Former Tottenham Hotspur academy graduate Ryan Mason has lifted the lid on what makes his old manager special.
Supporters, pundits and even rival fans are fast running out of superlatives to describe Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino and the job he has done in North London.
The former Southampton boss has turned Tottenham into one of the strongest and slickest teams in Europe.
But he has achieved the feat without spending gratuitous amounts of money on players, preferring instead to nurture homegrown talent and find rough diamonds he can sculpt into stars for club and country.
Gareth Southgate recently described Pochettino as ‘England’s secret weapon’ while others have compared him to legendary Manchester United figurehead Sir Alex Ferguson.
But a story told by former Spurs and now Hull City midfielder Ryan Mason on Sky Sports show The Debate proves just what makes ‘Poch’ special.
“I think if you look at what he’s done with the whole Tottenham squad, the amount of players he’s brought through the system, he’s obviously helped me to come through and play in the Premier League,” Mason told The Debate.
“The way he gives trust in his players and the freedom to go out there and express yourself really.
“I can’t speak highly enough of him, there was a point in my second season when he invited me around for dinner with my fiancé and his wife and I went around to his house and we had dinner, his two sons were there and we were just speaking as friends really and it’s that friendship and the connection he builds up away from football I think (is what sets him apart).
“Obviously tactically he knows what he wants from his team, he demands absolutely everything from every session but away from that you can really connect with him as a person and as a human being and I think that’s why they’ve had so much success.”
It is not often you hear of managers having their players over for dinner on a one-to-one basis.
And Mason was not even one of Tottenham’s key stars which in itself was a big statement from Pochettino.
Stories like this make it easy to see why Spurs players work so hard for their inspirational manager.
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