Meet the Spurs fan who cheekily asked for a hug from Mauricio Pochettino
Melvyn Xuereb asked for a hug to “lighten the mood” after a series of hard questions from other fans.
This is the moment a Spurs fan was engulfed in a hug by manager Mauricio Pochettino during a Fans’ Forum.
Melvyn Xuereb, 24, requested a hug from Poch – just like the ones he gives to players after a match.
“So I was wondering can I get a hug from Mauricio Pochettino?”
Melvyn, who now lives in Gozo, Malta, was at the event with his father Victor and his sister Victoria who had jetted in from Toronto.
They watched the 5-1 thrashing of Stoke at the weekend and have tickets for the Brighton game.
After getting hugged, Melvyn told Spurs TV: “I wanted to get a hug from Pochettino like all the players and it was a proper hug from him too.”
Pochettino also hugged Victoria and Victor.
Victor, 57, added: “We wasn’t expecting it. It was like a dream. If I go home now, I think ‘am I dreaming?’ I got a hug from Pochettino. I love him very much because he makes everybody happy.”
Victoria, 16, said: “It’s nice that he related to us, that we’re coming from far away and that we’re all here together in one team.”
But the hugs nearly didn’t happen. Melvyn had anticipated asking a question about next season but decided to lighten the mood with everyone else at the forum “asking difficult questions”.
“It was spontaneous, my dad and sister didn’t even expect I was going to ask that,” he told Press Association. “I didn’t expect it would get such a lovely reaction. Making Hugo Lloris and Daniel Levy laugh and smile like that is something I’ll never forget.”
It was Victor who first introduced his family to Spurs.
Melvyn added: “He liked the way they played when he was growing up and hasn’t stopped watching since. Now Spurs is just something we do as a family.”
They have watched Spurs play in New York and Toronto and saw a match against Sunderland in 2010.
