Mauricio Pochettino, born March 2, 1972, in Murphy, Argentina, is a former professional footballer turned successful manager. After a playing career that included spells at clubs like Paris Saint-Germain and Espanyol, he transitioned into coaching. Pochettino gained prominence at Espanyol before making waves at Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur.
At Tottenham, he transformed the club into a top Premier League contender, securing four consecutive top-four finishes and a UEFA Champions League final appearance in 2019. In January 2021, Pochettino took over as head coach of Paris Saint-Germain, aiming to lead the club to domestic and European success. Known for his tactical acumen, emphasis on youth development, and attractive playing style, Pochettino remains highly respected in football management circles.
Mauricio Pochettino Quotes
1. “It’s difficult to compete if you are not consistent.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
2. “Juventus are specialists because they have the habit to win and the habit to put pressure on the referee. It’s a club with a culture to try to do everything to help the team.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
3. “I always remember being competitive. From the beginning, with my brothers, with my friends, playing at school, everything – in everything I was involved in.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
4. “After games, my wife gives me a lot of advice and criticism. Sometimes, I am upset. I say, ‘Why do you advise me this?’ But I like it, because to listen to a different point of view is always important. You can find a different position or point of view that can help you to be more creative.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
5. “Sometimes it looks like the board and the chairman are the worst enemy of the manager and the coaching staff, the football versus the financial side.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
6. “We have short memories in football.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
7. “I work with young people, and I know that we must be careful. Newspaper headlines, sudden notoriety, and important comparisons can lead to confusion.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
8. “When you play for Barcelona, there is always pressure to win – you play for something special. It’s the same when you play for Tottenham; the names are not important.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
9. “If my ambition in Tottenham is only to win the Carabao Cup or FA Cup, with all the respect for that, I think my ambition does not match the ambition of a club like Tottenham.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
10. “You cannot guess what happens in the future.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
11. “I am not the victim, and I won’t be the victim in football or life.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
12. “Rather than complain about a thing you cannot change, I try to find a solution to help the performance in the best way.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
13. “I love to work and feel part of the project: to share and create something special.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
14. “I feel very important at Tottenham, very comfortable, and I enjoy the journey a lot.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
15. “It’s difficult to innovate, but you must try to create a project under your ideas and philosophies to take you ahead of other clubs.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
16. “I live in the present; there is nothing more important than that.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
17. “I always said anything is possible in football if you have faith and quality.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
18. “I think all the players need coaching; if you do not push the player, they are going to be too comfortable. Always, you need to push.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
19. “I’m someone who likes new things, likes change. But I also like challenges. I was a little bit of a prisoner to my challenge each time.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
20. To show respect for the opponent is to go and kill with every single action. That is the way you show it. You need to be aggressive. That is how I understand football.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
21. “I am so proud to be a manager in England.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
22. “When I stopped playing football, I stopped my relationship with my agent. I always had one agent.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
23. “For me, every single game is an opportunity to improve.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
24. “You never know in football.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
25. “For me, what it means to be competitive is to work hard but compete in this type of game when you need to play, you need to suffer, you need to fight.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
26. “A lot can happen in football.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
27. “We need to be regular and have consistency during the whole season.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
28. “All players need to feel confidence from the staff, the players, the supporters. All need to be consistent in training and games to give their best.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
29. “Being a captain means a lot – it’s not just about wearing the armband.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
30. “When you are young, you need to know the reality because when you are in your bubble, you believe that, always, all you do is right. And sometimes you need people who say, ‘Hey, come on, what happened with you?”
— Mauricio Pochettino
31. “When you talk about Beckham, he’s a massive world icon.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
32. “We are always trying to improve our squad because football is dynamic.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
33. “The most important club in the world is Tottenham. And it is the best club in the world. I need to feel like this, and that emotion is real because I cannot be fake. It’s too difficult to create the trust if you don’t really believe, and it’s not real, that emotion.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
34. “I would put Harry Kane in with Batistuta. All that is happening to him, he deserves. He is the protagonist of his life, and he deserves all the prize.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
35. “Every single club is special and is different.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
36. “I feel happy here in Tottenham because I feel the recognition for our job.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
37. “The most important thing is how you are made to feel in your home.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
38. “If your own fans didn’t want you, there is no point to carry on working because you are going to damage first of all your company, your club.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
39. “I am a very lucky person because I am not focused on social media and all that happens around.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
40. “I am a person that likes to move on. I am the first to make mistakes in my life.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
41. “Always it is important to improve.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
42. “Rumours are rumours and always happen, not only at Tottenham but every team.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
43. “Obviously, if you win a trophy, like I won when I was a player, it’s a moment to celebrate. For me – this is my mentality, and I don’t want to say it’s right or wrong – I love to celebrate in private and not make it public. I love to celebrate the things with your team-mates.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
44. “I’m of the older generation. I accept the new technology, but I try to keep a bit of that away.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
45. “I love it when the people celebrate when they beat you.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
46. “My life is 24 hours talking about football. For me, it is every conversation, every action. It is my life, my passion.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
47. “For me, family and football are the most important things. They are in the same level.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
48. “The platform that we have created here in Tottenham is the most important, the platform we created between all the coaching staff – in the academy and the first team. The platform we created is more important than one person.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
49. “I don’t have social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, nothing. I don’t receive information. That’s why my head, my face, looks younger than I really am.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
50. “We have seen that many teams, both in La Liga and the Premier League, have the economic capacity to steal a star from an important team.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
51. “What puts you in a different level is if you win the Premier League, and you’re capable of challenging every season for the Premier League, and if you play Champions League, and you really believe, and you’re a real contender one day to win the Champions League. That’s my objective in Tottenham.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
52. “My ambition is to win the Champions League one day with Tottenham, or the Premier League.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
53. “When the club offers you the job, they say what the club expects from you. If the club says to you, ‘I want you to win the Champions League, the Premier League, the Carabao Cup,’ you say, ‘OK, you want to win this and this and this? Can you give me this and this and this?’“
— Mauricio Pochettino
54. “When you build a team, and you have 24 or 25 players, all can be decisive; can be important.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
55. “I am a person who is always positive.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
56. “I don’t want to lie. Always, I want to be honest and I say, ‘I don’t think about tomorrow. I don’t think about next season.’“
— Mauricio Pochettino
57. “To be a player is so difficult.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
58. “When Real Madrid call you, you have to listen to them.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
59. “What is going to happen tomorrow, I don’t know, but I will always tell you ‘football is football.’ Football will put you in your place always.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
60. “It is always in our dream to win, and you need to dream of bigger things.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
61. “It is always in my nature to work like you are going to be at the club forever, for your life.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
62. “If you are 25, 30, 35, you need to think you can learn every day. If not, you are going to go backwards, and of course you are going to fail, and you begin to see the end of your career.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
63. “The fact is I have an interpreter because he gives me the security that, when I have to answer complex questions, and with my complex answers, it’s much better I have an interpreter to make sure nothing is misconstrued.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
64. “It motivates me, being a parakeet and living for so many years in Barcelona. Going back to the city is always something nice, and playing against Barca, too.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
65. “When English football started to integrate more with European football, England started to share the Latin culture more.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
66. “I am never going to be manager of Barcelona or Arsenal because I am so identified with Tottenham and Espanyol.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
67. “Nothing is impossible in football, and that is our idea, our philosophy.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
68. “For me, Jose Mourinho is one of the best managers in the world. I don’t think he needs to show anyone that he is one of the best.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
69. “I take every season as it being different.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
70. “Always, you miss all the players when they are injured.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
71. “We can’t see every small detail in football.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
72. “I enjoy my time in Tottenham a lot.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
73. “Sometimes, my kids say to me, ‘Ah, you played with Maradona; you played with this, or you played with that.’ And they are so proud.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
74. “The best agent for me is myself.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
75. “That is the difference from being a manager and being a player: As a player, if you sign a contract for four years, if you want to be there for four years, you are. But as a manager, it always depends on the sack. You are always under pressure.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
76. “Sometimes when you have lost, you don’t want to speak to anybody.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
77. “I think people always expect that when you have a good season and expect the next season to be better, and the season after better and better.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
78. “If we want to fight at the end of the season for big things and to lift trophies, you need to keep that intensity always.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
79. “You have to realise that players change every year, just like we change because every year is different, as things happen in our lives.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
80. “Managers and players at different clubs, it’s difficult to compare.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
81. “It is difficult to give time to develop projects in football. You buy the club, and you want the title after three months.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
82. “The chairman is the man who manages everything and, in the end, takes all the decisions. Always, for the fans, it’s important to hear him.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
83. “When you are next to Harry Kane, achieving all he is and scoring so many goals, it’s normal that the focus is on Harry Kane.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
84. “If we don’t need the players who are available to sign, then why are we going to sign?”
— Mauricio Pochettino
85. “When you are better than your opposition for 45 minutes and create six chances, if you don’t score, you are in danger in the Premier League. It’s the best league in the world.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
86. “He is a killer, Harry Kane.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
87. “I am not a person who is going to convince players to stay or not stay.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
88. “Tottenham has given me value.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
89. “I think the most important thing is to keep going and fighting to be in a good position. Like many clubs say, to be in the top four is a massive success.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
90. “All negative things you can turn positive, and for me, that is key.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
91. “My only focus is to try to assess and to provide the players with better tools to perform.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
92. “You judge someone from the day you meet them.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
93. “It’s important to have the opportunity to learn.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
94. “To win games, we need to be focused for 95 minutes. If not, you always pay in football.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
95. “If you win, of course celebrate and show the fans you’re happy – it’s fantastic – but when you win a trophy, when you win something special.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
96. “Belief is the most important thing in football. Not quality, running, or being strong but belief, faith, and fight.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
97. “I grew up in Newell’s Old Boys and will never manage Rosario Central. That is my decision because I prefer to work on my farm in Argentina than in some places.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
98. “The most important thing is to explain day by day that life is very short, and we need to spend the day thinking and enjoying life. We can’t been thinking too much and worrying about what is happening tomorrow.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
99. “When you concede in less than two minutes, it changes completely everything.”
— Mauricio Pochettino
