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Pochettino: I'm the head coach, not the manager.

Pochettino dropped a massive bomb on the football world with this super hot take.

Mauricio Head Coachettino gestures his massive disappointment with his limited role at Spurs.
Mauricio Head Coachettino gestures his massive disappointment with his limited role at Spurs.
Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

In a recent interview, Harry Kane said that responsibility for recent poor results should be with the players and not the manager. When asked about this statement so that the news media could appropriately apportion blame for the disaster zone that is Tottenham Hotspur, Mauricio Pochettino gave an answer that sent shockwaves rippling through the football universe.

"They don't have a manager, they have a head coach. I am a head coach."

BOOM!

"I think it's very different," he said. "If you are the manager, you decide many things about the club. But if you are a head coach, your responsibility is to play better and try to improve the players and to get positive results.

"The head coach is not the same as the manager. If not, why am I not [called] the manager? I am the head coach. In Southampton, I was a manager. My responsibility was not only to coach the team. Here I am a head coach - a head coach is head of your department. My department is to train the team."

Surely this means he is super dissatisfied with his role at the club and he is waging clandestine war against Baldini, Levy, and Chirpy behind the scenes in a power struggle over the soul of the club, right? Pochettino was pressed to elaborate on the important and critical differences between a head coach and manager. But instead, in a move that disappointed journalists everywhere, he didn't.

"I don't want to speak about the past," he said. "We need to improve in our structure. My responsibility is to get positive results in the future and the next few games. This is my job now.

"What needs to improve in the structure? Maybe this question is not for me. My idea is always to try to improve. Nothing is perfect - always we need to improve."

So there you have it. Spurs Manager Head Coach Mauricio Pochettino is here to get positive results and improve.

At worst, this rambling about being a head coach is probably something getting lost in translation as a man recently shorn of his translator struggles to find the right words in an unfamiliar language.

At best, Pochettino just did a baffling bit of misdirection to avoid the blame game that everyone seems so eager to play. He ducked out of answering a stupid question and didn't have to throw his players under the bus or fall on his own sword.

Some people are probably going to try and hold this up to support some narrative of backroom unrest. Look how unhappy Pochettino is! He doesn't have the control he needs! Those people are idiots. Do not listen to them.