New Delhi, June 20 -- At a drinks break somewhere in the American heat, Mauricio Pochettino did something that, two decades ago, might have looked like a man checking his phone at a funeral. He opened a laptop and showed his players footage of the match they were still playing.

The interruption in play once belonged to instinct: an arm around the shoulder, a barked instruction, the captain's growl inherited from some older captain's growl, stretching all the way back to the first man who told another man to mark his runner.

Pochettino brought a screen.

The players were reportedly taken aback, which is the correct response when the future arrives without ceremony and asks you to look at your positioning.

For most of football history, t...