Chicken Lovers

LONDON — Mauricio Pochettino, born in Argentina 10 years before the Falklands War reshaped his country, now works as a coach helping to shape Tottenham Hotspur and the English national team.

If there was one trait that characterized England’s comeback win against world champion Germany in Berlin on Saturday, it was the relentless spirit as the English refused to accept defeat after going down two goals.

Relentlessness, along with the energy needed to pursue it, are the hallmarks of Pochettino soccer.

He learned it as a boy, joining Newell’s Old Boys in Rosario in central Argentina when he was 14. Pochettino was the product of an unusual coach, Marcelo Bielsa, whose nickname, El Loco, comes from the sheer intensity he imbues in everyone and everything in his care. He would be a Vince Lombardi, the legendary American football coach, but a quieter one, as far as the media is concerned.

Pochettino, 44, seems to be similarly driven. As a defender, he gave his all. The bulk of his career was spent at Espanyol, the relatively struggling neighbor of F.C. Barcelona. It was a surprise to many when Pochettino was hired to coach Southampton, the Premier League club on England’s south coast, in 2013.

The Argentine seemingly could speak barely a word of English when he arrived at the English maritime city. His postgame interviews all came via an interpreter, though you could tell that he understood the questions and appeared to be using translation as a way of buying time to compose his answers.

It was not the same on his training fields. “We all soon knew that you needed two hearts to play the Pochettino way,” said Jack Cork, one of the Southampton players when the Argentine arrived.

Cork, who now plays for Swansea City, is not yet a member of England’s national team. But it seems that every other Englishman who played under Pochettino at Southampton — or at Tottenham, where the coach moved in 2014 — has graduated to the national team.

The lineup Saturday in Berlin featured four Spurs players: striker Harry Kane; playmaker Dele Alli; left back Danny Rose; and Eric Dier, who is being converted by Pochettino from a central defender into the holding midfield role he played for England last week.

Two other starters in Berlin — forward Adam Lallana and right back Nathaniel Clyne — were Southampton players under Pochettino before Liverpool purchased them.

And to complete the picture, four other players from Pochettino’s short but evidently enlightening run with Southampton have also recently played for the English national team. One might almost ask if Roy Hodgson, the England head coach, is really Pochettino in disguise.

That remark is disingenuous to the 68-year-old Hodgson, who has been coaching since 1971 and has changed his style to suit the talents at the many clubs and national teams he has coached.

Hodgson’s England team is playing the fast, intense and athletic soccer that has characterized Pochettino’s teams at Southampton and Spurs. The Tottenham team has youth and great speed. It can defend as well as any team in the Premier League and has conceded just 24 goals in 31 games so far, better than anyone.

But that isn’t how one primarily thinks of Spurs. Thanks in no small measure to Kane and Alli, it counterattacks at high speed and with high energy. Its defense is secured by Hugo Lloris, the French goalkeeper whom Pochettino identified as his leader from the start, and it is underpinned by the big Belgian center back, Toby Alderweireld, the former Atlético Madrid player who joined Southampton in 2014 before heading to Tottenham.

Pochettino is a coach who looks for trust. He uses the term that a lot of modern managers do — “a project” — when he refers to building a foundation based on fitness, team play and attacking from a position of security.

Osvaldo Ardiles, the midfield orchestrator of Argentina’s team that won the 1978 World Cup, played for Spurs after that tournament. Ardiles went on to be less than successful as Tottenham’s coach, but he remains close to the club and has observed how Pochettino, a fellow Argentine, is always first at the training grounds and usually the last to leave.

Pochettino saw everything from the back as a player, primarily as a defender who admired the creative talents in front of him. He did that first at Newell’s, then Espanyol, then for a few clubs in France before returning to and retiring with Espanyol.

Early in his managerial career with Espanyol, Pochettino had to cope with the shocking loss of his team’s captain, Daniel Jarque, and help his players deal with it. Jarque died in 2009 of a heart disease that nobody knew he had, alone in his room during Espanyol’s preseason training in Florence, Italy.

There are two ways to remember Jarque: One is to make fitness a top priority, and the other is to make sure, that as a coach or player, the team is more than the sum of its parts. Both are evident at Pochettino’s teams.

Pochettino’s formative years came at a club formed in Argentina by an English academic, Isaac Newell, in 1903. The pupil of that club is becoming something of a teacher in England now.