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Mauricio Pochettino has built a near-unbreakable bond with his Tottenham Hotspur players as they prepare for the Champions League final.
Spurs have been through the wringer in this season’s competition, taking one point from their opening three games, needing to draw with Barcelona in the Camp Nou to qualify for the knockout rounds, beating Borussia Dortmund handsomely over two legs, narrowly squeezing past Manchester City thanks to Fernando Llorente’s hip and VAR and then miraculously overcoming the odds to down Ajax in Amsterdam.
Now, they are 90 minutes away from immortality; Tottenham Hotspur are, incredibly, one game from being champions of Europe.
If they are victorious, captain Hugo Lloris will join an elite group of players who have won the World Cup and the Champions League in the same season.
And he insists that it will mean more because of the man he is playing under.
Quoted by Football.London, he said: “Now we have a fantastic opportunity in the Champions League. It’s the biggest trophy that you can win and when it’s in front of you, you must do everything to get it.
“It means even more when you do it with people that you really want to do it. With Mauricio it means even more.”
This is key.
For too long, Spurs appointed managers who could do one or the other; they were either motivators, such as Harry Redknapp and Martin Jol, or somewhat tactically astute but seemingly deficient when it came to communication, like Juande Ramos or Andre Villas-Boas. Tim Sherwood defies categorisation purely because of the sheer ineptitude of his appointment.
Now, though, they have a manager who can do both. Pochettino is brilliant at guiding his team tactically and he has also forged with them a bond that is unlike anything that has been seen at Spurs before.
So close is Lloris’ relationship with the Argentine, he presented him with his own replica of the World Cup trophy when he returned from Russia last summer.
Such has been the journey upon which they have embarked every single player appears ready to run through a brick wall in Madrid.
By Sunday, Pochettino may well have his own replica trophy, but this time of the Champions League.