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Jesus Perez is not a man who seeks out the limelight. He never has and never will.

The 47-year-old Spaniard is the person you might not notice at Tottenham Hotspur unless you look closely. If you do, you'll soon realise he's everywhere.

He's out there on the pitch before matches talking the players through their warm-up, then he's in the changing room at half-time showing them video clips and analysis and when Mauricio Pochettino speaks in his press conferences afterwards, Perez is always just out of shot, sitting on the Argentine's left, at the ready in case he's needed.

It's rare that the focus falls on Tottenham's assistant manager.

There was the time when Pochettino accidentally punched him in the face while celebrating a goal in the last north London derby at White Hart Lane. Then there was the moment when the Spurs boss began a press conference by pulling out his mobile phone to play 'Happy Birthday' for his good friend in front of the assembled media.

Perez is happy to be the guy just out of shot. This is his first interview since he arrived in north London in 2014. That's not because he's worried about talking - he's a confident speaker - but he's just a man who is more happy to observe others in the spotlight. That's fundamental to his job.

The first thing that strikes you about Pochettino's right-hand man is his intensity. Perez rarely breaks eye contact as he talks to football.london, his brown eyes lock on their subject. He also provides moments of real warmth and it's these two sides to his coin that make him the perfect middle man between Pochettino and his players.

Victor Wanyama and Ryan Mason have both said the same thing about Perez. He seems to know everything about every player under his watch. He's always there to help but there's also nowhere to hide.

Matt Lovell, who worked for years as a nutritionist at Spurs, once said of Perez: "He's a lovely fella, but he's fierce."

For Tottenham's assistant manager knowledge is power when it comes to helping the players.

"We try to know as much as we can about the players, their internal load, their external load, you know everything and we share it in context because without context it's difficult to help a player," admitted Perez.

"The staff can say this player is fresh, but what if mentally he's tired or he's worried because he had a problem, or there is something going on behind the scenes with his contract?

"Of course we don't share everything we know about a player, but with the medical staff sometimes we need to explain something that is going on around a player to help them get better or to improve. We try to know."

He added: "We do a lot of analysis and tests, but everything is to individualise the training. So when a player plays 90 minutes then on Monday and Tuesday they see some players resting and others training very hard, The most important thing is that they accept what others are doing because they are all individuals and maybe in three weeks it will be them who the coaching staff will give three days in an individual programme to.

"We don't treat the players as a group, we treat them as unique and some players have completely different programmes because it's the way to help them.

"I know there are probably too many things in a day to do. Maybe there will be one guy waiting for me today when I get here, today's plan is a blood test two days before a match, or two days before is saliva. They begin to know, every day a recovery test, it's probably too much but it's to help them. It's not for us."

Pochettino trusts Perez implicitly and calls him an extension of himself. Yet the Spaniard was the last man to join the tight knit coaching quartet led by Pochettino. First team coach Miguel D'Agostino has known the manager since his academy days at Newell's Old Boys and goalkeeping coach Toni Jiminez played with Pochettino at Espanyol.

The Spurs boss describes the trio as the three cables that jump-start him and his work, but Perez's journey to Pochettino's side was a long one.

He gave up his dreams of becoming a professional footballer at 17 when he realised his level "wasn't good enough".

After five years of studying sports science he emerged from university and worked his way from non-league football to La Liga, holding roles as a fitness coach, general coach and even an academy director early on.

His career took him to Gimnàstic de Tarragona, CD Castellón, Real Murcia, Pontevedra CF, Rayo Vallecano and UD Almería. It was at Murcia where he worked under both Spanish legend Joaquín Peiró and former Liverpool star and Real Madrid boss John Toshack during one turbulent season.

"It was a very interesting experience. He was in a different stage of his career. It was nice to see how he prepared the training and his philosophy," he said.

"I remember after two or three training sessions, I phoned Mikel Lasa, who was his player at Real Madrid and then my player at Murcia. I asked: "When you were at Real Madrid at 16 or 17 did you practice these exercises?"

"Now everyone does those kind of drills, but 20 years ago he was doing them with his players. He didn't believe in sports science or fitness coaches though, and my role at Murcia was more or less that, but recently he did say in one interview that I was quite good!

"I learned a lot and it was a good six months with him, to share a dressing room with someone like him. You can agree or disagree because his career stage was different, but it was good."

The manager who would transform Perez's career was yet to come. After a spell as a fitness coach with the Saudi Arabian national team and then with Saudi side Al Ittihad, reaching the Asian Champions League final, he returned to Spain looking to take six months out of a game he was becoming jaded with.

However, he soon received a call from Espanyol sporting director Ramon Planes - a man close to Pochettino - asking him to join the analysis set-up at the struggling La Liga outfit.

Perez was reluctant, partly because he had friends there and didn't want to step on their toes and partly because it was 100km from his home along the coast.

Eventually he relented after "three or four conversations" and the details of those early days with Pochettino showed exactly what his new boss was up against.

"When Mauricio started he had to do everything on his own. It's not like now where you have 10 analysts. He bought a camera, a Mac computer, he bought Sportscode which is very expensive analysis software," he explained.

"Here maybe we have 100 licences but at that time he paid for it and it was maybe 7,000 euros. He paid for a course for this guy to go and learn and the guy came back and said I've got an offer from Barcelona and I'm leaving!

"Mauricio was upset. He'd made investment to improve the analysis and was looking to do real-time analysis during matches. Now that's very common, but back then in Spain he was probably the first or the second to do it."

He added: "He noticed me every day there doing analysis, using Sportscode. The reason the guy who left knew Sportscode was because three years ago I told him he needed to look at it!

"Mauricio asked me: 'Can you join us and help us with analysis, and then I want you to travel with us and at half-time in matches I want you to give your opinion and images'.

"This is how our relationship started, doing methodology support to the academy coaches and at the weekend doing the matches with them and analysis.

"Then three months later he said I want you to be on the pitch. He wanted me on the bench with him and it started from there."

Pochettino has suggested that Perez was at a point where he was starting to fall out of love with the game and the Spaniard doesn't disagree.

"That point changed everything. I tell him 'You rescued me in football'. He laughs but I'd worked with 20 previous managers and I was in the stage in my life where I felt I had to do something," he said.

"The last three or four years I didn't really enjoy my job. I was lucky to always get jobs after leaving university but I never knew what was there waiting for me."

He added: "I feel part of his philosophy. It's completely different. If I'm here today it's not because of me. Of course I have some qualities, but it's because he wants me to be here. He takes me everywhere.

"We had lunch with Sir Alex Ferguson. I'm not going there because I'm the assistant manager or I'm so good, he wants me to enjoy this moment. That's what makes me happy, not if I manage the team more or less, or have more impact on the line-ups, tactics or physical problems. It's the way he makes me feel. It's not that we fell in love!

"I always say what I think generally and I tell him 'Before me, Miguel and Toni you were a manager and you did so well'. If I leave, Miguel leaves or Toni leaves it will be the same. The most important thing is the sense of the manager."

From that point on the Spaniard and Pochettino became firm friends. It was Perez who, along with the Argentine's wife Karina, convinced him to take the plunge and start a new adventure in England at Southampton where they spent the first six months in a hotel together with D'Agostino and Jiminez.

Now at Tottenham, not only do the duo spend up to 12 hours a day together they share the commute together, for Perez and his wife Olga and two daughters Paula and Marta live a minute away from the Pochettinos.

Surely spending all that time together means they must get on each other's nerves from time to time?

"It's very rare that we argue. In almost nine years, we've had probably only two or three days when he's been upset with me," admitted Perez.

"But you know why? Because he's very close with us. He's a very uncommon manager, because I've had experience with other ones and they've been different.

"If he discusses a new contract then first it's our contract and then afterwards his contract. Things like that mean so much. He never puts himself first.

"But in the back of my mind he's the number one. It's very rare for me to cross the line. Of course I make mistakes and I do realise when I make them, but I never overstep. It's something to know the limit. He never sets the limit but I need to know where it is."

The one question always asked of assistant managers is whether they dream of one day holding the top job themselves. Perez bristled at the suggestion, almost angered by the very thought of it.

"No, because I know where I'm coming from and I had 15 or 16 years experience before I started to work with him," he said.

"I know really well how I do my job. The thing you do differently as a manager is take two steps forward. But those two steps forward mean a lot.

"I don't have any ambition to be number one. I fulfil everything being number two at this level, because to reach this level, wow. I wouldn't change working with him to be number one elsewhere.

"He always says to us 'if one of you wants to be number one'. It's not my ambition. As soon as one of the staff starts to think they want to be number one, for me, they have to leave the team. You know why? Because their energy is somewhere else."

Perez's energy is most certainly directed towards Tottenham Hotspur, but what does a normal day hold for Perez when he steps through the doors at their Hotspur Way training complex?

"I arrive at 7.30am normally. I have half an hour breakfast in the restaurant, 15-20 minutes in my office on my own and then when Mauricio calls us we go to his office and we are there for 30 or 40 minutes," he explained.

"Then I go at 9am to a medical meeting in my office and we adjust 28 training plans. We discuss player by player every day.

"Then it's back to Mauricio's office until training starts. It's not only video or training and drills, you spend a lot of time doing everything and Mauricio spends time with John [McDermott, Spurs' academy head] and Steve [Hitchen, the club's chief scout] talking, discussing and explaining. Then normally it depends, 5, 6 or 7pm when Mauricio decides it's enough for the day. We spend 10 to 12 hours here every day."

The admiration Perez has for Pochettino is rarely far from the surface and he explained exactly what he thinks marks the Spurs manager out as someone special in the game and why he has developed so many young players into internationals, from Harry Kane to Dele Alli, to Adam Lallana to Luke Shaw.

"There are two ways in football to coach," he said. "You can coach with fear or you can coach the will to try. It's risk with knowledge. So if you say to a right-back 'be careful with this pass, don't do this pass, don't do that', then this guy will try to choose the other three options you didn't say and it's dangerous.

"But if you say to this guy 'be in a good position, be in a good angle and then you try, try because it's you on the pitch, I give you a position and then it's up to you'. Now we have one guy playing who has good skill and takes a risk in possession. We don't tell him to be careful, but to try to read the situations. Sometimes you need to pass and go back and offer support.

"Mauricio likes to create superiority. He has to do it because it's something inside of the player. You cannot stop the will to try to take a risk because in the end football is to create superiority, to take a risk, otherwise it's 0-0."

He explained further: "Mauricio got his chance when he was 16 or 17 at Newell's Old Boys and that is always in his mind. No one has to explain to him what it means to give a chance.

"Mauricio is not the person who says 'It goes there, this is good, play', he's more like 'let's see what he's like training for two or three months with the first team and see if he's good enough'. Then once the first team accept this guy is good he plays.

"Then you can fail, it's not a problem. Mistakes with Mauricio are not a problem, if you behave properly, if you want it and you try and your will is good. That's why he improves a lot of players.

"He doesn't teach players. He proposes to the player a scenario, a platform to improve. If they take it they will improve. It's just practising and having the backing of your manager. That's how you improve."

For Perez the foundations that his boss has built his managerial career on are a desire to make things clearer.

"One of the key things with Mauricio and how he connects with people is that he explains why," he said.

"He likes to explain why this and why that and also to the chairman to explain. 'Listen, this is how when you watch the game from a wide view, this guy should do this because when we have the ball we want to do this.'

"It's better to explain to people because when they watch games live or through the TV the perception is completely different. We as professionals need to fight against the perception.

"You have to concede the perception of players from people but if you want to go deep to know what happens with a player, how they train on the way up or way down, you need to fight against perception. Perception is a very dangerous enemy."

Whatever the enemy, Pochettino knows he has Perez by his side. The rest of us might not always see he's there but that's just how Tottenham's assistant manager likes it.

Tottenham Hotspur run Global Football Development courses for young players aged between 5 – 12. To find out more and sign up please visit here .