LONDON -- Mauricio Pochettino has accused his Tottenham players of lacking passion in Wednesday's 2-1 defeat to AS Monaco in the Champions League and says they must "show more" to prove their worth to the club.
Monaco's Bernardo Silva and Thomas Lemar capitalised on sloppy play from Tottenham to score in the opening half an hour at Wembley before Toby Alderweireld halved the deficit on the stroke of half-time.
Pochettino felt his team improved after the break, despite failing to equalise, but the Spurs manager was left mystified by their performance in the first half.
"I never said we didn't have passion for the Champions League but we didn't show passion on Wednesday night in the first half," Pochettino told a news conference.
"In the second half we showed a lot of passion and we played very well. Only in this 45-minute period we didn't show passion. Why? This is my big question, and not only me. We all have in our minds -- why? There's no excuse. Wembley wasn't the problem. The pitch wasn't the problem. We were the problem and we need to be very critical with ourselves.
"Now we need to learn from that, be more aggressive, to play more in the way we usually play, to try to fix this image. I think the first half was difficult to manage because I felt very bad afterwards.
"When we wait six years to play in the Champions League, after 45 mins you can't go to the changing room with this feeling. We had 90,000 people in front of us, waiting for us to play in the Champions League.
"The atmosphere was amazing. We nearly cried before when you hear the song from the Champions League -- it's a dream come true. That was difficult. We have time to win games and we have possibility to go to the next round. It's early in the season but we need to compete much, much better.
"I look at myself too. I [maybe] didn't know how to get the motivation to play on Wednesday night in the Champions League. Maybe I put myself in question too. We share responsibility but we cannot repeat."
Midfield trio Christian Eriksen, Eric Dier and Harry Winks have signed new contracts in the past fortnight, while Danny Rose and Kyle Walker are expected to follow suit in the coming weeks.
Pochettino, who himself signed a new five-year deal in May, praised the club but warned his players must improve, and said he was similarly unimpressed with the 4-0 win at Stoke last weekend.
"I need to say that the club has made a big effort to try to keep all our talent," he added. "I think it's fantastic for the club and my feeling is we need to do more because the club gives us a lot of very good things. We need to show more as a team -- more passion, more desire.
"I remember the first half [in Saturday's 4-0 win at Stoke] was the same as against Monaco -- they had the facility to score, and then because we scored late in the first half and again in the second half we won 4-0.
"But my feeling did not change from the result, it changed from the performance and what I can see during the game. It's not that I'm happy because it's 4-0, we need to be clever and analyse the circumstance of the game.
"Sometimes you have luck, sometimes not. Maybe if Stoke had scored in the first few minutes, maybe the result would have been different -- and against Monaco, the first chance, they scored. The second chance they scored. We allowed them to score and then it was difficult and we lost the game. But I'm not a fan, I'm a professional about football. I need to analyse it in a different way, that is a massive difference."
Spurs return to Premier League action against Sunderland at White Hart Lane on Sunday and are still without Danny Rose, who has a hamstring strain, while Pochettino said new signing Georges-Kevin Nkoudou is not ready to make his debut.