Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino believes that the crowd should get to see the players that they paid to see. Sports is an entertainment product after all, and the fans should expect to be entertained by the best players on the team that they came to see.
At least that’s the argument Pochettino made, as a counter to the idea that he was pouring it on Tranmere Rovers during Spurs’ 7-0 win in the third round of the FA Cup. Pochettino subbed Harry Kane on to face the minnows from League Two (the fourth tier of English football) while his side was up 6-0 and had just 15 minutes left to play.
“It was respect,” Pochettino told his post match news conference. “Respect the people, respect the opponent. They’re not going to have many chances to see Harry Kane play here in a competition like the FA Cup.”
Kane scored the seventh goal and while some may say this was paradigmatic of pouring it on, the Argentine has a very good point. The winner of past Golden Boot awards is the face of the England National Team and Tottenham Hotspur. A hero both domestically and internationally, fans in League Two just don’t have the opportunity to see players like him very often.
Pochettino has played Kane very extensively this season, so this was the kind of match in which his talisman could have easily sat out and gotten a nice rest.
However, Pochettino had “different reasons” to play him.
“For different reasons I decided to make a change and put Kane on the pitch but one of them is that it’s important to show respect to the people here so they could see Harry Kane, who is an icon in English football,” Pochettino continued.
“It is difficult in that division to see it. It was important to see him in action.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, regularly appears as a guest pundit on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
He also contributes sociopolitical essays to Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. The content of his cat’s Instagram account is unquestionably superior to his.