Tottenham Hotspur went on an incredible journey with Mauricio Pochettino last season in the Champions League, although it was one that ended in heartbreak.
After scraping through their group in Europe, edging out Inter Milan, Spurs blitzed past Borussia Dortmund, beating them both home and away in the round of 16.
In the quarter-finals, Spurs came up against Man City in a Champions League thriller, eventually defeating the reigning Premier League Champions across two legs.
Tottenham then came from 3-0 down on aggregate with just 45 minutes left away to Ajax in Amsterdam, as Lucas Moura bagged a second-half hat-trick to send Spurs to Madrid.
In the final, the Lilywhites came up against high-flying Liverpool, who had also made and lost the same fixture in 2018. This time, Jurgen Klopp’s side came out on top and the Tottenham dream was over. Within the next six months, Pochettino was sacked.
The Argentine has now revealed where his head was at after that final loss (High Performance Podcast – via Daily Mail): “Monday [after the Final], I was thinking to build again, because when you are so competitive and you are a winner, you are not stuck in the past. You lose, but you want to win again tomorrow.
“I wasn’t knocked because we didn’t win the Final, we wanted to take a massive experience for us, learn and be ready again for the next season. We were fighting for the top four at the same time we were fighting to be in the Champions League Final.
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“If you lift the trophy, you are very successful. But the second [place] is a failure, no? We are not thinking like this but, of course, that makes you sad.
“Of course, people recognise the job was fantastic, but to finish winning the Champions League would have been amazing.”
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