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Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino’s comments regarding silverware, following the FA Cup fourth round defeat to Crystal Palace on Sunday, were simply unacceptable and showed a real lack of respect to the club’s fanbase.
What did he say?
Speaking after the 2-0 defeat at Selhurst Park, the former Southampton boss told Sky Sports: “Again we’re going to have the debate whether a trophy will take the club to the next level. I don’t agree with it. It only builds your ego. The most important thing for Tottenham right now is to always be in the top four.”
You may think that’s a ridiculous thing to say, and rightly so, but let’s try and see it from the Argentine’s viewpoint. As reported by the BBC, clubs who manage to qualify for the group stages of the Champions League receive a total of £13.34m prize money, whereas, as seen on the FA official site, the winners of the FA Cup receive just £3.6m in comparison.
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Those figures make it a financial no-brainer for Pochettino to target the top four over domestic cup success, and as hard as that may be for fans to digest, that must be the case if Spurs want to compete with England’s best in the transfer market.
A tad disrespectful
Whilst we’ve taken a look at the Argentine’s side of things, we must analyse why the fans may feel offended and hurt by these comments. Throughout the history of football, teams have been judged on their ability to win trophies, how well stocked their trophy cabinets are, and so on. Fans want to be involved in gut-wrenching, nervy finals, battling for trophies rather than just qualifying for a competition they’re unlikely to win.
Are we entering a new dawn in football where European qualification is being viewed as on par with silverware? Probably. But Pochettino’s remarks about trophies being about building your ‘ego’, and how they won’t take Spurs to the next level are foolish.
Every top player at the club, such as Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen and Son Heung-Min, have won absolutely nothing since they arrived at the club, despite consistently putting in top-class performances. It goes without saying that, when they retire, they’re going to want to look over the medals they’ve won rather than the amount of times they finished in the top four.
No matter how lucrative European qualification may be, trophies are the ultimate barometer in football and always will be.
