Mauricio Pochettino has claimed Heung-min Son would no longer be at Tottenham if the club had not allowed him to play in the Asian Games last season.

Son earned precious exemption from South Korea’s mandatory 21-month military service after captaining his country to the gold medal in the 2018 tournament in Indonesia.

The Asian Games are not part of Fifa’s official calendar, so Spurs had to agree to release Son — who had recently signed a new long-term contract — and he missed three matches at the start of last season, before being absent for another chunk in January at the Asian Cup.

Pochettino, who was sacked by the club in November, believes he deserves more credit for releasing Son and saving his Spurs career.

“With Harry Kane injured, Son not playing the first few months because of the Asian Games, no one talks about that,” Pochettino told the High Performance Podcast.

“Today, Sonny is at Tottenham because we allowed him to go and play two competitions that weren’t compulsory, not being selfish and saying, ‘No, Sonny needs to stay here’.

"Because of the club. If not, two years and you need to stop the contract with Son.

“No one says anything about that. It was our decision to provide him the time to go.”

Tottenham’s League form continued to nosedive at the start of this season, following their defeat to Liverpool in the Champions League Final last June.

Pochettino was eventually replaced by Jose Mourinho, but claims he remained focused on the job after the crushing loss in Madrid.

“Monday [after the Final], I was thinking to build again, because when you are so competitive and you are a winner, you are not stuck in the past,” he added. “You lose, but you want to win again tomorrow.

“I wasn’t knocked because we didn’t win the Final, we wanted to take a massive experience for us, learn and be ready again for the next season. We were fighting for the top four at the same time we were fighting to be in the Champions League Final.

“If you lift the trophy, you are very successful. But the second [place] is a failure, no? We are not thinking like this but, of course, that makes you sad.

“Of course people recognise the job was fantastic, but to finish winning the Champions League would have been amazing.”