by Former Tottenham captain Hugo Lloris has revealed he questions the club’s desire to win after chairman Daniel Levy gifted the entire squad with an engraved watch ahead of the 2019 Champions League final.
Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs were beaten 2-0 by Liverpool in Madrid, one of three finals Lloris lost in 12 years with the club.
In a damning extract from his new autobiography, serialized in The Guardian, Lloris says he still hasn’t “recovered” from Levy’s well-intentioned gift to each of the team members of an engraved “Finalist » before the match, and claimed, Pochettino and Harry Kane doubted the club’s commitment to winning.
“Four days before the final, Daniel Levy brought us all together to announce that with the support of a sponsor, we would each receive a luxury aviator’s watch from the club,” Lloris wrote in ‘Earning My Spurs’. “At first we were delighted to see the elegant boxes.
“Then we opened them and discovered that he had had the player’s name and ‘2019 Champions League Finalist’ engraved on the back of each watch. ‘Finalist.’
“Who does such a thing at a time like this?” I still can’t get over it and I’m not alone. If we had won, he would not have asked for the watches to be engraved “Winner”.
“I have a lot of respect and esteem for this man and everything he has done for the club as president – I have gotten to know him – but there are things he does not It’s just not sensitive.
“As beautiful as the watch is, I have never worn it. I would have preferred there to be nothing on it. With an engraving like that, Levy couldn’t have been surprised if we were 1-0 down after a few minutes: that’s how it was written.
“At the post-match reception at the hotel, I got the impression that some of the people at the club and some of the players were not sufficiently discouraged about losing.
I had the same feeling as Mauricio [Pochettino] and Harry [Kane]: ‘does the club really want to win?’
Hugo Lloris
“I wish people would come up to me and say, ‘Don’t worry, Hugo. Never again. We will give you the means to come back.
“But when I went back to my room on the night of the final, I think I had the same feeling as Mauricio and Harry: does the club really want to win? Real Madrid would never have celebrated a losing final, and neither should we.”
Lloris believes the final was “snatched away” from us by the referee’s decision to award Liverpool a penalty after 24 seconds for a handball against Moussa Sissoko, with Mohamed Salah scoring from the spot and Divock Origi adding a late second.
“From June 2, 2019, a change in the rules meant that there would no longer be a penalty if the ball touched a player’s hand after touching another part of their body,” Lloris wrote.
“The final took place on June 1, 2019, and something that would not have been a mistake the next day sealed the fate of the final before it had actually started.”
The former French goalkeeper, Spurs’ record Premier League appearances holder, also criticized the club’s decision to allow Amazon Prime intimate access to the team for a wall-to-wall documentary from the 2019 season – 20 as they were still recovering from the disappointment of losing the final.
Pochettino was fired in November that year, with José Mourinho taking over from the Argentine.
“When the film crew placed small microphones on some tables in the canteen, we went and sat at others,” wrote Lloris, who revealed that the crew did not receive a share of the fees of £10 million announced by Amazon for Spurs.
“You had to be careful all the time. The only place we could speak freely was the training locker room – we made sure it remained off-limits.
“Otherwise, they had microphones and cameras everywhere, even during certain training sessions, which was no small matter: it was a constraint and it had consequences.”
Lloris also opened up about Antonio Conte’s tenure, revealing the Italian was just as “extreme and rash” with players as he occasionally appeared in public and claiming the team “finally put our fingers in our ears” to his furious tirades.
“During matches, Conte was as extreme and rash as he appeared, commanding respect and fear,” Lloris wrote.
“Such a strong personality made the wingers prefer to play on the opposite side in the dugout. I have never forgotten our first defeat under Conte: a 2-1 loss to NS Mura in Slovenia in the Uefa Conference League. Even if I wasn’t playing, I was still entitled to his cries and his reproaches, like everyone else.
“After the defeat in Maribor, he shouted: ‘Mura, Mura, who is Mura?! We lost to Mura! » I can still hear it. If a player needed a little love, he better not knock on Conte’s door.
“For Conte, confidence is gained through training. It has no filter; he is sincere, honest. He is a manager who lives only by results, whereas from a player’s point of view, performance is also important.
“That season, when we lost 3-2 to Manchester United, a result that didn’t reflect our performance, I said to Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Harry Kane in the dressing room: ‘Maybe they’re coming from us beat, but I bet you.’ we end up on top of them.
“And that’s what we did, finishing in fourth place after beating Arsenal 3-0 on the final day, putting ourselves halfway between Conte’s demand and a bit of self-management because, “After being whipped and shouted, we ended up sticking our fingers in our ears.”
