Mauricio Pochettino made ex-Chelsea star want to 'smash everything up'

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Malang Sarr has accused Mauricio Pochettino of 'lying' when the former Chelsea head coach responded 'who?' after the defender was brought up by reporters during his time at Stamford Bridge.

Sarr, 27, left the Blues in the summer of 2024 to join RC Lens. He arrived at Chelsea as a highly-rated prospect and was one of a number of young players who spent time away from the club on loan.

Pochettino was in charge of Chelsea for the 2023-24 campaign and seemed to lose track of who Sarr was when he was asked about the central defender and Jamie Cummings back in August 2023.

But Sarr has now hit back, saying Pochettino knew exactly who he was - and that he'd even greeted him in the days following his arrival as Chelsea boss.

Sarr told the YouTube channel Kampo : “I felt like smashing everything up when he said that because I know what’s going on behind my back, you know. He’s doing it on purpose. I know he knows me. It’s impossible he didn’t know me. But okay.

“He watches football, he’s the coach, you know all the players. But even beyond that, he was in the Premier League already with Tottenham . That means he didn’t watch any Tottenham games the year before, I played against them.

Sarr then went on to reveal that Pochettino, now the head coach of the United States national team, even tried to sign him for Tottenham back in 2019, claiming that he even held talks with his agent in London.

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He added: “Let me go even further, 2019, he bought my agent to London to convince me to sign for Tottenham.

“I’m coming back from Monaco, from my loan, prematurely, because I’m having surgery. When he arrived at Chelsea, he gave me the tour while everyone was on vacation.

“He called his assistant, who spoke Spanish, and said, 'Look who’s here, we tried to sign him at Tottenham, and now we are working together here!'”

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