Cuti Romero, Tottenham Hotspur’s club captain last season, has departed the club for Atletico Madrid. Not that he was likely to retain his captaincy even if he had stayed — it was a foregone conclusion that Roberto De Zerbi was going to name his own leadership group ahead of the new Premier League season.
That decision has now been made. Your new Tottenham Hotspur club captain is: this guy.
Am I surprised? Well, yeah, a little! I honestly thought James Maddison had it in the bag, possibly Pedro Porro.
And indeed, both of them are in the leadership group along with Ben Davies and Archie Gray. Here’s Roberto De Zerbi with the statement, as posted on Tottenham’s website.
“The new captain is Micky van de Ven. The second Pedro Porro, the third Ben Davies, the fourth James Maddison, the fifth Archie Gray. They all deserve to be captains and in the group of the captains.”
It’s a remarkable turnaround for Micky, who was sure making noises like he wanted to leave the club at the worst point of last season. But he’s a transformed man — signing a new contract at the club after bonding with De Zerbi, and now club captain to go along with it. This news is tempered a bit by the fact that he has yet to play a single minute of preseason football while dealing with an undisclosed injury (apparently), but his selection as club captain is both a representation of the trust and respect he has in the locker room and with the coaching staff, and an acknowledgement that he’ll be playing an important role for the club when he’s healthy.
It’s also maybe a hint that Maddison may not be playing as many minutes as we thought he was going to this season, or at minimum will have his playing minutes robustly managed to avoid a recurrence of injury. It’s also nice to see Ben Davies in the leadership group, and Archie Gray as part of the group as young as he is suggests he’s likely a future captain if he stays at Spurs long-term.
As an American, I’ve long held the belief that the club captaincy is an overrated and overthought phenomenon that doesn’t really matter that much, but this is a minority view. Clearly this is important to a lot of people, and while this is a bit of a surprise, I can’t say that Micky doesn’t deserve the role. Hopefully he can grow into it the way Son Heung-Min did. He certainly is beloved by fans and should be significantly more popular in the role that Cuti Romero ever was (rightly or wrongly).
Congrats, Micky! You’re so fine you blow my mind.
