Mauricio Pochettino landing at Chelsea carries an irresistible sense of jeopardy

“E very week I am fired,” complained Mauricio Pochettino last June, a few weeks before Paris Saint-Germain fired him. “I like Manchester City, because they gave Guardiola the opportunity to build. They gave him time. At PSG, you also need that. By giving serenity to this project, we will be close to winning the Champions League.”

Serenity. Yes. Well, good luck with that. One of the fundamentals of coaching is that vacancies rarely turn up at clubs where everything is running smoothly. Yet even allowing for this, Pochettino’s appointment at Chelsea carries its own irresistible quantum of jeopardy. A coach who craves order and control, colliding head-on with an organisation that has spent two decades running on the fumes of chaos. A coach who values a tight-knit environment and close personal relationships, entering a club that has spent the last year trying to sign every professional footballer in the northern hemisphere. For better or worse, something is going to break here.

The broad brushstrokes of this deal make eminent sense. Chelsea are a big club in need of an elite coach; Pochettino is an elite coach in need of a big club. This is why all those rumours of a return to Tottenham Hotspur seemed to be grounded more in fantasy than reality. Pochettino has made no secret of his desire to coach the biggest players on the biggest stages. Real Madrid and Manchester United have been actively courted in recent years. Why willingly take a step down to coach Oliver Skipp?

For Pochettino, Chelsea is about as perfect a job as he could have expected to get right now: a richly talented squad and an almost unlimited transfer budget with no immediate pressure to win anything. Even a top-six finish could be spun as progress from