AT THE HEART of the recent spat between Mauricio Pochettino and Pep Guardiola was the idea of creative control. Pochettino was peeved at Guardiola labelling Spurs “the Harry Kane team” and hit back at the Manchester City manager’s most vulnerable point.
“It’s difficult to understand because Pep was part of the big success at Barcelona, when it was Messi at his best,” Poch jibed. “And I never said it was the Messi team. I always said it was Barcelona and it was Pep Guardiola. I think everyone deserves to be recognised as being part of the success of the team.”
Everyone deserves to be recognised, but, as far as these guys are concerned, the manager first and foremost. For one of them to highlight the other’s success as being down to a mere player is the most heinous attack.
This is the world of coach as auteur. They are the football equivalent of the New Hollywood directors of the late 1960s and 1970s like William Friedkin, Roman Polanski and Francis Ford Coppola. Dazzlingly talented, frequently bonkers, they were responsible for most of the era’s great cinema as well some of its most bloated box office disasters.
In the New Hollywood the director was the star, not like the old studio system and it’s dependence on squared-jawed heart-throbs and blonde bombshells, lavish musicals and cowboy pictures.
Last season was the Premier League’s New Hollywood moment, with the big clubs hiring football’s equivalent of the temperamental, polo-necked helmers of 1970s Tinseltown. The presence of Guardiola, Pochettino, Antonio Conte, Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho meant as much attention was on the men shouting ‘action’ as those in the middle of it.
Conte’s imprint on his title-winning creation at Chelsea seemed to underline the value of giving talent its head, with the troubles at the club this season a classic case of studio interference on the final cut. But elsewhere the limits of one man’s imagination were displayed. As Pochettino’s barb alluded to, Guardiola’s success at previous clubs is forever linked to the calibre of players he was able to work with, and although City’s mesmerising displays this season carry the hallmarks of his coaching genius, it is hard to totally separate them from the club’s vast transfer outlay.
If Pep is a tortured artist demanding total creative control, it helps that he has blockbuster backing. Guardiola’s vision is undoubtedly unique, but over €450 million in transfer fees spent since his arrival at the Etihad has certainly helped to implement it.
Frequently last season City resembled Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, a self-indulgent opus with moments of brilliance but undone by the scope of its ambition. The money spent last summer on adding a decent goalkeeper, the high-quality full-backs his football demands and depth in creative areas has been as important as the undoubted improvements Guardiola’s coaching has wrought in players like Raheem Sterling, Kevin De Bruyne and Leroy Sané.
Jurgen Klopp is also demonstrating that even the best directors need the right leading men. Klopp’s resolutely indie vision sees him attempt to create a masterpiece with unfashionable up-and-comers rather than bankable A-listers. But at the moment he is like Martin Scorsese casting a soap star as the lead in Taxi Driver. Liverpool’s lack of investment in two key areas – central defence and on a top class striker – has been at the root of their problems this season, and the club must give Klopp his De Niros to get the Raging Bull they crave.
Perhaps Guardiola’s comment stung Pochettino because if there is any of the Premier League super-coaches who fulfils the notion of the true auteur, it is the Spurs boss. All around him is the evidence of a vision being fulfilled, of every creative whim granted. While a new stadium rises on the site of the old White Hart Lane, at the club’s training ground a 45-room hotel is being constructed to optimise player recovery time.
The club’s transfer spending is frugal by their rivals’ standards, yet they remain competitive at the top of the Premier League, relentlessly responsive to the crack of their manager’s whip, seemingly shrugging off the defection of Kyle Walker and the mutinous murmurings of Danny Rose about the club’s direction.
Even the player at the root of Pochettino’s tiff with Guardiola, his superstar striker, is a Poch product.
“At 21, he had the habits of a player in his 30s, the type who has been around the block,” writes Pochettino in his newly published book, appropriately titled ‘Brave New World’, about the Kane he found when he took over in 2014.
“I had several stern conversations with Harry in which I had to make him understand that he had to get ready for whenever the opportunity might arise.”
The manager’s tough love approach to Kane’s attitude and physical condition paid off in spades.
While flagged as a Bernabeu audition for Kane, Tuesday night‘s draw against Real Madrid, with its tactical surprises and daring team selection, was a glamour premiere night for Tottenham’s hot shot director.
Just as the New Hollywood era ended with the onset of blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars, so it may be Pochettino who Real someday offer control of football’s big budget franchise; but the auteur’s real masterpiece might just be in production in north London.
Subscribe to The42 podcasts here:
