Hugo Lloris says his faith in Daniel Levy was shaken before Champions League Final

Former Tottenham captain, Hugo Lloris, has revealed that his belief in the club’s desire to win was shaken after a moment with Daniel Levy.

The Champions League Final 2019

When you mention the 2019 Champions League Final, many Spurs fans drift into a thousand-yard stare. Drawn into traumatic memories of coming so close to glory, but their hopes were shattered with only 1 minute on the clock.

It was the culmination of Tottenham’s project under Mauricio Pochettino, who came close to ending Spurs’ trophy drought with second-place finishes in the Premier League and League Cup.

However, Hugo Lloris, who was a mainstay during the Pochettino era, has revealed one interaction with Daniel Levy made him doubt whether the club had the right mentality to succeed.

Lloris says Daniel Levy accepts ‘second best’ at Tottenham

Exclusive excerpts in The Guardian from the soon-to-be-released Hugo Lloris autobiography, have detailed that Levy gifted the Tottenham players engraved watches four days before the Champions League Final. The gift was not well received.

“At first, we were excited to see the elegant boxes. Then we opened them and discovered that he’d had the back of each timepiece engraved with the player’s name and ‘Champions League Finalist 2019’. ‘Finalist.’

Who does such a thing at a moment like this? I still haven’t got over it, and I’m not alone. If we’d won, he wouldn’t have asked for the watches back to have ‘Winner’ engraved instead.

I have considerable respect and esteem for the man and all he has done for the club as chairman – I got to know him – but there are things he is simply not sensitive to. As magnificent 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 had been 1–0 down after a couple of minutes: so it was written.”

A well-intentioned, but misguided gift

Reaching the Champions League Final was a genuinely incredible feat for a Spurs side that was beginning to crumble after poor squad investment. Levy was not wrong to be proud of the players for that achievement, but Lloris’ reaction is an important lesson in why football-minded individuals are an essential part of a club’s management hierarchy.

Daniel Levy has provided infrastructure like the stadium and Hotspur Way, which has cemented Tottenham as a top Premier League club. However, he has often been at fault for making footballing mistakes along the way. We can only hope that Levy has learnt from these kinds of mistakes.

If Spurs can make their way to another illustrious final, hopefully, the players are now filled with the belief that their goals of winning are aligned with and supported by those who run the club.

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