Football was Mauricio Pochettino’s life growing up in Murphy, a small town in the Santa Fe province of Argentina.
“Even as a small boy I always remember playing football with my family,” he recalled of those days in the 1970s. “Football was very important to me, it meant a lot.
“It was my only toy, a football, and in my head it was always ‘play football, play football, play football’. I played all the time, everywhere.”
It’s no surprise then that the 1978 World Cup, hosted by Argentina, made such an impact on the young Mauricio.