Mauricio Pochettino believes a domestic cup triumph means nothing to a club in terms of the creation of a winning culture. The Tottenham manager knows the FA Cup represents his only chance of a trophy this season and his team play at Swansea City in the quarter-finals on Saturday.

Pochettino wants to win but, even if Tottenham were to claim the trophy, which would be his first as a manager, he would not consider it a decisive step in what he is building at the club.

Pochettino won the Copa del Rey twice as a player with Espanyol and he says it “changed nothing” for him. He insists that only winning the Premier League or the Champions League would make a material difference to the mentality of his players.

“When you win a real tournament, when you need to play under pressure and perform at your best over 10 months – that is the moment when you start to learn about winning,” Pochettino said. “ Winning a cup is going to help but to create that winning culture you need to work a lot and take many steps. It is not: ‘Oh, I am going to create a winning culture in two months [at the business end of a cup run].’”

Pochettino’s Copa del Rey successes were celebrated but he says they were underpinned by intangibles such as the draw, form and other of-the-moment circumstances.

“We were very lucky,” he said. “Maybe we didn’t deserve to win. I am in the history of Espanyol because we won but I don’t feel it made a massive change [to the club]. It changed nothing for me, personally. Nothing. Sometimes success doesn’t help you to be better.

“Sometimes you win because the draw is kind and maybe it makes you play a team that is focusing on the Champions League. The form of the players that you are going to face is another factor. I don’t know if who wins titles like the FA Cup or the League Cup is the best team. The Premier League is the truest test because you need the whole squad and the competition is 38 games over 10 months.”

Pochettino even included the World Cup in his comparison. He played for a highly rated Argentina team at the 2002 finals but they were eliminated at the group phase having arrived out of form.

“It’s like the League Cup, Copa del Rey, FA Cup – they are very short periods and, sometimes, it’s a coincidence; maybe you have some players not in good form,” Pochettino said.

“There are competitions that if you win, fantastic, but if you don’t win, nothing changes.”

To Pochettino, the process and the stability of what has been built is all important. “Leicester winning the league was a fantastic story but the moment you lift the trophy and then put it down, that disappears,” the Spurs manager said. “You need to be ready for the next challenge. If not, all that happiness will transform into sadness.”