As Tottenham Hotspur close in on Roberto De Zerbi, whose appointment is coming any minute now, fans are left wondering how long it will be until they have a chance at seeing Mauricio Pochettino back in the dugout again. And the cynics in the fan base - and with this club, the cynics have usually been spot on - will say that it shouldn't be too long until De Zerbi blows it all up again.
Pochettino is the clear frontrunner in the eyes of the fans as the best manager to take over for the disaster that Thomas Frank brought to Tottenham during the 2025/26 season, which Igor Tudor was unsurprisingly able to fix in a few weeks.
But the management team of Johan Lange and Vinai Venkatesham has been bamboozled by the charismatic De Zerbi, whose intentions of winning and love for the game easily shroud a volatile attitude that is quick to turn the minute things don't go the way he wants.
Tottenham didn't even try
Pochettino, meanwhile, is a level headed, almost saintly figure whom many Tottenham Hotspur supporters feel was wronged and should have never been fired in 2019. Well, it looks like Spurs have wronged him again by choosing Roberto De Zerbi over him.
Worse yet, Mauricio Pochettino has told reporters that Tottenham have never actually reached out to him at any point in this process. He said, via The Spurs Watch, “No one has approached me, but who knows what is going to happen."
You can feel the pain behind that quote. While Pochettino obviously cannot coach Tottenham immediately and drop everything and leave the United States before the World Cup, nor can he coach both teams at the same time, it is unfathomable that Lange and Vinai would not even make an approach or discuss what having Poch back would look like.
No, they have instead only gone after De Zerbi with laser focus, not even realizing that Pochettino's worst seasons as a manager have been better than De Zerbi's best seasons. They have fallen for the empty charisma and "ideas", which, while clever, have not yielded the level of success that Poch brought as someone who literally competed for Premier League and Champions League titles.
Maybe it won't be long until Tottenham are going back for Pochettino again, but it is telling that the judge of character of Lange and Vinai was to throw a ton of money at a guy who had to be convinced to join Spurs over a guy whom the fans loved that was willing to join Spurs regardless of their status as a Premier League side in 2026/27.