By the end of this season, it’ll be 30 years that Mauricio Pochettino has been going at it with Pep Guardiola on and off. From Espanyol to Chelsea, from Barcelona to Manchester City.
Captains on opposing sides in Catalonia. Then ‘the Harry Kane team’. Then the VAR-affected Champions League quarter final. There is a steady stream of scrapes between the two of them.
Pochettino was always a Jose Mourinho acolyte, bonding over their mutual dislike of Barca. But unlike Mourinho, this relationship with Guardiola has always simmered rather than boiled over.