This defeat — Spurs’ eighth consecutive F.A. Cup semifinal loss — seemed to prompt something of a change of heart. Pochettino’s Spurs lost at the same stage of the same competition last year. The team missed out on the League Cup in 2015, beaten by Chelsea in the final. And, of course, there were the two seasons in which Spurs provided the most consistent challenge for the Premier League title, 2016 and 2017, only to be beaten to the line first by Leicester City and then by Chelsea.

“We are close, we are close, we are close,” Pochettino said. “Nearly close enough to touch.” Every time, though, his team has fallen short. And now, he said, he knows that painstaking, hard-won progress in the league, and improving performances in the Champions League, are no longer “enough.” “The only way to reach this last level, not just to compete, but to win” is to break that seal, to pick up that first trophy, he said.

The view that Spurs needs something tangible not just to prove its progress under Pochettino but to cement it has become something close to received wisdom. Inside the club, players admit — as both Jan Vertonghen and Harry Kane have said — it is time to “win something.”

That belief is, if anything, even stronger on the outside. Alan Shearer, the former England striker, wrote earlier this season that Spurs could not pass up the chance to open its new stadium later this year “with a trophy held aloft.” Only then can Spurs claim a place among the game’s true elite. Until then, it is merely a pretender. Pochettino, finally, has joined the chorus.