Champions League final 2019: Mauricio Pochettino admits it will be ‘painful’ to leave out Tottenham players

The Tottenham manager must decide who to pick up front, most likely two from Spurs’ player-of-the-season Son Heung-min, semi-final hero Lucas Moura and the recovering Harry Kane

Mauricio Pochettino has admitted that it will be “painful” to resolve the dilemma of which players he has to leave out of the Champions League final against Liverpool on Saturday evening.

The Tottenham manager must decide who to pick up front, most likely two from Spurs’ player-of-the-season Son Heung-min, semi-final hero Lucas Moura and the recovering Harry Kane. Kane has not played in almost two months after an ankle injury sustained in the quarter-final. He believes himself to be fit but Pochettino will take the final decision tomorrow.

Pochettino did not want to be drawn on the details of the decision but did say how “difficult” it was to leave players out of the final. And said that he will make sure he has his whole squad photographed together on the pitch, so that they all feel part of the team regardless of who he picks up front.

“It’s not going to be easy to take a decision tomorrow,” Pochettino said. “But it was difficult the last game we played, the semi-final, the quarter-final, the last-16. Every single game you need to take a decision. Tomorrow is going to be another decision. And a decision, for sure, we will have all the information, we know every single detail, and we are going to take the decision to win. Like always in football, it is so painful. When this kind of game arrives, and you can only use from the beginning 11 players, it is the most painful situation.”

This is why Pochettino wants a photo with the whole squad. “I proposed a few weeks ago to try to get the whole squad to make a picture together. And I think Uefa listened. Tomorrow both teams are going to have the possibility that the whole squad can be on the pitch before the game to take a picture.”

Pochettino hopes this can send a positive message about football. “When we talk about [the game], the values, we know many things have happened in England, bad things, a lot of problems. Maybe we can show 1 billion people that the value of football is there. Tomorrow we can show the togetherness, the values that football translates to people. We can show one value: football is a collective sport. All 25 players are so important. They are going to be so important, because the energy they are going to translate in the changing room of the players who are not playing is going to be decisive.”