It was a good team, or rather, a great one. But it was never a champion team. That’s why Harry Kane had to go to Bayern to seek trophies — though he’s seemingly cursed there too — while Hugo Lloris won titles with the French national team. He had his chances with Tottenham, but now, looking back, the Frenchman openly admits he sometimes doubted club director Daniel Levy’s genuine desire to win.Let’s start with that Champions League final in 2019. Liverpool won handily, and while everyone then thought the Reds were simply the better team, Lloris places some blame on the referees.”Less than a year after the World Cup final, I found myself in the Champions League final against Liverpool. Doing so made me one of the few to play in a European Championship final, a World Cup final, and then a Champions League final. The day before the match in Madrid, I bumped into Dejan Lovren, a defender for the Reds and my former teammate from Lyon. ‘Hey, Hugo,’ he shouted. ‘You have the World Cup, let me have the Champions League!’ I didn’t let him; it was taken from us,” writes Lloris in his autobiography, released yesterday.He elaborates:“The penalty that referee Damir Skomina awarded after 24 seconds — when the ball struck Moussa Sissoko’s body and then deflected onto his arm — killed the final and wiped us out. From June 2, 2019, a rule change meant there would no longer be penalties if the ball hit a player’s hand after first hitting another part of his body. The final was held on June 1, 2019, and what wouldn’t have been a penalty the very next day sealed our fate before the game had even started.”##NAJAVA_MECA_8486595##But let’s get back to the original issue — Tottenham’s losing mentality, or their acceptance of defeat.”It wasn’t a great final. I played in three finals with Tottenham — two League Cups (in 2015 and 2021) and one Champions League final — and we didn’t score in any of them. It was so disappointing to experience all those emotions only to have the journey end that way. I’m not sure everyone at the club and on the team understood how hard it is to reach a final and how hard it is to get back to one. I’m not sure we realized that this might be the only chance in our careers to win the Champions League; that the club we played for wasn’t built to win it; that we could have avoided hearing people say Tottenham never won anything; that our names could have been etched forever in the club’s history. That’s what that penalty took from us.”THE WATCH THAT WAS NEVER WORN AND MICROPHONES ON EVERY TABLEA specific detail stands out that reflects Tottenham’s lack of a champion’s mindset.“Something is etched into all our memories. Four days before the final, Daniel Levy called us all in to announce that, with sponsorship support, we’d each receive a luxury watch from the club. Initially, we were excited to see the elegant boxes. Then we opened them and discovered each watch had the player’s name engraved alongside the title ‘2019 Champions League Finalist.’ ‘Finalist.’ Who does that at such a moment? I still haven’t gotten over it, and I’m not the only one. If we’d won, he wouldn’t have asked for the watches back to change it to ‘winner.’”This doesn’t mean Lloris doesn’t respect Levy.“I have great respect for him and all he’s done for the club as president — I had the chance to get to know him—but there are things that simply don’t affect him. As magnificent as that watch is, I’ve never worn it. I’d have preferred it if it had nothing engraved. With that engraving, Levy couldn’t have been surprised when we were down 1-0 just a few minutes in. It was already written.”Hugo Lloris on after the Champions League final and the Amazon documentary: “Everything was hard after that, for Mauricio and for us. The club had finally invested in recruitment, but we hadn’t got over the Champions League final, and the squad still wasn’t sufficiently revived –… pic.twitter.com/GWxLpzaPlj— Chris Cowlin (@ChrisCowlin) November 7, 2024 For all these reasons, there’s the feeling that Spurs simply didn’t want the trophy badly enough.“At the post-match reception at the hotel, I had the impression that some people at the club and certain players weren’t devastated by the loss. I would have liked people to come up to me and say, ‘Don’t worry, Hugo. Never again. We’ll support you to come back stronger.’ But when I returned to my room that night after the final, I think I felt the same as Mauricio and Harry did: does the club really want to win? Real Madrid would never celebrate a lost final, and neither did we.”##EDITORS_CHOICE##For Tottenham, it seemed enough just to make money. When there was cash, defeats were easier for management to accept. Here’s an example…“Everything was tough after that — for Mauricio and for us. The club finally invested in reinforcements, but we didn’t get over the Champions League final. Not to mention the tension that kept building after a decision by the club that affected the team’s daily life; decisions made without consulting the team or coach: installing cameras everywhere for Amazon’s series on Spurs. Given the sum involved — about £10 million — we wondered if those whose season and activities would be impacted, those who were wired daily, would get a raise. The answer wasn’t long in coming — no. So when the film crew would place tiny microphones on some of the tables in the dining room, we’d move to another. We had to be cautious all the time. The only place we could talk freely was the locker room for training — we made sure they left that alone. Other than that, there were microphones everywhere — even during certain drills, which wasn’t trivial: it was restrictive and had consequences.”Osimhen‘s brace sinks Spurs in IstanbulIF CONTE SUFFERED, EVERYONE HAD TO SUFFER! HE WAS HAPPY ONE HOUR A WEEKPochettino left, and many coaches followed, but the trophies still didn’t come. When Lloris talks about coaches, he particularly recalls one: Antonio Conte.”I found Antonio Conte to be quite a character, driven by the desire to win, which gave him energy. But it was very difficult for him to control his frustration when we started drawing, let alone when we lost, as his inner turmoil had to come out. And if he was suffering, then everyone had to share in his suffering, and things could quickly get complicated.”For example…”Once he told me that any given week, his happiness lasted one hour, right after a win, and that was it. He oversaw everything in training, organizing tactical sessions with ten outfield players against one goalkeeper; but creative players struggled to find their place in his restrictive style of play. The rigidity of the structure and the sequence of drills initially helped us a lot, but after a few months, teams learned how to play against us, and winning became harder.”Henry reveals his ‘issues’ with Arsenal’s formMoreover, nervousness crept into the team.”During games, Conte was extreme and explosive, demanding both respect and fear. Such a strong personality made the wingers prefer playing on the opposite side of the field from the bench. I’ll never forget our first loss with Conte: a 2-1 defeat to Mura in Slovenia in the Conference League. Even though I didn’t play, I was still exposed to his shouting and dissatisfaction, just like everyone else. In team meetings, we’d spend at least 30 minutes a day doing video analysis. After the loss in Maribor, Conte shouted, ‘Mura, Mura, who is Mura? We lost to Mura!’ I can still hear him.”A military mentality, with no love from the boss.“If a player needed a bit of affection, it would be better if he didn’t knock on Conte’s door. For Conte, trust was earned in training. He has no filter, he’s honest, straightforward. He’s a coach who lives solely for results, while from a player’s perspective, performance also matters.”
