Jermaine Jenas played with a lot of very talented players at Tottenham.
Indeed, Jermaine Jenas was lucky enough to share the pitch with the likes of Gareth Bale, Ledley King and even Luka Modric at one point.
Jenas himself was a top player too, in fact, Jenas was rather underrated in his pomp.
However, according to Jenas, speaking on The Dressing Room Podcast, he played with one big-name player who was actually rather disappointing at Tottenham.
According to Jenas, Edgar Davids was a very disappointing player technically, claiming that he was nowhere near as skilful as some of the marketing campaigns around the player at that time would have you believe.
Edgar Davids was disappointing at Tottenham
Jenas spoke about the players he shared a dressing room with at Spurs.
According to the former England star Edgar Davids was disappointing as a player on a technical level, but he did note he was a great leader in the dressing room.
“As I walked in straight away, to be fair to Edgar Davids, Edgar, what I loved about Edgar, there was two sides with Edgar. One was disappointing, and one was like, I can see why you are what you are,” Jenas said.
“The disappointing side is I grew upon the adverts of Edgar. Yeah, but then when I played with him, as much as I loved him, technically I just didn’t see it.
“Was that because it was the end of his career?” Jenas was asked.
“I don’t know because I played against him at Juve as well. And when I look back, all those tricks and stuff, weren’t really a big part of his game, if I’m honest with you,” Jenas said.
“If you ask him to hit a 60-yard diagonal, he could only hit it about 30 yards. You know what I mean? It wasn’t really his bag.”
Edgar Davids’ career achievements
Jenas says that Davids was a disappointing player on a technical level, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t an all-time great of the game.
Indeed, while the midfielder may not have been as skilful or as tricky as many of the adverts of the time would suggest, he still achieved incredible things during his career.
Technical ability is, of course, very important, but there’s a lot more to the game than that too, including leadership, workrate and ability to read a game.
Ultimately, you don’t play for teams such as Barcelona, Juventus and Ajax unless you’re a special player, and that’s what Davids was.