Tales of Mauricio Pochettino telephone calls to get transfers over the line for Tottenham are now almost expected when Spurs make a signing.
And it’s not all media nonsense, with players taking the step to confirm a Poch call swung their decision over a Tottenham transfer. Similar happens with Pep Guardiola at Manchester City and it’s clear the two managers can be very persuasive.
Davinson Sanchez has been speaking to Marca and was asked about his summer transfer to the Premier League club. There had been interest from elsewhere, and Ajax were clearly trying to push the idea of a bigger battle being on than actually was, but Spurs got their man in the end.
The Spanish newspaper quote Sanchez as saying: “The first person I spoke with was Pochettino. I had chances to go to Italy but Mauricio convinced me, he’s very direct. He believes that a good central defender must dominate and not forget the game when my team attacks. To be alive throughout the game.”
Marca wanted to know how Pochettino prepared his team for the matches against Real Madrid, and Sanchez explained: “He told us that we should be aggressive, that to play a good game at the Bernabeu we should have confidence and play them as equals. The key was not to go crazy making changes.”
When Tottenham talks with Ajax were at their peak, there were claims from the Dutch media that Real Madrid were trying to hijack the deal. At the time that seemed like a clumsy Ajax invention to try and get more money out of Spurs, and it’s didn’t work.
Interest from Italy didn’t seem so strong at the time, and there’s not many clubs who could, and would, have matched what Tottenham were able to pay for Davinson Sanchez.
