Tottenham's Transformation Under Roberto De Zerbi: From Tears to Triumph
There was a point last spring when Roberto De Zerbi walked into the Tottenham dressing room at the Stadium of Light, looked around at the players lying on the floor, some of them in tears, and asked a question that cut through the silence.
“Did we pass away?”
It was only his first game in charge, a 1-0 defeat at Sunderland, but the scene felt like the aftermath of something far worse than a single loss. Spurs were broken, frightened, staring down the barrel of relegation with seven matches to save themselves and a manager parachuted in to perform triage.
They survived on the final day. Barely. But four months on, the landscape around De Zerbi and his squad could hardly look more different.
From tears in Sunderland to coffee in Sydney
In Sunderland, players lay on their backs, crushed. In Sydney, they lounge on sofas, laughing over flat whites.
At the team hotel, a short walk from the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, Spurs occupy a private floor. They have their own barista. Table tennis tables are in constant use, rallies punctuated by shouts and laughter as a squad worth a club-record £237m in new signings begins to knit together.
This is not the mood of a club still blinking in the harsh light of survival. It is the sound of a group daring to talk again about the “upper echelons” of English football and trophies, instead of trapdoors and what-ifs.
The new faces are everywhere. Sandro Tonali, the £100m headline act from Newcastle. Mateus Fernandes, signed for £85m from West Ham. Jan Paul van Hecke. Andrew Robertson. Martin Dubravka. All have already featured on the pre-season tour in Australia and New Zealand.
Only Marcos Senesi, fresh from a World Cup final with Argentina, has been eased in more gently. Granted extended leave, he missed the tour but is now on the grass at Hotspur Way, folding into a squad that has been ripped up and reassembled at speed.
“I deserve to want the top players, because now Tottenham deserves to build up a top team,” De Zerbi says, and there is no hint of apology in the way he says it.
Two futures, one choice
Spurs went into the summer with two transfer plans drawn up: one if they went down, one if they clung on.
They clung on. Just. And so Plan A came off the shelf.
De Zerbi insists he would have stayed even in the Championship, but he never had to find out. Instead, he moved quickly to shape a Premier League squad, while “respecting the will” of senior players like captain Cristian Romero and goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, who could still depart.
“At the beginning of my time in April I had one million individual meetings,” he jokes. The joke lands because it’s not far from the truth. Player after player walked into his office to discuss their futures.
“They told me if they didn’t want to be here. I said: ‘Yes, help me to stay up, and then I help you to leave. If you don’t help me to stay up, you stay underwater with me.’”
The message was brutal, simple, and effective. Spurs stayed up. Those who wanted out will get their chance. Those who stayed have walked into a club that barely resembles the one they left in May.
New faces upstairs, new edge downstairs
The upheaval has not stopped at the dressing room door. Over the past 12 months, Tottenham have been reshaped from the boardroom down, a response to supporter anger and two seasons that skated too close to disaster.
New chief executive Vinai Venkatesham now runs the club on behalf of the Lewis Family Trust. Beside him, technical director Johan Lange – the lone survivor from the previous regime – leads recruitment, backed by director of football operations Rafi Moersen and performance director Dan Lewindon, both hired from City Football Group.
Lewindon’s brief is clear: fix the injury record. Keep the players on the pitch.
De Zerbi, though, has no intention of limiting himself to the touchline. He prowls through every department. And when the subject turns to transfers, his language hardens.
“In the transfer market, when I want one player, I become like a shark. No chance to say no.”
That shark has been busy. Fernandes for £85m. Tonali for £100m. Deals that announce Tottenham’s intent as loudly as any slogan or mission statement.
“I love working in the transfer market. It’s not a pressure, it’s one of the nicest parts in my work, in my job,” he says. The enjoyment, he explains, comes from responsibility. From being the one who picks up the phone, makes the case, and then lives with the consequences.
“When you take the decision, you take the responsibility. If the coach calls the player, you can build a special connection at the beginning. With Mateus Fernandes, I spoke with the mum, with the father.”
He went further than a sales pitch. De Zerbi told Fernandes’ father he would be his son’s “second dad” in England. A promise, not a slogan.
Beating the big boys to the punch
Tottenham have not only spent, they have competed. And won.
Van Hecke arrived despite interest from Chelsea. Spurs had already held off Manchester United and Manchester City to land Fernandes and Tonali, two midfielders whose combined fees would have been unthinkable for this club not long ago.
Transfers at this level are a game of speed, nerve and psychology. Those involved say Spurs knew they had to be both aggressive and quick, and that aggression would have to stretch to transfer fees, wages and De Zerbi’s personal involvement in persuading players to buy into a project that, on paper, still carries risk.
One of the manager’s more audacious plays came in April, when Spurs were still fighting for their lives. After a 2-2 draw with Brighton, sealed by Georginio Rutter’s 95th-minute equaliser, De Zerbi sent a message to the man who assisted the goal: Van Hecke.
“You wanted to push down Tottenham for Brighton when you made the assist to Rutter, now you have to come to me, you have no choice,” he told him.
It was half-joke, half-challenge. It ended with Van Hecke in a Spurs shirt.
With Tonali, the approach was even more direct. The day after Tottenham secured their Premier League status with a final-day win over Everton, De Zerbi texted the midfielder. Soon after, he sat down with him at his home in Brescia. That meeting proved decisive. Club staff then moved in to close the deal.
Now, with the midfield rebuilt and the defence reinforced, De Zerbi is teasing what he calls a final attacking “bomba”. Two forwards are expected, with Manchester City’s Savinho among the targets.
Spending with a plan
The numbers are eye-catching. They have to be, to tempt this calibre of player to a side that finished 17th twice in a row.
The Lewis family injected £100m into the club in June, but De Zerbi bristles at the idea of reckless spending. He points to Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, all of whom have spent heavily in recent seasons, and insists he is under “no pressure” to justify the outlay overnight.
There have been exits, too. Luka Vuskovic’s £45m move to Brighton has brought in a substantial fee. Questions still hang over the futures of Lucas Bergvall and Djed Spence.
“We assessed the request of Vuskovic [to join Brighton], with Vinai, with Johan together, because I consider Tottenham’s money my money,” De Zerbi says. “It’s like the owner is my father, I think you don’t want to ask your father to lose money.
“Like all the big clubs, we have to sell a player at as big of a price as possible and we have to bring a player with a small price, we are starting for a plan of five seasons because we are building.”
That logic also underpinned a rare act of restraint. Spurs chose not to turn Joao Palhinha’s loan from Bayern Munich into a permanent deal, not because De Zerbi doubted his quality, but because the overall financial package did not fit the club’s structure.
This is not a free-for-all. It is a rebuild mapped out over five years, not five weeks.
Cleaning the air
The damage of last season ran deeper than the league table. After that first defeat at Sunderland, the gloom seeped into the training ground.
“The day after I organised a meeting without players and I said, ‘The first one I see say something negative, I send you home immediately’,” De Zerbi recalls.
He wanted to strip out the fatalism, the habit of expecting the worst. Changing “behaviour, attitude and spirit” has become as important to him as changing personnel.
These are players who had already endured one traumatic season, finishing 17th under Ange Postecoglou but salvaging a Europa League triumph that softened the blow. The following year, with relegation suddenly real, the fear took hold.
To break it, De Zerbi turned to something simple: a night out.
He took the squad for “one big dinner in Mayfair, with alcohol”. They talked, they drank, they laughed. They were reminded they were human beings before they were footballers clinging to form and contracts.
He still believes they were unlucky in their final matches and could have secured safety earlier. But he also believes that, by then, they had begun to see themselves through a warped lens.
“I think they considered themselves in that moment worse than the people thought,” he admits. The healing, he says, is not finished. “I hope next time they organise [dinner and drinks] for themselves.”
Because that, to him, is the sign of a real team: one that doesn’t need the manager to book the table.
“With love, friendship and care, you become top, top, top.”
From bodies on the floor in Sunderland to coffee and competition in Sydney, Tottenham under De Zerbi have already travelled a long way. The question now is whether this rebuilt, re-energised club can climb far enough, fast enough, to match the manager’s ambition – and the scale of the gamble they have just taken on his vision.
