Brave New World

by Guillem Balague

  He calls me into the office sometimes. When we beat Everton he called me in and showed me some clips, including the assist I got for Dele’s goal. We had a little joke about the fact that I didn’t know what to do with the ball, who to play it to. He was almost saying, ‘Harry, what are you doing, why are you crossing it?’ It was the 88th minute, we were 2–1 up but luckily it paid off. You could see by his reaction that he was delighted that I did not think like him at that point.

  We have cameramen and camerawomen that walk around filming. They film everything. They film our pre-activation work, all our gym. We did a recovery session a few months ago. We went down to the pool and did ice baths, some were doing swimming and jogging in the pool and the others were doing core, and he brought the cameras down there and filmed us in the pool as well.

  Before a game, when we are getting dressed and before the warm-up, he is quiet, he won’t speak to us at all. If it’s a home game, he’ll be in his dressing room. He’ll stay out of the way, let us prepare. When the boys come back from the warm-up and are getting ready for the last two or three minutes before kick-off, he’ll come in and that’s when he’ll really start to get us going. He’ll be shouting, ‘Come on boys, first minute let’s get into them, front foot, let’s be solid, let’s be brave, enjoy it.’ He’s massive on enjoying the game. He just reiterates the things that we know we need to do, helps us get focused and gets the boys in the right frame of mind.

  At half-time his interventions are sometimes necessary. Like when we played Monaco in the Champions League. I think in the first half we were getting a lot of the ball in our half but they were on top of us and getting a lot of shots off. And in the dressing room he changed the formation and we went from a 4-2-3-1 to a diamond. He made a few points. He often brings in a screen so at half-time he can show us clips of the first half, and can tell us, ‘Come out wide here, come narrow here,’ information like that. If we are doing really well, he’ll just reiterate that we need to go out there and stay positive and not get complacent.

  He’s massive on the mental side of things. Physically we are in great shape, he knows that. Technically we are up there as one of the best teams in the Premiership and he knows that too. It’s mentality that separates us from the rest. He showed clips of us earlier in the season, against Man City, when we were on the front foot, in their faces, not letting them play so all of a sudden the momentum of the game was in our hands and that’s what he wants. In the first five minutes almost bully the opposition, make them scared so they are on the back foot. All that is done with the mind as well as with the feet.

  Eric Dier

  I was bought as a centre-back but ended up playing as a right-back. I made my debut at Sporting as a right-back, so it wasn’t new to me. I grew up in Portugal and it’s quite easy for me to adapt to things. The methodology here is very similar to the way football is played in Portugal. If I’d come here to an English manager it would probably have been a lot harder for me. One of the things that helped me decide to come was that Spurs had a foreign manager.

  I’d only arrived the week before so I was surprised he let me play against West Ham. I scored and did well. I thought, ‘Yes, he trusts me.’

  I’m fluent in Portuguese but it’s funny. When he speaks to me he speaks in Spanish and I reply in English, although if I’m in the office we all speak in English.

  I’m a completely different person now to when I arrived. Physically, mentally. I play at a different intensity. I was aggressive at moments but he keeps pushing that aggression and it’s much more focused now.

  Danny Rose

  The season before he came I didn’t have a particularly good season and there was talk about me moving on and I was interested in doing so. He was officially appointed in May and then sometime in June, when I was off, my agent told me that Mauricio would like to see me. I spent about an hour in his office and the first thing he told me was that he didn’t want me to move on. He had seen me play and he thought that I could be one of the best. He said that if I didn’t believe that, then there was no point in my being here. If I followed his philosophy and bought into his ideas, he added, he would make me one of Europe’s best left-backs as well as an England player. Two and a half years down the line he has improved my game massively and before I was injured I was England’s left-back. He was true to his word and staying was the best decision I ever made.

  It took a while to get to grips with how Mauricio wants to play, how hard he wants you to train. Even small things like arriving late he finds very disrespectful and it was hard to understand at the start.

  Every morning he goes around shaking everybody’s hand and you can see when he’s doing that that he’s looking into your eyes to see how you are that day. Within a few seconds of speaking to you, he knows if you’re going to do well.

  We got beaten in one game earlier in his tenure but I thought I played well. The next day I went into his office and he had 26 video clips showing everything I did wrong.

  Before this I used to think you had to have older experienced players to challenge at the top of the league. He has proved me and everybody else wrong.

  I now have a relationship with a manager that I have never had before. He’ll text me sometimes saying, ‘Watch this player,’ or ‘What do you think of this player?’ But we also speak about a lot of things away from football – about family, and investments. People ask me when I do interviews who is my best friend at the club and automatically I think of players, but when I sit down and think about it, I would say the best friend I have at the club is my manager.

  He always says you need to have a clear mind so you can give 100 per cent, and whatever small problem you may have, be it with your family or your friends, he wants to help you. I’m the sort of person who likes to keep myself to myself. But recently my uncle passed away and the manager was the first person I called. He was at home on his day off, and he got into his car straight away and came to see me. The manager and his staff all helped me get through it. The manager asked for my dad’s number so that he could contact the family.

  I went to his house two weeks ago. He has a nice collection of red wine and he gave me a bottle from Argentina. He explained so much about the wine, where and how you plant the vines, what grape to use, and how you look after them how the grapes turn out according to how you treat them. Very much like a football team.

  Daniel Levy

  At Tottenham, we have always tried to develop players and make them superstars rather than buy superstars. Our fans have a real link with homegrown players and so you have got to try to find a coach who actually believes in that philosophy. A lot of coaches say they do but when it comes to it, when they’re working, they are not interested in the young players. They prefer to buy players. I’ve always been striving to find that coach.

  When I looked at Mauricio at Southampton, two things stuck out for me. One was that he seemed to have the ability to develop players and he did a fantastic job there. The second one was how loyal he was to the club – he never criticised the players when things weren’t going right and remained very humble. That’s quite unique and it’s very hard to do in front of the media when you have just lost a game. You probably want to kill one or two players, but he never did. That’s how it should be. The telling-offs have to be in private. I wanted somebody who believes in the way I think we ought to operate so that’s why I went for Mauricio.

  There had been a change in the chairmanship at Southampton and he wasn’t totally happy. We also knew he had a buy-out clause in his contract. Having said that, Mauricio is an incredibly loyal person and this was also key in why we wanted him as manager. Regardless of what was in his contract, I don’t think he would have left Southampton if there hadn’t been personal circumstances that allowed him to do that.

  I didn’t contact him directly. It was through a third party to his lawyer but he wasn’t prepared to come to us mid-season or anything like that, it was only at the end of the season that he agreed to m
eet. He came to my house and we had a good meeting. We chatted for a couple of hours; his English wasn’t as good as it is now. At that time he was a lot more reserved too. In Europe, the relationship between the coach and the president is very different to the ones we establish here. I’m not the type of person who feels I’m up here and everyone else is below me – it’s very much everyone at the same level and I’ll talk to anyone at this club. Anyone can come and talk to me. That’s the relationship I want with my coach and I think it’s taken Mauricio a bit of time to understand that. Yes, I am the chairman, but he can have a very close relationship with me, which is probably different to how he perceives other presidents.

  Jesús Perez was also there at the meeting and it was important as sometimes he would have to translate. Jesús is fantastic, very bright, very loyal and I think they’re a great pair. And obviously he’s got two other coaches as well that he brought in as part of it. We had a couple of meetings. I think with Mauricio it’s very much about feeling, that is important to him, much more so than anything to do with the contract, money or anything like that. He was also intrigued because it was Tottenham, a big club, with a historical following in Argentina.

  Mauricio says to me that I took a gamble on him because, with all due respect to Southampton, the expectations there are less than they are at Tottenham and he wasn’t a big name. Most fans want names, but I have sometimes done the name bit and it hasn’t necessarily worked.

  The public perception is that managers always want more players and the chairman never wants to spend money. Actually the contrast with Mauricio is quite interesting. If I left it totally to Mauricio, we’d probably just have 11 players! I respect the fact he is definitely not the type of manager who wants to spend money. I know some fans and the media think we have to spend, spend, spend, but every time Tottenham has done a big transfer, generally speaking, those players haven’t been the best performing players. It’s been those players we bought below the radar for not a lot of money who gave us better performances.

  I’ve never put him under pressure because I am a great believer that all we can do is our best. I know other directors put coaches under pressure if they do not reach targets, finish in the top four or the top five, or whatever. I’ve never ever had that conversation with him. It’s not necessary. We just want to be the best we possibly can be and that’s all we can do.

  I remember having a conversation with Mauricio quite early on when we weren’t doing very well and the style of football was a bit different to what I expected. At Southampton it was quite fast-forward football and at the start here it didn’t feel as though that was what we were getting. I was a little bit concerned. He said, ‘Don’t worry, it will take time and the big thing is the fitness of the players.’ He was trying to build them up and to get footballers to his level of fitness, often a different level than most people would think. The work ethic of the team took time to be established. He’s here at seven o’clock in the morning, often here at seven o’clock at night. He’s totally dedicated to winning and he’s totally bought into the project.

  His ability to talk to all the staff and the link between the academy and the first team is so important. Most managers focus on the first team. They say they love the academy but . . . do they do anything about it? Mauricio often goes round to the academy, he watches some of the matches, he’s very integrated with the staff. John McDermott, who is the head of our academy, is always in Mauricio’s office. It’s one club. Very much like a family club; everybody knows everybody. We don’t have a massive infrastructure or big layers of management all over the place and you can get decisions made at this club very, very quickly.

  We’re both striving for the same thing, that’s perfection. He’s a perfectionist on the field and I’m a perfectionist off the field. You look at the training facility, probably the best in the world, a fantastic place and environment to work in and the new stadium too. We’re building a lodge which will be a 45-bedroom accommodation for the players. When he gets them doing double sessions he can force them to rest. All I can do is give him the very best resources the club can afford and then it’s up to him to make the best of them. We’re very integrated, so he knows exactly what we’re doing in terms of physical facilities and he is involved in suggesting changes and improvements. I see him most days, and we often text each other at night.

  I will go and see Mauricio after a game for five minutes. Most of the time I’m saying well done, not much more. There will be times when things don’t go well and the kind of bond we are creating means you stick together then. We are strong. I’m very careful what I say because that is his area, not mine. I will often say to him that was a great game, player X or player Y played great in my opinion. But I will never be critical. If he opens up to me and asks what do I think about a player or an ex-player, I’ll give an opinion, but really that is his remit.

  I don’t go into the changing rooms – that is his area. It’s his job to motivate and to give guidance to the players. When he needs me I will always be there for him. I’m quite a reserved person. I don’t like the limelight, so the idea of me standing in front of the players and giving them a speech is not going to happen. In the almost 17 years that I have been chairman I may have done it three or four times. I went down to congratulate everyone when we got into the Champions League and also when we failed to get to the Champions League after struggling against West Ham due to food poisoning. The players see me at the training ground all the time, my door is always open, so occasionally one or two of them might come to see me about something or they see me with Mauricio having breakfast, or lunch, and they always come over. It really is a family environment.

  Signings are a collective decision. Let’s say we decide we want to buy a player . . . a defender. Mauricio would be talking to the recruiting department, they would come up with some names; myself, Mauricio and one or two people in the recruiting department would sit down very informally and we’d talk about the options; then the recruitment department and myself would work to understand what is and isn’t possible. You can have these names but maybe they’re not possible, for one reason or another. Then the recruitment team would go back to Mauricio and say that of the six names, three of them are possible, and then we’d probably have a discussion about the pros and cons of each, such as the type of individual they are, whether old or young, what impact would he have on other positions in the team, does he only play in one position, and money may be relevant, lots of different things. Then Mauricio would decide if he wants player X or player Y or he may say, ‘I’m happy with either,’ and that’s when I really go to work. My job is to deliver what he wants. We can’t always have what we want but we certainly try our very best.

  We haven’t really discussed the money that is available. It’s not a secret, it will eventually be between Mauricio and me. We wouldn’t go public on it. Mauricio is very aware that firstly we have got a huge capital project that we are embarking upon. For two seasons we have been competing for the title but it’s unlikely that we can improve our starting XI without spending a huge sum of money and actually I don’t think that either I or Mauricio want to be in that model. It’s a huge responsibility, we’re a big club but it’s run as a proper club, we are self-sufficient. If we make a £60-million investment in a player, that means somebody else is going to be affected in our starting XI, and if we make a mistake, it’s very costly. If you look at some stats, particularly for the 2016–17 season – the best defensive record, scored more goals than any other team, best goal difference in our history, youngest squad in the Premier League – you realise we can only aim to improve the squad overall.

  I have always said to him that I want him to be a partner, that when he signed a contract for five years – which was a massive commitment for the club – it was on the basis that we were really going to commit to each other. I want Mauricio to be the Alex Ferguson of Tottenham Hotspur and he has the most fantastic opportunity to be that. I have confidence that he
can do it. We’re so aligned in where we want to be.

  I’d be surprised if there wasn’t interest in Mauricio from other clubs because it means we are doing well. He’s never given me any indication that he’d like to leave. He loves the project and he once sent me a picture of Bill Nicholson – our most famous manager from years ago – holding the fronts of the gates of the stadium. They are very historical gates and we’re keeping them at the new stadium. I replied, ‘One day it is going to be you,’ because that really is what I aspire to. I would love nothing more than Mauricio still to be our manager in ten to 15 years’ time. I think to really build success you need time, you need longevity. It’s easy to go and become a manager at Real Madrid, for instance. It’s a fantastic club, don’t get me wrong, but winning at Tottenham Hotspur is far greater than winning at Real Madrid, and he agrees.

  Mauricio wants this sense of achievement, this recognition, to be the main guy. And at this club, he can be the main guy. At some other clubs, the president is the main guy but that’s not how it is here. I’m so low key, I want him to be the main guy. Him.

  Sometimes it’s nice to be given something when you are not expecting it like the Bentley I gave him as a sign of appreciation. And it’s really weird, we went away for two days in France and we had a wine-tasting experience – we were obviously talking about players as well – and we came back and he bought me a gift and I bought him a gift and it was the same bottle of wine, a dessert wine we’d enjoyed! Isn’t that incredible?