malleable players. He is obsessed by profiling and the prototype Pochettino player is tactically flexible, physically imposing, full of desire, open to learning and blessed with good character.
Pochettino gives them freedom. For example, players at some clubs have to sign up to a code of conduct but not at Tottenham. Pochettino will not fine a player for being a couple of minutes late or wearing the wrong clothing. To him, it is important that they have the framework to express themselves. But there are limits. There are principles that must be respected and, above all, he must be respected.
Pochettino would describe his approach as fluid and holistic. He is not bound by conventions, such as running through tactics and set pieces the day before a game or naming the team immediately after the final session. For the 3-0 home win over Hull City on Wednesday 14 December, he announced the lineup two hours before kick-off. Furthermore, he switched to a formation with three at the back.
The timing was partly because the team had played at Manchester United on the Sunday and so, by Tuesday, were still in recovery mode, when Pochettino believes that he cannot stress the players’ bodies or minds. And so he waited. Some managers stick to pre-match schedules partly as a comfort to themselves, so that they can say they ticked every box. Not Pochettino.
The 45-year-old is young enough to be matey with his players but old enough to take a distance. What he prioritises is knowing everything about them; how they react and, crucially, how they feel. It is often said, behind the scenes at the club, that Pochettino likes to feel before he makes a decision – in other words, rely upon intuition.
“Faith and belief are important words,” Pochettino said, on the Thursday before last. “But most important is to feel the faith and the belief when it is running in your blood and your body.”
Pochettino puts the good vibrations into his players. Why does he talk up the credentials of the back-up goalkeepers, Michel Vorm and Pau López, even though they cannot expect to displace the first-choice, Hugo Lloris? Because they need to feel the positive energy. When they are required – Vorm, in particular – they cannot flick a switch and perform. They have to be primed; a part of the collective chemistry; a member of the family.
Pochettino’s confidence in his squad is total these days, and it is why he never complains about injuries. He knows that a replacement is tuned in and ready to go. A feature of Tottenham’s season has been how well they have coped, at various times, without Kane, Lloris, Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen and Danny Rose.
To Pochettino, every member of his squad is a complex individual and he has had to mine deep into their psyches to understand them. In some cases, it has taken more than two years to arrive at the connection but he believes that it is the only way to get the best out of them. It might be that just one of them responds in a positive way to a particular thing. It makes the thing worthwhile.
The way that Pochettino and his staff use data and analyse performance is extraordinary in its detail and, allied to their psychological approach, they are able to devise bespoke programmes for the players. There have been occasions when there are eight different types of training in one day. Pochettino knows when a player ought to train or rest, when he needs the carrot or the stick. Over recent weeks, with the team on an eight-match winning streak in the league, he has tried to push, rather than relax. The players are more receptive when their tails are up.
Pochettino’s success at Tottenham has been striking on several levels. He was charged with establishing the club in the top four. Instead, he has them in title contention for a second successive season. It has been done on a relative shoestring, with a “completely different project to the big sides”, to borrow a phrase from Pochettino, while it might also be noted that he is working with a third sporting director in less than three years. After Franco Baldini and Paul Mitchell, it is now Steve Hitchen who is in charge of scouting and recruitment.
The trends are upward; the improvement in many players pronounced. Will it lead to a trophy this season? Possibly, although Chelsea remain the favourites for the title and they showed their superiority over Pochettino’s team last Saturday, when they beat them 4-2 in the FA Cup semi-final.
Yet Pochettino does not see silverware as the route to validation. He is consumed, instead, by the work; the process; the energy. The trophies would be a consequence.
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