Mauricio Pochettino inspired by former glories as Tottenham take on Barcelona angling for salvation
Pochettino is confident that Tottenham can save themselves: that the Camp Nou need not be as intimidating as the stadium and Barcelona's European record there seems
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Your support makes all the difference.As Mauricio Pochettino stepped back into the Camp Nou for what will be his 11th game there as a player or manager, there were the painful memories of nine derby defeats at the stadium with Espanyol, but also that one sensational victory that may genuinely be so much more relevant than that miserable record.
That was because, just like Tottenham Hotspur on Tuesday, his side absolutely needed to win.
It was February 2009 and Pochettino had only recently taken up his first managerial job at an apparently doomed Espanyol, and hadn’t even got a first victory yet.
The timing and place of it would be something else.
Against a Barcelona who were on a much higher level than this one, and en route to a first treble in what was Pep Guardiola’s own first season, Ivan De La Pena scored twice to give Pochettino’s side a brilliant 2-1 win.
“You will think I am mad but we are going to save ourselves,” Pochettino had been saying to his players before the game, and that message justifiably changed in the aftermath. “Now we’re definitely staying up!”
Espanyol did so. Comfortably.
It is an intense level of persuasive conviction that Pochettino has been similarly imparting to his Spurs players over the past few days, and really since the late 1-0 win over Internazionale that set this up. That they’re going to save themselves; that the Camp Nou need not be as intimidating as the stadium and Barcelona's European record there seems; that there is plenty of proof you can make progress underneath its cavernous stands.
And, even allowing for a weaker Barca XI given that they’ve already qualified top of the group, it is a message that’s necessary.
Because while so much of the build-up to this week’s Champions League fixtures has naturally been based on epic last-game home heroics at Anfield, and the possibility of Liverpool echoing what they did against Olympiakos in 2005, Tottenham need similar defiance from a different context - and a different stadium to their own. They need one of those great last-group-game away wins.
There are also precedents there, however, and two of them from English clubs.
Just like Tottenham now, Newcastle United had lost their first two group games in the 2002-03 season - going on to actually lose a third - and needed a win away from home in the final match as well as some favours.
That was at Feyenoord, but this wasn’t quite the economically belittled Feyenoord of today. It was a side who had just won the 2002 Uefa Cup, and were close to eliminating against Newcastle, only for Craig Bellamy to hit an injury-time winner. Juventus meanwhile won away at Dynamo Kyiv to send Sir Bobby Robson’s team through.
Even more sensationally, there was Rosenborg actually winning away at giants AC Milan in 1996-97, with Vegard Heggem’s goal directly eliminating the club that had dominated the competition throughout all of the 90s up to that point.
Even more relevantly, then, there was… Arsenal, and Olivier Giroud’s hat-trick away to Olympiakos in 2015-16, and a last group match that was effectively a direct eliminator.
It is Spurs’ own last match against their north London rivals that could have diluted the effect of some of the conviction Pochettino is radiating right now, but that has not been the case. That 4-2 defeat at the Emirates has already been accepted as just one of those unfortunate losses that happens, in what was mostly just an intense and supremely contested fixture.
It was also just one defeat in the middle of eight wins, a run that only fires the belief - or, really, the knowledge - Spurs are again coming to form at the exact time that assistant Jesus Perez’s conditioning programme has scheduled them to.
If they can pull this off, that might be some timing too.
And yet, for all such talk of time and place, this might really come down to who - and not from the Spurs’ side.
This whole fixture, and maybe Tottenham’s entire European campaign, could come down to whether Leo Messi fancies a rest or not.
If he plays, and is in any kind of mood, that’s kind of it.
The first match was proof.
He’s in that kind of form, that kind of mood, as everyone at Barca talks of how he has deeply realised the need for himself and the club to win the Champions League again.
But that might be of benefit to Spurs. Because Barca need to keep him fresh for the course of the season, physically as well as mentally.
The feeling is he will be rested.
If so, it will only embolden Pochettino’s conviction.
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