Guardiola renews his rivalry with Pochettino
▶ Duo will face-off for 30th time when PSG host City in tonight’s Champions League semi-final first leg
It was, said the local sports newspaper, “a derby with a difference – but still full of tradition, like refereeing controversies and plenty of conflicts.”
Unusually, this combative Catalan derby finished with the underdogs Espanyol at the top of La Liga, and Barcelona mid-table. But it was only September, early in the season. One newcomer to the city of Barcelona and its derbies would soon learn the odds were generally stacked against his club.
He was Mauricio Pochettino, a rugged 22-year-old defender freshly arrived at Espanyol from Argentina.
“Committed, no frills”, noted El Mundo Deportivo of ‘Poch’s’ performance in the first of his many Catalan derbies.
The paper gave him the same top marks as Barcelona’s most influential midfielder in the tetchy 0-0 draw. That man was Pep Guardiola. He had “led the team, and stamped his personality on the game”.
That warm day in 1994, Espanyol had a goal chalked off in a harsh ruling by the referee that Pochettino had fouled Barcelona’s Ronald Koeman. Guardiola was struck by an object thrown from the crowd.
So it was that Poch and Pep met for the first time as rivals, in a fiery and attritional beginning to a saga that marks its 30th episode tonight.
They would go on to be combatants another 10 times as players. They would meet again as young, up-and-coming coaches at Espanyol and Barca in the 2000s. They would be Premier League duellers for three-and-half seasons as their managerial careers developed.
They have been European rivals, too, as they will be at the Parc des Princes. Pochettino guides a Paris Saint-Germain – who appointed him in January – against Manchester City whom Guardiola has led to every major English prize, but not the desired European Cup.
And in the Champions League, history favours Poch, thanks to one of the most memorable quarter-finals, when Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur upset predictions to eliminate City on away goals in an eightgoal thriller two years ago.
This time, the stakes are even higher, a place in a Champions League final at stake. The net worth of the players they instruct is the most it has been in the Poch-versus-Pep saga.
Over the past five years, PSG and City have spent more than any other club building super squads capable of winning what would be a first European Cup. Any rivalry that stretches back more than a quarter of a century is bound to have nourished the odd grudge. There have been spiky moments, not least when, at City, Guardiola called Pochettino’s Spurs “The Harry Kane Team”.
Pochettino took that as a sneer, and reminded his old adversary that he never used to refer to Guardiola’s Barcelona as ‘The Leo Messi Team’.
In 18 head-to-heads as rival coaches, Pochettino has won just three times, but that massive 2019 victory of the Harry Kane Team over City is burned on the memory.
Spurs won despite a 4-3 second-leg defeat in Manchester that would have swung the other way but for a late City goal being ruled out by a paper-thin VAR offside call.
Might that dramatic night have a bearing on PSG-City? “Two different games, two different teams, a different contest,” Pochettino said. “The main thing is that this will be a battle between two great teams, nothing personal between him and me. Guardiola is one of the best coaches in the world, and I respect hugely what he has done throughout his career.”
Neither coach was yesterday defining their opponent by a single player. PSG, so expensively assembled in the attacking positions are no more The Neymar Team than they are The Kylian Mbappe Team or The Angel Di Maria Team.
Yet, to list those names is to spell out the very special capacity of Pochettino’s frontmen to exploit any space behind an opponent and push their defensive line up high, as City tend to. Bayern Munich and Barcelona, eliminated by PSG in the previous two rounds, both suffered against the French team’s swift breaks.
“We are confident,” Pochettino said, “although I’d prefer to call it calm and relaxed. It will be a very hard game, City are having a fantastic season, and have huge talents, like Phil Foden, Riyad Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling and Kevin de Bruyne.
“You are talking about some of the best in the world, and a very hard side to keep control of.”
There have been spiky moments, not least when, at City, Guardiola called Pochettino’s Spurs ‘The Harry Kane Team’