Prioritisation is one of the most important skills a football manager can have. The ability to know when to use his resources and balance risk against reward often defines a manager’s career. It can, in some cases, cost people their jobs – should their decisions bring about undesirable consequences.
We are seeing a change in such standards in the Premier League. Where the league was once a means to more glamorous, Champions League ends, we are now witnessing Premier League teams focussing primarily on glories domestically. Such glories are, paradoxically, focussed on qualifying for the Champions League, rather than succeeding in the competition.
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The financial benefits are an obvious calling towards Champions League qualification, but monetary reward is more significant for qualification than for progressing into the latter stages. Finishing in the top four has become a higher priority than actually threatening to win any competition, or reach the knockout rounds of the Champions League.
It may make little sense to the older generations, but the closer that football becomes to business, the more pragmatically clubs must think. Ensuring greater financial security supersedes lifting a trophy or making it to the Champions League semi-finals. As a result, managers are judged on their ability to keep a club afloat as much as they are at delivering the all-important silverware.
Tottenham Hotspur and Mauricio Pochettino are the latest team to show such desires. With Champions League qualification unlikely, Pochettino rested players for their game away at Monaco in midweek. This was surely due to the upcoming fixture against fellow title challengers, Chelsea. Tottenham are only a point outside the top four currently and four off the Premier League summit, perhaps justifying the decision to pool his resources domestically.
It did, however, cause quite a stir. It implies that Pochettino was primarily focussed on earning qualification to the Champions League. Some will see it as the ultimate pragmatism, but there are many that will think this is the sign of a club who are unsure what their aims are. After all, what is the point in qualifying for a competition if you are not going to throw all you can at progression?
Most fittingly of all, Spurs now face a Chelsea side who are experiencing a rare year without European football. Without the long midweek trips and squad management challenges, the Blues are flourishing under Antonio Conte and look a fresher unit. Where the Europa League was once the curse used as a permanent excuse for Spurs’ failure to reach the top four, the tables have been turned. Foolishly, though, Spurs’ Champions League collapse means that they will – yet again – be competing in the Europa League after Christmas. Probably.
Mindsets change in football all the time. Just as international football was once the pinnacle of the game, domestic football (in England at least) has become so lucrative that clubs will see a top four spot to be the most relevant of anything they could achieve. Spurs, who are in the process of building a new stadium, need the financial security that regular Champions League qualification brings more than they need a run in the competition.
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