Mauricio Pochettino has dismissed suggestions he advocated diving with comments he made earlier this week.
Following Tottenham’s 2-2 draw – during which Dele Alli was booked for simulation – Pochettino said football is about trying to “trick your opponent.”
On Thursday, he told reporters his words had been twisted.
“I am honest, always. And I gave you what I think, I feel,” said Pochettino. (Quotes via Sky Sports.)
“In 2002 my vision about English football – you [the media] laugh, because you know what I will say – I didn’t touch Michael Owen [at the World Cup] and he dived.
“But today we are so sensitive about details and sometimes it is difficult for me, because when you are honest and you try to explain the things – and my language is not English – it is hard to be right in my words.
“I don’t like it when people twist my words, always my intention is to keep the sense of football. That is why I said a few days ago that I love football, because football for me means to be creative.
“Don’t feel the limits to try to – not cheat – but trick the opponent in a good way. That is how I feel about football. I am not going to change, that is my opinion.”
I’ve been present at one of Mauricio’s interviews, and the sense he gives is of being absolutely sincere. When Wenger says “I didn’t see that”, i think he means “I don’t want to have to answer your question”; when Pochettino says that, he means: “I didn’t see that”.
I daresay you believed Tony Blair on the Iraq ‘dodgy dossier’ and Obama on Guantanamo Bay as well! Unless Pochettino’s English is so poor even after six years that he should go back to speaking through an interpreter, he unequivocally said that diving is just another football skill, that people applauded it twenty or thirty years ago, and that ‘tricking’ the referee is no different from tricking an opponent. The original Tommy Harmer was before my time, but was he a diver by any chance?
You’re clearly as ignorant about Spurs past as you are about Spurs present. Try looking him up on the internet; I.m not about to provide you with a much-needed education, chum(p).
Thanks for the thoughtful and well-meant advice – I knew that Harmer was considered too small to hold down a regular first-team spot at Spurs, and that he played a few games for Chelsea at the end of his career, but I didn’t know he was a penalty taking specialist – presumably you just love penalties, however questionably obtained (but I wonder if you’ll feel quite the same if Arsenal give us a taste of Pochettino’s own medicine – cheating – tomorrow).
Football is not about diving is about fair play