Champions League final: How Tottenham justified Mauricio Pochettino’s gamble to put Spurs on the map

By putting so much pressure on his players to challenge for the Premier League and in Europe – and subsequently snubbing domestic silverware – Pochettino’s faith in establishing Spurs as a force to be reckoned with has paid off

It is a line of logic nobody is faulting any more and, certainly, nobody is laughing at any more.

For most of Mauricio Pochettino’s five years at Tottenham Hotspur, a persistent argument has always been he should devote more resources and energy to the domestic cups, to just try and win that breakthrough first trophy.

“Come on, Mauricio, it’s about winning one title,” he would be told, as he reflected upon last week. His logic has always been that Spurs are “not a machine”, that spreading themselves so thin would make it impossible to challenge for what are “for me, two real trophies”, in the Premier League and Champions League.

“We were right,” Pochettino said last week, with a certain satisfaction. The semi-final against Ajax has ended up a vindication as much as a victory, for the manner it has proven that argument correct.

Pochettino and Spurs are now just one game from “touching the glory”, as he so evocatively put it.

This however means even more than just putting them so close to the most prestigious trophy in club football, or this great gamble paying off. It has been about the impeccability of the timing, as much as any final placing.

Just as Spurs have put one of the world’s greatest stadiums on the map, and they need a squad renewal, they have put themselves on the among the modern Champions League finalists.

It is an unmatched visibility, with an unmatched prestige and consequence.

The impact of it cannot be underestimated, not when it’s only a few months since Der Spiegel’s leaks revealed Spurs were not included in initial 2016 plans for a European Super League. If that prospect arises again, as virtually everyone in the game think it will, it will be difficult to exclude them.

But this is obviously about so much more than the obese grotesquery of a Super League. It is about how Pochettino has honed and thereby maximised Spurs, to continuously transform them.

Mauricio Pochettino gambled on Spurs challenge for either the Premier League or Champions League (AFP/Getty)

To just be appearing in the most prestigious and high-profile fixture in club football is huge. It also means a lot more than it did even 10 years ago, because of the changes to the scale of the fixture, and how it has become a true football Super Bowl.

The analogy is all the more apt given Spurs’ plans with NFL.

It just changes the very status of the club, to go with all the gradual changes to their infrastructure, from the training ground to the stadium. They have gone from a Europa League club to regular Champions League qualifiers, to finalists and a club now seen on that level with everything it entails.

Top players see that. Sponsors see that. Investors see that. They see Spurs as being at that level. All at what feels a juncture point in football history with the all-consuming growth of the super clubs.

You only have to look at Atletico Madrid for precedent, meanwhile, not least because they share so many parallels with Tottenham right down to charismatic modern Argentine managers. Although shock Spanish league winners in 2013/14, they were still considered mere upstarts when they got to the Champions League final in Lisbon that year. And upstarts they genuinely were, as they did all that with a revenue of just €120m. They may not have been able to make it a historic double, as they lost the final to their great rivals in Real Madrid, but it helped them make massive strides as a club. It transformed them as a club. Their official revenue has since then trebled, and they are considered one of the continent’s super clubs.

Tottenham can now aim for a similar effect. This is the platform they now have. This is “the effect of being in the final”, as Pochettino himself puts it.

Spurs now know a Super League cannot happen without them (PA)

That he has got them there with such resourcefulness, with so many injuries, with such a stretched squad, only emphasises the point. It similarly only reinforces his point about the domestic cups. He has stretched everything to put them in reach of this stage, and they have - just about - grabbed it.

This is the rationale behind the emotion, after that semi-final win over Ajax. It’s a new chapter for the club, one that gives them new scope.

“Our responsibility is to create a project again, to engage everything, to be realistic and try to achieve something important for the club,” he said.

It might not have been possible had Pochettino listened to some very old-fashioned arguments.

It might make greater things even more possible if they go and win it. Just getting there has already won an argument, though, and a new place in the game.