Pochettino’s assistant Jesus Perez insists both will return to Tottenham in the future

Martin Macdonald

• Updated: 19 May 2021 15:43 BST
• 3 min read

Jesus Perez, the assistant to Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham and now at Paris Saint-Germain, has claimed that both men will return to the Premier League with Spurs at some point.

Despite reaching the Champions League final the season before, Pochettino and his staff were sacked by chairman Daniel Levy in November of 2019 following a poor start to the Premier League campaign.

Even though the departure seemed slightly acrimonious at the time, Perez says there was nothing but respect between Levy and Pochettino, and that he and the PSG head coach plan on coaching in North London again.

“Every day Daniel crossed to Mauricio’s office and he joined us on the topic we were discussing,” Perez revealed to The Evening Standard.

“Then most of the time we had breakfast with him and lunch at the training ground. We, as a staff, never started lunch until Mauricio or Daniel was at the table. That’s something we always respected.

“Mauricio and Daniel still text each other and they have a very good relationship. We don’t have any bad feelings with Daniel. The other way around. It was a professional decision.

“At some point, we had to split but we will be back at Spurs for sure.”

Why did Pochettino leave Tottenham?

When Pochettino left Tottenham, they were 14th in the table and looked a shell of their former selves who performed so well to reach the Champions League final just a few months previous.

However, there were issues off the pitch for the Argentine, too, as Perez believes his boss and Levy eventually had contrasting visions about what the club needed at that time, with money tight following the construction of a state-of-the-art new stadium and training facilities.

“At some point, as everyone knows, visions were different,” Perez continued.

“The circumstances of the club, they couldn’t please what the team needed or the manager needed to keep progressing. Because of the training centre and then the stadium.

“To keep that level and keep progressing and build a stadium, probably it was impossible.”

Pochettino was subsequently replaced by Jose Mourinho, and after a period out of the game, returned to management as head coach of Paris Saint-Germain after the Ligue 1 giants parted ways with Thomas Tuchel.