Mauricio Pochettino is basically Jurgen Klopp, in a bad way

Mauricio Pochettino’s decline at Tottenham is starting to eerily resemble Jurgen Klopp’s final days at Dortmund.

It was impossible to avoid the sense of resignation as Mauricio Pochettino stood, arms folded, brow furrowed, on the touchline, watching his Tottenham Hotspur side crumble and fall so catastrophically to a rampant Bayern Munich team. His facial expression, or lack thereof, gave away an inner sentiment that can no longer be asked.

Pochettino has been in a prickly mood for a while. The Argentine might have led Spurs to the Champions League final last season, but he also admitted to harboring the “worst feeling” of his time at the club. He complained almost weekly about a lack of investment in the squad and what he perceives to be a lack of commitment to winning the biggest honors in the sport.

Spurs were expected to overhaul their squad during the summer, but that never quite materialized. Giovani Lo Celso, Tanguy Ndombele and Ryan Sessegnon were signed, but Pochettino’s team remains grossly unbalanced. Armed with the smallest budget of the Premier League’s so-called ‘Big Six,’ Pochettino might just have run out of ammunition.

Spurs in their modern form have been molded by Pochettino. Think back to the days of Tim Sherwood and White Hart Lane; the Argentine has carried the North London club into another era of their existence. But there is a growing feeling that Pochettino has taken Tottenham as far as he can. That what we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for him at the club.

It’s somewhat evocative of Jurgen Klopp’s final days as Borussia Dortmund manager. Just like Pochettino has done with Tottenham, Klopp molded Dortmund in his own identity during seven hugely successful years there. As a team, they became reflective of him as a character and a coach. The two could barely be separated from each other.

But it became clear over the early part of the 2014/15 season that Klopp and Dortmund had reached the end of a cycle. The German subsequently announced in April that he would leave the Westfalenstadion at the end of the campaign, taking over at Liverpool in October of the same year. Of course, Klopp’s development since then has been well documented.

Despite recent struggles, Pochettino hasn’t all-of-a-sudden become a bad coach. It’s just that he needs invigorating and more often than not that sort of stimulation comes from a fresh challenge. Spurs, restricted by their constricting wage structure and transfer budget, are unlikely to give him that. Pochettino, a fiercely ambitious figure, faces a career crossroads.

One mustn’t forget what Pochettino has achieved at Tottenham. When he arrived, they were banging their head against the glass ceiling of the Premier League’s top four. This season is now the fourth straight season Spurs have played in the Champions League. Under Pochettino, they have become permanent fixtures at the top end of the Premier League, even challenging for the title on a couple of occasions.

Ironically, having broken through one glass ceiling Pochettino might now be finished by his inability to smash through another. The run to last season’s Champions League final was billed as a symbolic establishment of Tottenham as a bona fide member of the elite. In retrospect, it was a cruel tease of how far they have still got to go to become that. They are so close and yet so far. This has seemingly dawned on Pochettino over the past few weeks and months.

Manchester United and Real Madrid are possible landing destinations for Pochettino, with both having previously considered the Argentine as a managerial candidate. Like Klopp making the leap from Dortmund to Liverpool, Pochettino might need to risk everything he has built to build something even greater. His Tottenham project may have topped out.