“From dream to nightmare to dream again.”
These were the words posted on an Instagram by Tottenham goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky in the hours after the thrill of making a first Champions League start dissolved and all a goalkeeper’s worst fears were realised.
The 22-year-old was a surprise pick in Igor Tudor’s starting XI for Tottenham Hospur’s Champions League last-16 first leg against Atletico Madrid on Tuesday. Chosen ahead of Spurs’ usual No 1, Guglielmo Vicario, Kinsky was making his first appearance since October at Atletico’s daunting Wanda Metropolitano home.
It took six minutes for Kinsky’s world to start falling apart: the Czech slipped while taking a goal kick, gifting the home side possession and ultimately allowing Marcos Llorente to fire in.
Less than 10 minutes later, with Spurs now 2-0 down after another awful error (this time from defender Micky van de Ven), Kinsky miskicked a simple back pass, allowing Julian Alvarez to effectively walk the ball into an empty net.
Moments later, Kinsky looked up to see Vicario ready on the touchline and his number being flashed up by the fourth official. As Kinsky trudged disconsolately off the pitch, there was no acknowledgement whatsoever from his manager. Only three goalkeepers have been substituted earlier in Champions League history.
Kinsky received widespread sympathy, especially from fellow members of the goalkeepers’ union. Former England and Tottenham goalkeeper Paul Robinson said on the BBC that Tudor’s actions were “selfish” and he had shown “no consideration for the young goalkeeper.” Ex-Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel, meanwhile, said the interim manager had “absolutely killed (Kinsky’s) career. It’s going to take something to get over that.”
It is hard to disagree. The white heat of that emotional night may have died down, but the ramifications could be long-lasting.
How can Kinsky come back from such a humiliation? How will his team-mates react to seeing their friend treated that way? And what of Tudor? Many are surprised the Croatian is set to lead Spurs into tomorrow’s game at Liverpool given his record of four defeats in four — a historic nadir for the club’s new manager. Can he really rebuild relationships as the club prepares for a desperate relegation battle?
Tudor has been short of allies in recent weeks, but not everyone is unsympathetic to his plight.
“Without any doubt, the coach had a reason (for switching goalkeepers),” says Gus Poyet, the former Brighton and Sunderland manager, who also played for Tottenham. “The coach made the very difficult decision to change Vicario and put in the No 2. And then an even more difficult decision to change him after the two mistakes.”
The Uruguayan recalls a time when, a month after taking over a Sunderland side that was bottom of the Premier League table in the 2013-14 season, he chose to drop the No 1 goalkeeper, Keiren Westwood, and replace him with Vito Mannone for a home game against the eventual champions, Manchester City.
“I put in my mind, without talking to any other staff, that when it comes, the most difficult game for us so far, I will try the No 2, because I want to see him in a big game — meaning a game that, if it goes normal, we’ve got little chance to win,” Poyet recalls.
It was a gamble, but it paid off. Sunderland won 1-0 and ultimately survived by five points.
“(Mannone) played the whole season after that,” says Poyet. “If we lose that game 4-0, I would probably look like an idiot. But the situation is that you have to look for solutions and the more good decisions you make, the better for the team. And if you don’t make good decisions, well, you saw the result.”
What it comes down to, he says, is trying to make what you think is the best decision for the team. In Tottenham’s case, both the decision to select Kinsky and then to remove him from the game were made while thinking about the best outcome for the team.
“They want to play him and they want to take him out, to release him from that pressure,” Poyet says. “Because the team is more important than a single player.”
So much for the practical considerations. What, though, about the psychological stakes? How does a player come back from such a humiliation?
History is littered with talented stars who have been brought to earth by catastrophic displays — think former Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius, whose horrible errors during the 2018 Champions League final against Real Madrid effectively ended his career at the club.
“For a young player like Kinsky, this wasn’t just 17 minutes on the pitch, it was the hopes, dreams and preparation that led up to it”, says sports psychologist Jeremy Snape, host of Inside the Mind of Champions podcast.
“Moments like this can define a career and an athlete’s life. The question now is whether it is a defining chapter that supercharges his resilience, or an emotional scar that shapes everything after. Just like recovering from a shocking injury, his team-mates and inner circle will have a huge role to play in his recovery.”
What is it that will determine the direction Kinsky takes? “It’s how he meets that experience”, says sports psychologist Sam Kotadia, who works with the first team at Wrexham. “If he can hold in the heat of that feeling, be deeply present with it, then the impact could not necessarily be negative; it could actually be the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
“If you can weather it and, despite the whole world talking about it and feeling humiliated, hold the line in that feeling and know that, actually, potentially I’m OK, then that’s growth, that’s resilience. If I don’t give myself space to feel, that’s when I can create a block — or you can call it a trauma.”
It can also become negative, says Kotadia, if blame gets involved. “You might start indulging things like ‘The manager shouldn’t have done this’, etc. “That only creates more animosity and anger. If we indulge that for the rest of our career, we’re not going to do too well. Blame doesn’t help a culture move forward.”
There is also the risk of Kinsky’s team-mates being negatively affected by seeing Tudor’s treatment of his goalkeeper.
Jack Cassidy, a coach at Major League Soccer side Portland Timbers, was once the assistant coach of a club where the manager had a habit of making multiple substitutions at half-time in games. It was a trend which began to impact players’ first-half performances.
“Lads were so scared that they might get taken off,” he says. “That manager is a really terrific person, and if you asked him, ‘How do you want your players to feel on the football pitch?’, he would have said, ‘I want them to play with freedom, express themselves.’
“If you looked at his coaching behaviour, that was the opposite. If a player made a mistake, he’d be on at them straight away. That was one of my biggest learnings; seeing how the pressure on the coach impacted him — there was a massive disconnect between his behaviours and how he actually wanted the players to feel.”
After the game, Tudor explained that he had never before, in 15 years of coaching, done what he did to Kinksy. In his view, it had been “necessary to preserve the guy, preserve the team.” He added that he had spoken to the goalkeeper since, but there was no comment on his lack of acknowledgement for the player as he left the pitch.
For Poyet, who won 26 caps for Uruguay in a distinguished playing career, avoiding a player who has been substituted can be the wiser move.
“You know the players and you need to be smart as well not to create a bigger problem,” he says. “You don’t know how the player is going to react.”
When Poyet takes off a player, especially if it’s a “big character” who is likely to be unhappy at being removed, he purposely tries to avoid him, so as not to create a bigger issue. “For him as well. Because if I go (to him) and he does something silly, then we have a problem.
“So I don’t force the players. I had a few coaches who forced the players to shake hands with the coach. I think it’s too ‘dictatorship’. So I don’t think it is right or wrong. I think it depends on how you are and on the feelings of the moment.”
What is true, adds Poyet, is that “the kid was destroyed.” He makes the point that it won’t just be Kinsky either, but his family and friends, too. “Everybody suffered. He’s the worst, but all people who love the kid, after that, would be down and fuming badly.
“This football passion that we have affects more than the player or the coach themselves. That’s something that we don’t put into consideration; here, there are many people who got really hurt, apart from the player, apart from the result at the end.”
Is there a way back?
Tudor was doing his best to rebuild bridges in his pre-match media conference for the Liverpool game, telling reporters that Kinsky “will play for sure” this season and praising his “positive” response in training.
“This is normal, this is a mistake that will happen,” he added. “For sure in his career there will be other mistakes but he has a strength and quality and in front of him is a very good career.”
Asked more generally about the mood at the club, Tudor said: “Like everything in life, you can choose how to see the situation. So, you can stay and cry, or you can fight. You can be the victim or you can say I can change something.”
For Tudor, the solution is simple, but not easy. “He needs to win,” says Poyet. “You can be the best coach in the world, put on the best training sessions, the best PowerPoint presentation, the best analysis of the opposition, the best plan to play, but you only convince the players by winning.
“If you don’t win, the players don’t get convinced. And if you don’t convince the players, you don’t have any chance.”
And for Kinsky, it’s all about how he interprets the events of Tuesday night.
“When we label a mistake as pervasive and permanent — ‘I’m a total failure and I always will be’ — it becomes a deep identity flaw that’s hard to escape,” Snape says. “The most resilient players do something different: they depersonalise it and isolate the setback to a specific action at a specific moment. ‘I’m a failure’ becomes ‘I lost my balance as that pass arrived at 7.32pm, I took the wrong option and that’s something I can fix.’ One is a life sentence; the other is a powerful lesson that shapes every training session going forward.”
The other strategy is to change the timeframe, he says. In the immediate aftermath, things can feel painful and raw, but imagine looking back as a successful 30-year-old and that 17 minutes will be a blip.
“Stuart Broad got hit for six sixes in the T20 World Cup (by India’s Yuvraj Singh in 2007) and went on to become one of England’s greatest bowlers, so setbacks can fade,” says Snape. “But only if the athlete’s mind allows them to.”
Kinsky’s Instagram note suggests he is already “dreaming again,” which is a positive sign that perhaps those 17 minutes against Atletico will one day be a mere footnote in his story, and no longer the headline.