Can Tottenham’s new management team deliver what is sorely needed?

 

Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy

met with the team’s leadership group, or

“player committee,” in April to discuss his

options following the team’s 6-1 humiliation at Newcastle.

After Jose Mourinho left, this committee—

which included club captain Hugo Lloris,

vice-captain Harry Kane, Pierre-Emile

Hojbjerg, and Eric Dier—was reinstated as a

mechanism for senior players to

communicate with the club from the

dressing room. Oliver Skipp occasionally

participated as well to represent the

interests of the younger players. The topic of

discussion in this case was what to do

regarding interim head coach Cristian Stellini.

 

 

 

. It was only a few weeks since the player

committee had met with Levy to discuss

who should replace Stellini’s predecessor,

the outgoing Antonio Conte.

 

Fast forward a few months and Tottenham’s leadership group looks completely different. Kane has left the club; Lloris, the captain for the past eight years, is about to do the same; Hojbjerg will be allowed to leave if the right offer comes in; while Dier wasn’t even named on the bench against Brentford on Sunday and only has a year left on his contract.

 

 

In their place is a different structure, with new head coach Ange Postecoglou naming Son Heung-min as his captain and James Maddison and Cristian Romero as vice-captains.

It’s a huge amount of change in a short space of time, especially when you consider that captaincy changes tend to be a gradual process (like when a deputy replaces the departing captain). It’s very unusual to have the captain and all three of his deputies either leave the club or no longer have major roles in the dressing room, but it’s a reflection of the state of flux that Spurs are currently in and what a transitional period this is. And part of the idea of all three of Son, Maddison and Romero having these roles is to try in a post-Lloris and Kane world to have greater responsibility across the board. Lloris often felt that too much of the leadership burden fell on him and the England captain.

To put some numbers on Spurs’ changing leadership, Lloris, Kane, Hojbjerg and Dier have 1,388 Spurs appearances between them and 35 combined years of first-team service. At the time of their appointments, Son, Maddison and Romero had 436 combined appearances and 10 years of service. Lloris alone has more than that with 447, Kane one fewer with 435.

 

Broadly, there are two ways of looking at this. One is that Spurs have not exactly been known for their dressing-room leadership in the past few years, so how on earth are they going to cope without some of their most experienced players?

The other is that this offers a new set of players the chance to provide the leadership for a group that have suffered their fair share of disappointment recently and might be in need of fresh ideas. As a starting point, their appointments have gone down very well with the rest of the dressing room.

Part of the logic in Postecoglou’s decision is that the trio cover pretty much all areas — Son the overall leader and centrepiece of the squad, Maddison representing the British contingent, and Romero a reference point for the Spanish speakers and South Americans. They are also players who will play every week, which is important (the same can’t be said of Hojbjerg and Dier if they stay, or Ben Davies, another long-serving and well-respected player) and the view internally is that this is an opportunity for some different voices to become more prominent.

So can they provide the sort of leadership Spurs have sometimes lacked and so badly need?

Before evaluating the merits of those three players, it’s worth looking at how Postecoglou views leadership. He does not want the burden to just fall on those three players and has been clear with the squad that leadership can come in many forms.

“It’s not just about the captain. Leadership can come from the youngest players in the team,” he told the Tottenham players during Saturday morning’s meeting when he revealed the new captain and vice captains. “Leadership is about behaviour, that’s it. The example you set. If you train well, if you do something in the group that inspires the other players, that’s leadership. It’s not just about who the captain is, it’s about everyone buying into it.”

 

Last month, when asked about the leadership skills of Skipp, a young man once tipped as a future Spurs captain by his then-head coach Jose Mourinho, Postecoglou said: “Leadership in my view is not that relevant to age. You can be a leader when young just by actions and he trains hard every day and, from that point of view, that’s leadership to me. Because when you present every day a certain level, whether it’s a game or it’s training, that’s leadership because that gives an example to others.”

Postecoglou’s view that leadership “is not that relevant to age” is evidenced by the fact his two vice-captains are aged 26 (Maddison) and 25 (Romero).

Son is a bit older at 31 and is a more obvious choice having been the South Korea captain for the past five years. That’s a role that comes with a huge amount of pressure, especially given the general reliance on Son as the team’s best player. At the last World Cup, Son was the captain and talisman for a nation desperate for success and was trying to carry that burden while recovering from a nasty injury.

 

Son Heung-min (MB Media/Getty Images)

The view in Korea is that Son has done an impressive job as the national team captain. “A good comparison with Son as captain of Korea is Park Ji-sung, who was also the captain while at the same time being far and away the team’s most celebrated player,” says Rachel Hur, a Korean football correspondent based in London. “The general feeling was that Park was a very good player himself but wasn’t great at giving out orders to the younger players. He was naturally more introverted.

“But Sonny, even when he wasn’t captain, he was already doing that. He’s very outspoken, always leading the team, so he’s been great.”

At Spurs, too, Son is someone whose importance and vocalness in the dressing room has increased. It’s why he was such a popular and natural choice to be the new captain.

Son was delighted to be given the role and, like Maddison and Romero, only found out with the rest of the squad in Saturday’s team meeting. It’s a big honour and a position he will take very seriously.

As soon as the meeting had finished, he was thinking of little changes he could make to the group’s dynamic. On Saturday night, he sent a text to Maddison suggesting that, before the Brentford game the following day, the team should perform the pre-match huddle in front of the away fans rather than in the centre circle to strengthen the bond between the players and the supporters. Who knows how much things like this affect performance, but it certainly went down well with the fans, who were in full voice throughout — as Postecoglou acknowledged afterwards.

 

Postecoglou has also been quick to praise Son’s leadership qualities, even before he made the Korean his captain.

“He’s another one that I think shows real leadership qualities,” Postecoglou said in Singapore last month. “I look at him and he’s pretty much a conduit for the whole squad. He mixes in all groups. I don’t think it’s just because he’s popular. What he’s done in the game, he has a certain standing.

“He’s got a massive influence on the group, which doesn’t surprise me because I know he’s a leader for his nation and he’s been an icon for his nation for a long time. He carries that really well for someone who has been in the spotlight for that long. He has enormous respect among the players.”

Maddison is similarly central to the squad and everyone at Spurs has been struck by his infectious, positive energy since joining the club in June. Being on the pre-season tour and seeing his interactions with his team-mates, it was obvious how much the rest of the Spurs squad enjoy his company.

 

“He really knows what to say at the right time, not only on the pitch but off it,” his then Leicester team-mate Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall told The Athletic last year, while also revealing that Maddison regularly spoke to the club’s younger players to offer advice and encouragement. He saw it as one of his responsibilities as a senior player. Dewsbury-Hall continued: “If things aren’t going so well, he tells me to believe I am a good player. If they are going well, he says not to get too high because things can quickly change in football.”

Speak to Maddison’s former colleagues at

Leicester and you’ll quickly get the sense

that he is a natural choice for his vice-

captaincy role at Spurs. He was part of the

leadership group towards the end of his

time at Leicester, along with Jonny Evans,

Marc Albrighton, Youri Tielemans and Jamie

Vardy. Between them, they would be given

responsibilities like assigning fines for

lateness, addressing issues with the

coaching staff and helping the younger

players. Building team spirit was important

and they reintroduced the old ethos that

when the group socialised, everyone had to attend.

 

Leicester were eventually relegated, but

Maddison captained the side on a number of

occasions last season and learned a huge

amount from that experience. One such

time was Leicester’s 4-1 win over Tottenham

in February, when Maddison was constantly

encouraging those around him, pointing to

where they should be pressing the

Tottenham defence and where the next pass should go.

 

Whenever there was a break in play,

Maddison would run to the touchline for a

drink and a tactical chat with the then-

Leicester manager Brendan Rodgers.

Maddison was similarly vocal when he took

the Spurs armband during the final stages

against Brentford on Sunday after Son and

Romero had been substituted.

At Leicester, Maddison was always vocal in

the dressing room whether he was captain

or not and he has said that will remain the

case at Spurs. At Leicester, he would also

have regular tactical chats with Rodgers in

the club canteen over breakfast and

whenever the club’s media team needed

someone to front up and speak eloquently

and responsibly, inevitably they would turn

to Maddison. Already at Spurs, his

interviews have been insightful and helped

to give a sense of what this Spurs team is trying to achieve.

 

Maddison also offers other kinds of

leadership. In football nowadays, you often

hear coaches talk about players being a

“technical leader”, which ties into

Postecoglou’s point on leadership being

about setting an example, whether that’s

about what you do on the ball, how you

press, or how you carry yourself in training.

“Bravery” is another of Postecoglou’s

favourite themes and that’s much more

about being willing to take the ball in tight

areas or to keep trying what’s been asked

than it is about putting in big tackles.

Maddison is never one to shy away from

demanding the ball or attempting to play

forward and that’s the kind of leadership

Postecoglou needs from every player in the team.

In Postecoglou’s first Spurs press conference

last month, he referenced Maddison’s

leadership qualities. “I think he’s in a stage

of his career where it feels like he can be a

leader,” Postecoglou said. “We’re going to

need leadership on the field and he feels like

he can be a player who does that.”

Returning to that theme the following week

in Bangkok, Postecoglou said: “He makes his

presence felt as a footballer, but also in a

personal sense by being really present and

making sure he can be an influence in all areas.”

Maddison, for his part, said after Sunday’s

game that whether he has a captaincy role

or not, he’ll always try to lead and take

responsibility while at Spurs.

 

The third man in all of this, and perhaps the

biggest surprise, is Romero. Given his

disciplinary issues, this could be viewed as

the equivalent of giving a misbehaving kid

at school some responsibility in the hope it

gets them on the straight and narrow.

There definitely is an element of that and a

hope that this new role will help Romero’s

development and growing maturity, but it’s

also the case that Romero’s on-field persona

can be a little deceptive. He is quiet off the

pitch but is very well-respected and, to use

one of Postecoglou’s words in relation to

Son, acts as a conduit for the rest of the

Spanish speakers and South American

players, of which there are plenty in the

Spurs squad. He is also a World Cup winner,

which adds to his gravitas.

And where the perception has often been

that Romero cares more about playing for

Argentina than Tottenham, the defender

came out swinging to forcefully deny that

accusation this summer. In a revealing

interview in Perth, he also said he had

turned down offers to join other clubs

“because I want to have my best years here”.

Romero is someone with a real presence

about him and you feel it when speaking to

him one on one or in a group. Something

that came across during that Perth

interview was how much responsibility he takes on.

 

Spurs players have often been accused of

shirking responsibility and hiding behind

the manager — Antonio Conte lasered in on

this during his St Mary’s meltdown — so this

feels significant. It also chimed with Son’s

attitude during his interview with the

British press on the pre-season tour. “It was

a mess last season,” Son said. “As players,

young and old, we should all take

responsibility.” He repeated this message to

his team-mates in Saturday’s meeting,

saying: “We should all take responsibility.

For nice behaviour, for good training sessions.”

 

Sceptical fans will probably feel that actions

speak louder than words in this regard, but

it’s encouraging to hear Spurs’ new captains

talking in this way and echoing the head

coach because the expectation is that this

has to be a collective responsibility — that

as Postecoglou said, it’s not just about the

three who have been given official titles.

Yves Bissouma, for instance, is someone

Maddison described in July as “a leader, he

talks. He’s very demanding and very vocal”.

Soon after taking the Spurs job, Postecoglou

encouraged Bissouma to take more

responsibility and help set the standards for

the younger players, and if the three

captains are expanded into a bigger

leadership group, Bissouma, along with

Skipp, may well be a part of it. Pape Matar

Sarr told The Athletic in a recent interview

that he saw Bissouma as a “big brother”

after the way he helped him settle on and

off the pitch last year.

Then there’s Guglielmo Vicario, who will be

a vocal presence in goal and has a

gregarious personality.

As with so many elements at Spurs, their

leadership is entering a brave new world.