Forget PSG, Pochettino would be a great appointment for United

Time Stamp: February 21, 2022 3:00 AM

What has been the most jarring thing about Mauricio Pochettino’s time as Paris Saint-Germain manager has been just how little fun he’s had.

In an age when football takes itself far too seriously, part of Pochettino’s sterling work with Tottenham Hotspur was his ability to craft together a relentlessly attacking team built on youth and high-pressing.

For years, his Spurs team were one of the most enjoyable to watch in Europe, even if that major trophy just evaded them on a number of occasions. A serious team no doubt, but one who seemed to enjoy the journey of their upward trajectory, taking their game to the opposition no matter their name.

That emotion, which culminated in the scenes of Pochettino emotionally celebrating the famous win over Ajax in the 2019 Champions League semi-final, was the intangible driving force of Pochettino’s work.

Over at PSG, however, the story is different. For a club who seem to want to be the stylish leading force in football, a sporting Disneyland of sorts, life in the French capital looks mind-bendingly boring.

Dripping in corporate lingo and generally sweeping domestic titles year after year, star players look to be in control of things and there’s a focus on signing big names. Lionel Messi, as good as he might be, has offered little to the team so far.

For many, Pochettino looks like a dead man walking. With Ligue 1 sewn up and PSG out of the French Cup already, everything rests on the Champions League. Given the team’s performances in the group stage, their chances seemed slim. Then came Paris.

While the performance was not exactly perfect, one of the most striking aspects of PSG’s win over Real Madrid was just how proactive the home side were. Utterly reactive and devoid of any inspiration in league competition, Pochettino’s team showed signs of life.

For most of the game, it was them taking it to Madrid, who often looked as if they were playing the kind of football Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho championed almost twenty years ago. Kylian Mbappe’s late winner was the icing on the cake but, really, PSG should have been much further ahead.

Pochettino, incredibly, has been doubted. Having not won the league during his first season, the turgid football PSG have played this time around led to suggestions that the Argentine simply wasn’t that good.

How, after all, could he fail with this PSG team?

Well, having good players doesn’t necessarily mean you play good football. Pochettino’s skill set is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum and, amid such circus, he’s performing well. Motivating this team full of ego over the course of a league they’d win more often than not anyway is not something Pochettino seems suited for. Taking the game to the opposition on the continent, however, is.

Whatever happens between now and May’s final in Saint Petersburg, it seems difficult to imagine him continuing in his post amid the looming figure of Zinedine Zidane. Pochettino, then, can breathe fresh life into his candidacy for the Manchester United job.

United might, in many ways, be run in a similar kind of manner to PSG but at least decision-makers at Old Trafford are trying to change. In appointing Ralf Rangnick as interim manager before moving in a consultancy role, there appears to be a willingness to modernise.

That is where Pochettino excels. Operating under such a structure and enjoying more in the way of resource than he did at Tottenham, United could benefit from the kind of football his PSG team played against Madrid, as well as in big ties against Barcelona and Bayern Munich last season.

The sheen might have come off of Pochettino in recent months but this is a United manager waiting in the wings.

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