Guillem Balague has revealed that Real Madrid are withdrawing from their long pursuit of Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino.
After winning the Champions League final last Saturday, Madrid were expected to retain the services of Zinedine Zidane for another year at least.
But the Frenchman held a surprising press conference during the week to announce that he would no longer be in charge of the Spanish giants.
Speculation afterwards have linked Pochettino with the vacant Real Madrid job yet again, even though the Argentine signed a new contract with Spurs last week.
But Sky Sports journalist Balague has revealed that Madrid’s new decision will be to not pursue the Tottenham boss.
“Real could see there was so many positives in signing him, not just the fact he can deal with the stars but how he improves players and how he works with youth players as well.” said Balague
“But what they had in front of them was the possibility of negotiating with Daniel Levy for perhaps a month, even longer, with no guarantees whatsoever that they were going to get him.
“They know that Levy is a very tough negotiator, with Florentino [Perez, Real Madrid’s president] having been in touch with him in recent seasons. They’ve decided to abandon the possibility of signing Mauricio Pochettino.
“That makes life very difficult for Real Madrid because there is not someone you could consider an automatic candidate after Pochettino.
“They will have to look at other possibilities including all the managers that are already in a job with a contract.”