Here, as the afternoon sunshine peeps in through the blinds of the floor-to-ceiling windows, it is Pochettino who chooses to address his confrontation with referee Mike Dean following the final whistle at Turf Moor - which has already publicly apologised for - that led to an improper conduct charge from the FA

The chaotic scenes - the official seemed to say something that incensed the Spurs boss and Perez as they were walking away - was the antithesis to his usual state of tranquilidad - calmness.

“I cannot say that wasn’t me,” Pochettino admits. “It is part of a side that maybe I don’t show often, but inside with my staff, the players or sometimes with my family, my personality is that I am capable to be upset or angry. But I never lose my control.”

In the minutes between the heated exchange - where Pochettino freely accepts he failed to keep his cool - to the post-match TV interview, there was a complete shift. He was composed and handled his media duties with poise, refusing to divulge what Dean had said, not placing the blame for defeat on the officiating, while adding that he had “made a mistake.”

Pochettino and his backroom team have a mantra: When something has happened, it is gone. You can’t change anything about that moment, you can only make it worse. Do not make it worse.

That line of thinking surfaced on Saturday. “In life, it is a massive advantage to have people that can tell you the truth, that care about you and aren’t only going to tell you what you want to hear,” the manager says.

“The people that love you can be so tough with you and this is necessary. They are not there to push you just through the good times, but tell you when you are wrong and not doing the best for your career or your life. You need people that tell you the truth, that give you real advice not just nice words.

“I’m 46 and I feel very blessed to have so many people that are honest with me. [Tottenham’s head of communications] Simon [Felstein], for example, after the game on Saturday sent me a message. He helped me a lot when he described to me the reality that he saw, I realised quickly ‘come on, I need to do what is best for the players, the staff, the club’ here. It was only a message, but I could see from it that he cared about me.

“My responsibility as a manager is bigger than whatever I feel. That must always come first.”

One of Pochettino’s strengths as a leader is trust, loyalty and a willingness to be collaborative rather than dictatorial. D'Agostino, his former defensive partner at Newell’s, has joined him in the technical areas of Espanyol, Southampton and Spurs, where is he is first-team coach.

Jimenez played with 'the gaffer' in Spain and has been part of his staff since 2011, now as goalkeeper coach. Assistant manager, Perez, who was instrumental in convincing Pochettino to move to England, has been a fundamental part of the close-knit team from 2010.

“It’s impossible today to work without the support of people with capacity, quality, who have honesty and loyalty - people you can trust,” the Spurs boss says.

“With all the things a manager has in his hands these days to deal with, you need to be able to delegate to people you know are committed to helping you. This is a 24-hour job, seven days a week. It’s not only about tactics or training sessions, because the evolution of football means we need to be across everything at the club.

“It’s key to have the right people with you, who know you, who accept the role they do next to you, who really enjoy what they do. How you treat them is very important too, to give them the opportunity to have influence. I don’t want people that only follow me, I want people that challenge me and think like leaders.

“They need to be able work well within a team, but also grow as individuals. They have to feel important and have the bravery to take decisions and make a mistake.

“The ultimate decision will always be mine and I am the face to the cameras, but it happens a lot that sometimes it is Jesus’ idea and we translate it together. We like to have different input and it’s never Miki’s decision, or Jesus,’ or Toni’s, or mine - it is a conclusion we reach as a team.

“I arrived with those three, but my staff is Simon, the chef, the doctor, the kitman. It’s 25 football people, but also everyone that works in the canteen and everyone who gives their time to Spurs.

“We’re lucky to have been here five years now and to work with passionate people. If, after all this time, the staff didn’t feel like they were mine or I didn’t feel like they were mine, we’d be doing something very wrong.”

Pochettino rushes to point out, though, that the support structure away from football should never be under-appreciated.

“At Espanyol, after we secured our safety from relegation, we gathered the families of everyone - players and staff - together.

“We recorded a video as a way of saying ‘thank you’, because you cannot achieve anything without the support of the people you love. If I leave the training ground today and I go home and I don’t feel happy or don’t feel like I have a strong foundation, it’s so difficult to do the job well.

“You have to have that support base - not just in football, but for every type of situation. Family and friends are so vital to give you consistency and the capacity to have balance in the good moments and the bad moments. It is crucial that in both moments, you have the right people around you, but also that you remain the same person.”

Hector Pochettino has recalled, more than once, his pride when people relay to him that ‘your son is a great manager, but more than that, he is a great man’.

As one employee at Hotspur Way put it: “He is the boss, yes. But he is a person I can go to when I have a problem: he is a friend, he helps. There is a chant the fans have that goes ‘Mauricio Pochettino, he’s magic you know’, which is true, but even better than that - he is real, he’s genuine.”