London is Blue Dispatch #020

On a cold evening in 1893, the entire village of Champaner has gathered at the temple, heads bowed, spirits broken. After the year’s monsoons had failed and the British Empire continued to demand tax, the beleaguered villagers had agreed to a do-or-die wager – a game of cricket between the British Indian Army and the villagers. If the villagers won, no tax had to be paid for three years. If they lost, however, they would have to stump up three times the tax in a single year, in the middle of a crippling drought.

The scene at the temple unfolds on the eve of the final day, with the village facing certain defeat. In tears, the whole gathering breaks into a hymn, pleading for a divine miracle to save them from certain death.

As an eight-year old, I remember watching the movie teary-eyed in a single-screen theatre in Bangalore packed to the rafters. Lagaan (Tax), the movie in question, was the first blockbuster Bollywood film of this millennium. It captured the country’s imagination, playing the strings of the Indian heart like a harp – Cricket, God and a team of Hindus, Muslims, a Sikh, a Sufi, an Untouchable uniting and turning the odds against The Great empire.

Eight years after that film, a young, untested Argentinean manager faced a quite damning sporting endeavour. His team, Espanyol, were bottom of La Liga with 22 points with ten games left. Yet, when plunged into the mire, Mauricio Pochettino did something similar – he asked his wife and assistant coach to accompany him on a 12 km hike up Montserrat, to the shrine of La Morenata, the black virgin, a statuette associated with miracles. Poch’s pilgrimage led to an astonishing turnaround in fortunes, with Espanyol beating one of the greatest teams of modern times – Pep’s 2009 Barcelona – before assuring their safety after a string of key results.

Chaos and Guardiola are two forces Pochettino knows very well. You come up against either, and it is very hard to predict what exactly you’re going to get. “There are teams that wait for you, and teams that look for you. Espanyol look for you. I feel very close to their style of football,” Pep said about Pochettino’s team more than 12 years ago.

The first time they faced each other was Pochettino’s first game as a manager, a Copa Del Rey quarterfinal. On their way to a historic treble in Guardiola’s first season, Barcelona would fail to score only four times in all competitions. The 0-0 draw that evening was one of the four. Barcelona, boasting Iniesta, Puyol, Marquez, Busquets, Gudjohnsen and Bojan, brought on Messi and Xavi but came away rattled. Espanyol took a shot on target 15 seconds after kick-off; their aggressive, fearless pressing would become a hallmark of Poch’s management style.

Years later, in another quarterfinal, this time in the Champions League, Poch’s Spurs had a one goal lead to protect at the Etihad. Missing talisman Harry Kane, Poch went with Son and Moura up top in a 4-4-2 diamond, a compact, narrow approach that looked to force City wide, limit space for De Bruyne, Gundogan and Silva centrally and defend the box against wide deliveries with a rock solid Vertonghen-Alderweireld duo. Seem familiar?

Just like on Sunday, it was City who scored first, thanks to Raheem Sterling. But instead of withering under City’s cranked up pressure, Spurs stuck to Poch’s instructions. They stayed compact, pressed hard and forced City into an error. And just like on Sunday, Poch’s team fired back twice, going up 2-1 in the tenth minute.

Poch’s plan, however, wasn’t quite working. The diamond was too narrow at times and allowed City to overload the flanks with Sterling, at the peak of his powers, and Bernardo Silva. Both would score within the first eleven minutes. But as if aided by the celestial, City saw a Llorente goal allowed by a referee despite VAR asking him to take a look at the touchline monitor for a clear handball, and a stoppage time hattrick winner from Sterling was ruled out, taking Spurs into the semis, where they would pull out another miraculous escape from the jaws of certain defeat.

This past Sunday’s confrontation was no different to how duels between the two titans have played out. Pep’s team came to breathe fire, and Poch’s teams came prepared to be burnt and to rise from the ashes. Both managers overloaded the centre and killed space; Michael Cox wrote in The Athletic that this was a game without a single throughball played between them. Poch offered the channels up to Pep again, this time thanking his stars that Raheem Sterling was playing on his side, and that he had Reece James to guard against Jeremy Doku. Unwavering faith in his plan, even though it hadn’t worked vs City and Pep before.

It may have been easier to retreat into a mid-block immediately, sink into a back five and play on the counter – things that worked well for Wolves and even at Spurs, in the big games. But Poch did not take that route. This was the underdog snapping at the heels of the wolf, pressing and chasing tirelessly across the pitch. Nana korobi ya oki, or fall down seven times, stand up eight – 1-0 down, 3-2 down, 4-3 down in stoppage time. It did not matter. It was all about getting back up. After seven goals in his first seven games, there were now eight against two teams that were on top of the table. No divine interventions were needed here.

At the end of Lagaan, when the villagers pull off the unthinkable and win the game, the heavens thunder and rain soaks the parched earth. Eight-year-old me danced with jubilation with an entire movie theatre full of strangers when it happened. The City game, played in pouring rain, certainly felt close to that – the end of a drought, the beginning of a brave new world.