“Every week I am fired,” complained Mauricio Pochettino last June, a few weeks before Paris Saint-Germain fired him. “I like Manchester City, because they gave Guardiola the opportunity to build. They gave him time. At PSG, you also need that. By giving serenity to this project, we will be close to winning the Champions League.”
Serenity. Yes. Well, good luck with that. One of the fundamentals of coaching is that vacancies rarely turn up at clubs where everything is running smoothly. Yet even allowing for this, Pochettino’s appointment at Chelsea carries its own irresistible quantum of jeopardy. A coach who craves order and control, colliding head-on with an organisation that has spent two decades running on the fumes of chaos. A coach who values a tight-knit environment and close personal relationships, entering a club that has spent the last year trying to sign every professional footballer in the northern hemisphere. For better or worse, something is going to break here.
