There can be no doubting the influence on the pitch, considering more than 15 players who worked under Pochettino at Southampton or Tottenham have gone on to make their England debuts since he arrived in English football five years ago.

The backbone of the England team all worked under the Argentinian before getting their international breaks – Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Eric Dier, Kieran Trippier and Danny Rose of the current side, while Adam Lallana and Harry Winks might also be in Russia but for injury.

But what is intriguing is the way Southgate has taken on board many of the same characteristics in his management style, which has helped replicate with England the mood and the method Pochettino took to Tottenham.

The first thing to be said about both men is that they don’t judge players on their reputations but by their eagerness to work hard and improve.

Pochettino arrived at Tottenham two seasons after the club squandered the bulk of their windfall from Gareth Bale’s world-record sale to Real Madrid. Players with big reputations arrived but mostly failed to live up to the mark, including Paulinho, Roberto Soldado, Etienne Capoue and Vlad Chiriches.

Tottenham already had a handful of players who thought they could dictate terms to the manager, rather than vice-versa, including Emmanuel Adebayor and Younes Kaboul. Within months of taking over, Pochettino had replaced most of them in the first team with younger, hungrier players including Kane, Rose and Ryan Mason.

Fast-forward to Southgate’s first few months in charge of the England team, and one of the first high-profile ‘victims’ was Wayne Rooney, who was dropped from a squad after losing his place at Manchester United and promptly announced his international retirement.

Perhaps Southgate recognised what many of us who watch England regularly knew, that Rooney did not fit into a fast-paced dynamic team that move the ball forward quickly and needed young legs to close down opponents relentlessly. It was interesting to note that before England’s disastrous European Championship campaign in 2016, they scored a remarkable 3-2 win in Germany with five of the Tottenham side playing the way Pochettino had got them doing at club level. Rooney was unavailable for that game, but when he returned for a friendly against Portugal shortly before the Euros, England looked laboured, slow and ponderous in transition once again.

Southgate has also changed formation from the traditional 4-4-2 that England have always set up with, including under Sven Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, and like any good coach, has adopted a system that suits his players’ strengths and the way he wants to play.

The 3-5-1-1 shape is similar to one Pochettino primarily uses at Spurs – although the Argentinian will switch to a flat back four if it is appropriate. The system brings the best out of key players such as Kane, Alli, Rose and now Trippier, who has replaced former Pochettino player Kyle Walker as England’s right wing-back of choice.

Kane, Walker and Trippier are examples of the sort of player both managers like. They have served their apprenticeships doing hard graft on loan in the lower leagues. Most of Southgate’s squad had humble beginnings — think where Harry Maguire and Jamie Vardy were four years ago — and few were born with football’s equivalent of a silver spoon in their mouth.

It is why this current squad, without the superstars of yore such as Beckham, Lampard and Gerrard, looks more like a team than anything the so-called Golden Generation managed.

And that brings us to another characteristic shared by both managers, the philosophy that the team comes first, that no individual is greater than any other, and everyone, including the backroom staff, gets a hug, a pat on the back, a mention when praise is deserved.

Those who know Pochettino well speak of the almost-fatherly bond he has with his players, and Southgate has the same sort of relationship, despite his relative youth. They are calm when they need to be, firm when it is called for, rarely lose their temper and are gracious and intelligent in their public demeanour. More importantly, it is hard to imagine any of it is an act.

One of the most fundamental requirements in the dynamic between players and staff is honesty, telling it straight, and both men are embodiments of doing things the right way, as the lighthearted social media campaign around Southgate’s current saintliness attest.

You cannot imagine him leaving his shoes outside a blonde TV presenter’s hotel room, as Sven would do, nor launching the ill-judged Capello Index, that Fabio came up with shortly before the 2010 World Cup, whereby he would be judging his own players for a commercial enterprise.

And there is one more similarity between Pochettino and Southgate – they have yet to win anything as a manager.

But it can be said with confidence that both Tottenham and England are in safe hands.