Mauricio Pochettino has opened up on being scouted by Leeds United manager Marcelo Bielsa as a teenager.
The Tottenham manager was picked up for local team Newell’s Old Boys back in Argentina when he was 13, and it was Bielsa who went above and beyond to ensure that he ended up at the club, and got his shot in the professional game.
Speaking to BBC Sport, Pochettino explained how.
He said: “It’s an unbelievable thing that happened.
“When I was 13, Marcelo Bielsa knocked on my door at one or two o’clock in the morning. Of course my Mum and Dad were a bit scared.
“Marcelo asked if he could see the boy and they said ‘of course’. My Mum pulled out the blanket and Marcelo said ‘what legs! They’re the legs of a footballer’.”
OPINION
Bielsa has clearly got an eye for talent, and the fact that he has scouted a 13-year-old, brought him through the ranks, seen him have a full senior career, and is now his peer in the English game as a fantastic manager in his own right, is testament to just how long he has been in the game. Bielsa has forgotten more about football than the rest of have even known, and it’s interesting to hear that he acts on such an instinctual manner. That show you a man who isn’t just a scholar of that game, but who feels the game and understands it on a level that most of us can only aspire to. Bielsa is one of the great footballing minds of his generation, and Leeds should be delighted that they have him at the helm at Elland Road. If he can take them back up to the promised land of Premier League football, then even better.