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Now there's no excuse, says Mauricio Pochettino – video

Mauricio Pochettino calls on Tottenham to become guardians of ‘galaxy’ at Wembley

This article is more than 6 years old
‘Wembley was a big one for me. When I was young it was like the moon’
Manager wants national stadium to feel like home for next nine months

Mauricio Pochettino is looking forward to making Wembley his home for the next nine months, even if the English national stadium seemed like something from “another galaxy” as a child.

Tottenham Hotspur, who on Friday sealed the record £42m move for the centre-half Davinson Sánchez, will play all their home matches at Wembley this season while construction of their new stadium is completed.

Much has been made of whether the team can adapt to their new surroundings, but their coach is enthusiastic about the prospect. “I played in the old Wembley for Argentina in 2000 and it was a massive dream for me,” he said.

“Wembley was a big one for me. When I was young it was like the moon, or another galaxy. It was in another world no? Then, one day, I had the possibility to play there and now every week I will spend time there.”

Pochettino, who describes Wembley as “the most exciting place to play football”, will take charge of his first home match of the Premier League season against Chelsea on Sunday. His opponents beat Spurs 4-2 at Wembley in the FA Cup last season and the Argentinian insists his side must be ready to meet the challenge of a top level opponent, even one currently in turmoil.

Chelsea lost 3-2 at home to Burnley last Saturday and suffered two sendings off in the process. They also in the midst of a protracted dispute with Diego Costa, last season’s leading scorer currently sitting out the season in Brazil.

“It’s true that Costa is not here,” said Pochettino. “But instead it’s [Álvaro] Morata. They have [Michy] Batshuayi. They’ve signed players and the quality of the squad is good. It’s very good. It’s true that last week they had a problem but in football the next game is always different and complicated in its own way. The most important thing is to focus on us. For us we must be aware that we need to improve every week and we need to try to show our best quality to try to win. We are playing against the Premier League champions.”

While Pochettino’s enthusiasm is no doubt genuine, it is likely he will also hope some of it rubs off on his players. With just two wins in 10 previous matches at the new Wembley, Spurs do not have a good record there and Pochettino suggested the fact may have been preying on his team’s mind ahead of a recent friendly at the ground against Juventus, which Spurs went on to win 2-0.

“I think when we played Juventus there was a little bit of ‘oh, we are going to play at Wembley’. We didn’t talk too much, but the feeling was that this was a massive test for us”, he said. “After the game the feeling was more ‘ah, we can do well here’. We can play well, we can play respecting our philosophy and I think it was a very nice feeling. It gave us more confidence and more trust.”

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