Tottenham chief Daniel Levy’s three reasons for snubbing Mauricio Pochettino return

At one point, Mauricio Pochettino was heavily favored to return to Tottenham; however, he chose to take the helm of Chelsea, their great rivals in London. Here’s how…

Despite all of the criticism he receives, Daniel Levy has good cause to refuse to rehire Mauricio Pochettino as the manager of Tottenham.

After leading Spurs for five years in north London, Pochettino was fired in late 2019 and Jose Mourinho took over as manager right away.Five months after leading the team to their first-ever Champions League final, the Argentine was fired following a terrible start to the 2019–20 campaign.

Following a period of rest, Pochettino assumed leadership of Paris Saint-Germain, although he was remarkably unimpressive and resigned from his position after 17 months in the French capital. After parting ways with the Parisians in July 2022, Pochettino was unemployed and available when Antonio Conte was fired as Spurs manager in March 2023.

Levy, however, decided to let Ryan Mason serve as the team’s temporary manager for the balance of the season. Even so, there was constant conjecture that Pochettino would return to the Spurs dugout; for many, this would be the ideal appointment.

The Argentine, who is still adored by the Spurs supporters, comes back at the team with more experience and a goal to break through the team’s trophy drought. Chairman Levy, on the other hand, did not share that viewpoint and chose not to pursue Pochettino for a second term.

Since then, the three factors that led to that choice have become evident. First, Levy had originally intended to choose a youthful, promising project manager. Not quite keeping his word, he hired Ange Postecoglou, who was seven years Pochettino’s senior.

That’s not to suggest Postecoglou isn’t here to stay; in fact, the Australian seems to be putting in a lot of work and is already building a rapport with the Spurs supporters and saying all the right things to win them over. Levy also held the opinion that it is highly uncommon for top sports management to succeed when looking to the past for guidance on the present.

Levy was obviously thinking about the fact that very few managers have managed the same team twice and delivered results both times. The Spurs CEO did not want to be persuaded to make an appointment just on the basis of sentiment, which was the third reason.

Although supporters would have initially praised Pochettino’s return, things could go wrong again and Spurs would have lost valuable time. Rather, as previously said, they chose Postecoglou.

Pochettino, on the other hand, did go back to London. Only to dominate Chelsea, Spurs’ fiercest capital rivals, and burn a great deal of his north London bridges in the process. The 51-year-old will visit his former haunt for the first time on Monday night, and it’s unclear how he’ll be received.

“For a lot of us in our roles, that’s our ultimate goal and ambition: it is that we make an impact,” Postecoglou said in a statement prior to the competition, praising one of his predecessors. There was no denying its impact. He brought the team dangerously close to the Champions League’s pinnacle and nearly to the top.”