Tottenham Hotspur had to make the worst walk in club football in 2019 as they went to collect their runners-up medals after losing 2-0 to Liverpool in the Champions League Final.
There had been a real hope around supporters that the North London club would build on reaching the final, however, that was far from the case following a shocking summer of spending.
Since the 2018/19 season, Spurs have only played Champions League football on two more occasions and have been through five different managers, as they struggled to ever hit those heights again.
Now, one of the key players from that team has opened up on the club’s reaction to losing to Liverpool and how their response to kicking on shocked him.
Hugo Lloris on Tottenham’s reaction to losing the Champions League Final
Former Tottenham captain Hugo Lloris has expressed his disappointment at the club’s reaction to losing the 2019 Champions League Final.
After the game, the Frenchman reveals he got the sense that players and staff weren’t disappointed enough at having lost the biggest game in club football.
Lloris told The Guardian: “At the post-match reception at the hotel, I had the impression that some people from the club and certain players were not sufficiently despondent at having lost.”
Lloris also explained how nobody from the club’s hierarchy offered him and the team the support to really kick on: “I would have liked people to come up to me and say, ‘Don’t worry, Hugo. Never again. We’ll give you the means for a comeback.’
“But when I returned 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 lost final, and we shouldn’t have either,” added the World Cup winner.
Hugo Lloris reveals Tottenham’s gift days before the Champions League Final
Lloris has revealed that Daniel Levy gifted all the players luxury watches four days before the final, however, engraved on them were the words, ‘Champions League Finalist’: “Four days before the final, Daniel Levy called us all together to announce that, with the support of a sponsor, we would each receive a luxury aviator watch from the club.
“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’.
To this day, the 37-year-old still can’t believe the club were simply rewarding the players for just reaching the final and that obviously played a big part in the mentality just days before the game.
“‘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,” claimed Lloris.
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