When Tottenham Hotspur appointed Roberto De Zerbi as head coach to save their season, I would not have expected him to end up being a player-whisperer. In fact, considering all the crap he had in his background, including massive fall-outs while at both Marseille and Brighton, I would’ve predicted that he’d piss off a lot more players than he mollified.
Well, consider me Mayor of Wrongsville. We’ve seen over the past few months how De Zerbi has galvanized the squad and won over a lot of Spurs players
that previously were ready to bail. The most notable of those players is Micky van de Ven, who since RDZ was appointed has signed a new contract and was made club captain. But another one of those is, apparently, Lucas Bergvall.
Bergvall was notably and publicly unhappy at the start of the summer after Spurs signed Sandro Tonali and Mateus Fernandes, and for good reason — after working his way to becoming a rotational starter over the past two seasons, it looked like he was poised to be a benchwarmer this year, and he was pretty vocal about that. During the World Cup he and his representatives were openly asking other clubs to make a bid and supposedly at one point he asked to be sold.
But things changed during the club’s tour to Australia and New Zealand, after Bergvall returned from the World Cup and his stint with Sweden. De Zerbi put his arm around his shoulder, let him play a lot of preseason minutes, and essentially changed his mind, as the head coach said directly yesterday.
That’s huge. Bergvall would’ve likely commanded a big transfer fee, something around the £50m-60m mark, but it’s better for Spurs and for Lucas that he stays and fights for his spot. Spurs don’t have European competition, but they’ll still have a good amount of minutes to spread around, and we know that RDZ is a reactive manager who tailors his tactics to the opponent. Bergvall isn’t going to be a regular starter but there’s every chance, for example, that he’ll start against Brentford today, and he’ll get plenty of rotational minutes as the season goes on.
I like Lucas a lot and think he’s got a bright future ahead of him. I’m also glad that he’s decided to stay as I’d rather Spurs unlock his potential rather than some other club. This is good news.
