For the sake of belief, we should hope that Tottenham Hotspur win the Premier League

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Mauricio Pochettino: The Cocoon of the caterpillars

Do you sometimes just look up at the sky and feel amazed at the fact that we are actually a part of the Universe and are made of the dust from the stars? Everything feels so full of aura, pure passion and love, no room for greed or lust… just transcendence of the highest calibre.

And then, when you look around and see the people, do you feel disgusted at the fact that despite being made out of something so pure, we are actually corrupted from within? That greed has become the core of our being with lust as its twigs, does it sicken you?

Perhaps, it does, but the tragically funny thing is that we ourselves are not any different from our surroundings. We hope, though, we hope for a better place; an abode where the horizon isn’t covered with nebulous fog to deprive our gaze off the radiant rising sun.

We hope that, someday, money won’t be the all-is and all-will-be entity of this world. And for the sake of this very hope, it is absolutely necessary for Tottenham Hotspur to continue challenging for the Premier League title and perhaps also win it.

Parallels with the young Arsene Wenger

It is almost as if the past is meeting the future or vice versa

Now, I know that, by now, you must be assuming that I am a Spurs fan. Let me assure you that I am not. I am, however, a big fan of Mauricio Pochettino. His work with Espanyol left me in awe of the man. At Spurs, however, he is doing something far greater.

Arsene Wenger tried it. And succeeded. And then failed. After years of focusing on developing youth and trying to win something with them, the Frenchman seems to have thrown in the towel this window. And, to be fair, he should have done it a long time ago.

Arsene Wenger’s face might seem like the waning moon in its 10th day, but it wasn’t always like this. The propensity of humans to feel hurt by others is what changed Wenger.

“When Arsene first got here [at Arsenal] he spoke about Lilian Thuram,” quipped Tony Adams, one of his former players. “He had him at Monaco and Thuram was making mistakes and costing him game after game.

“But Arsene worked with him and coached and trained him. Eventually, they sold him for a lot of money, he became a French international and the rest is history.

“But Arsene said: ‘I’ll never do that at Arsenal. I can’t afford these players to cost me anymore.”

While Wenger may have been credited with turning the likes of Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry and Cesc Fabregas into world class players, he hasn’t been able to replicate the same with the more recent batch of youngsters.

Maybe, he really has stopped personally coaching them. Maybe, time has just taken its toll on him. And can you really blame him? Almost every player that he moulded into something special left him at their peaks.

The cocoon of the caterpillars

Harry Kane and Dele Alli - The caterpillars that are now butterflies

With Pochettino however, things feel a little different. He exudes the impression of a young Arsene Wenger – one who is energetic enough to coach his players one-on-one rather than delegating the task to his coaches, like the old and exhausted Arsene Wenger does.

It was Pochettino’s coaching that metamorphosed a talented Dele Alli into a world class player within the mere age of 21. Meanwhile, Harry Kane’s transition from a talented prospect to the best striker in the league was overseen by the Argentine.

The likes of Kyle Walker – who was nothing than a Speedy Gonzales in a Tottenham shirt – Eric Dier and Mousa Dembele have all improved leaps and bounds under his tutelage.

And now, when almost every other club are doing their best Jesse Pinkman-impression of throwing money around the neighbourhood, Pochettino has stayed calm and asked the fans to ooze the same demeanour.

"Our moment will arrive,” Pochettino promises to disgruntled fans. “We are calm because our squad is competitive. We have a plan. We have a very clear idea of what we want. I want to tell our fans 'don't be worried' because we will move in the market."

At this point of time, Pochettino’s idea is clear: he is going to rely on youth while signing players that he deems fit for his system instead of acquiring a superstar with eight-pack abs and a shiny piece of a face just to appease the dismayed fans.

Under his watch, there won’t be any glamorous signings. Instead, the academy players will be moulded into something beautiful. And history gives the former Espanyol boss an advantage.

His much-hyped or big-money signings – the Janssens and the Sissokos – haven’t really hit the ground running. Instead, the carefully selected Allis and Sons that succeeded under him.

Pochettino is like the cocoon inside which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Right now, he has already chosen the caterpillars to sheath inside his cocoon and metamorphose them into butterflies. The likes of Harry Winks and Marcus Edwards are seemingly huge prospects and have been awarded with first-team contracts while Kyle Walker-Peters, who is said to be more talented than his namesake was at that age, is expected to follow suit

However, to think that relying on these kids would suffice is a risk – and the former Saints manager knows that. He will only sign the players that actually improve the quality of the team rather than attempting to make the fans as a badger during mating season with a thoughtless acquisition.

Tottenham have the most balanced squad in England and given that they have lost only Kyle Walker, their team chemistry is still intact and should only be made better by integrating youngsters that are already aware of the ethos of the club.

And for the sake of a better story, we should hope that Spurs challenge for the title and win it while maintaining this approach – for it can make us believe that.money doesn't always come out victorious. In a window such as this, where clubs have gone berserk, we need something like that to stop the madness.

An ember of belief; that is all it takes sometimes to fire up the forest of greed and light up the darkness with its burgeoning radiance.

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