👔 The 5th best manager in the world is ... | OneFootball

Our countdown of the best managers in the world continues today.

In at number five is this guy …

Mauricio Pochettino

You might be asking yourself how a manager who is yet to win a major trophy and has been out of work since November could currently be the 5th best in the world.

And it’s a fair question. On paper, Pochettino’s managerial record isn’t much to shout about and it’s possible that he might be a little overrated at this moment in time.

But though his Tottenham tenure ended on a sour note at the end of last year, the Argentine has done a successful job wherever he’s been so far, and it’s exciting to think about what he could do in the future when he eventually joins a club whose ambitions match his talent.

A former centre-back who played for the likes of Newell’s Old Boys, Paris Saint-Germain and Espanyol, Poch began his coaching career with Espanyol in January 2009.

It was a real baptism of fire for the 37-year-old, who had very little coaching experience other than a short stint as assistant manager of the club’s women’s team, and was ushered in as a last ditch attempt to save a struggling side from relegation.

But in his first match he masterminded an unexpected 0-0 draw with Espanyol’s local rivals Barcelona and his side would go on to finish in a comfortable mid-table position, having also managed the club’s first victory at Camp Nou for 27 years later in the season.

Four years after beginning his coaching career, Premier League club Southampton made the controversial decision to hire him as their replacement for Nigel Adkins.

It was a move which didn’t go down too well with the British media at the time, as Adkins had been doing a decent job and it was hard to understand why he had been jettisoned and replaced by a relatively unknown foreign coach.

It didn’t take long for Pochettino to make the doubters eat their words, however, and in his first full season at the club, he led the Saints to an eighth-placed finish, their highest league position since 2002/03 and their highest points tally of the Premier League era.

His proven ability to turn ships around was what attracted Tottenham to him in the summer of 2014.

Spurs were languishing at the time, having gone off the rails under novice manager Tim Sherwood, but they finished 5th and made it to the League Cup final in Pochettino’s first season at White Hart Lane.

In the years to come, Pochettino’s high-pressing 4-2-3-1 system and his blooding of talented young players like Harry Kane and Dele Alli would see the Lilywhites establish themselves as a top four force in the Premier League.

In December 2018, Pochettino won his 100th Premier League match as Spurs manager, becoming the third quickest manager to reach that milestone with a single club in Premier League history.

And the following year he would pull off the crowning achievement of his managerial career so far, when he took Spurs all the way to the Champions League final, having pulled off incredible comeback victories over Manchester City and Ajax along the way.

They would end up losing to Liverpool in the final, but the against-all-odds nature of their journey in the competition felt like the dawn of a new era for both Spurs and Pochettino.

It wasn’t to be, however, and a failure to sufficiently strengthen the squad last summer saw Pochettino’s relationship with Spurs chief executive Daniel Levy become fraught, with the manager eventually being given his marching orders in November last year with the club 14th in the table.

It was a sad end to five wonderful years in north London and though links with the likes of Manchester United and Real Madrid have come and gone in the months since his departure, Pochettino presently remains on the outside of the football world looking in.

But it surely won’t be long before a big club comes calling and when that happens, we wouldn’t bet against Pochettino proving his credentials and finally lifting some silverware as a manager.

You can’t keep a good man down forever.