Paul Childs/Action Images, via Reuters
In the long, slow weeks before last season’s Champions League final, Tottenham Manager Mauricio Pochettino did not lose much sleep over his team’s physical state. It was, after all, the end of the season. His players had the miles of nine fierce, relentless months in their legs; their bodies needed a little rest and a little fine-tuning, but that was all.
Instead, he poured all of his energies into sharpening their minds. Pochettino has always held a few — by soccer standards — left-field convictions: his belief in auras; a devoutly held but rarely explained spirituality; his tendency (shared, as it happens, with Pep Guardiola) to have an incense stick burning in his office.