(Video): “It’s difficult to accept” – It’s not my job to motivate players says Mauricio Pochettino | OneFootball

Mauricio Pochettino was pretty spiky in his press conference today. He had a friendly exterior, but wasn’t taking any nonsense.

He was asked whether it was going to be harder to motivate his players now, given that there are no trophies to play for, just the questionable promise of a place in the Conference League.

He gave an interesting response – he puffed his cheeks out and gave a grunting “wow,” then explained that he didn’t think it was on him and his staff to motivate the players. They should be motivated themselves by the fact that they’re playing for Chelsea.

“It’s difficult to accept [players not being self motivated]. Even when you play for nothing, in a friendly game… if you don’t have the motivation, it’s difficult. If you told me we have to motivate the players to play tomorrow, I think we have a big problem.”

We know what he means, of course. We’d like every player to be at 100% for every game. But that’s not how life works. We’re not sure how facetious he was being, or whether he was just sending a message to the players, but it was quite some statement either way.

You can see the coach speaking in the clip embedded here: