David Ornstein, writing for The Athletic, has dropped a bombshell report today, writing that Tottenham Hotspur’s 20-year-old midfielder and Sweden international Lucas Bergvall has expressed a desire to leave the club this summer after the conclusion of the World Cup.
Bergvall was an extremely highly rated youngster and it was considered a coup at the time when Ange Postecoglou convinced him to join Tottenham Hotspur ahead of Barcelona. He’s gotten a lot of playing time as a young professional at a very bad time at the club when things had been falling apart. Last season saw him playing for a bad manager (Thomas Frank) in terrible tactics with a mismatched squad that had huge holes and massive injuries. When Roberto De Zerbi came in, he barely played Bergvall, preferring experienced professionals to save the club from relegation, which honestly you can understand under the circumstances.
But now Lucas is watching, along with the rest of us, as the club under Roberto De Zerbi, is blocking his pathway to the first team, targeting players like Sandro Tonali, Mateus Fernades, and Adam Wharton in midfield and stating his preference for current players like Rodrigo Bentancur. You can hardly blame him for wondering if he might be better off with a fresh start.
But this gets to the heart of De Zerbi and the Lewis Kids’ plan to make a big splash in the window after two 17th placed finishes. Bergvall has proven himself to be a footballer capable of playing and succeeding in the Premier League. We don’t know what his final level is — is he a mid-table Premier League footballer? Could he succeed in a Champions League caliber side? — but it feels like he, and Spurs, deserve a chance to find out at the club that brought him in from Sweden. Bergvall, however, does not appear to be the kind of player that De Zerbi wants in his newly-configured Tottenham side, and that’s a shame.
Instead, Spurs seemed hell-bent on ignoring youth to spend huge amounts of money for experienced players at the expense of younger guys like Bergvall, Archie Gray, and Mathys Tel. This is at some level understandable, but also a bit frustrating, especially in the case of De Zerbi, who has a volatile record and, like his compatriot Antonio Conte, is not a manager we should expect to remain at the club longer than a couple of years. We’re stocking the club with quality talent that skews older at the request of a single manager who has a history of not sticking around, and once again if De Zerbi does eventually explode into a cloud of pique and rage, we’ll once again be stuck holding the bag with a club full of De Zerbi players that don’t make sense with whomever we bring in next.
I’m so tired. I’m tired of this whole cycle. I’m tired of bringing in talented youth, managing them badly, and then watching them move on and excel somewhere else when these kids could form the core of the NEXT great Tottenham team. I’m tired of overspending for “the manager’s guys” and ignoring long-term squad building while building a squad that might not deliver Champions League football immediately.
I understand Bergvall’s desire to leave under these circumstances. He’s only 20 years old, has a ridiculously high ceiling, and will continue to develop over the next few years. He probably should leave Spurs, and I wouldn’t blame him for forcing his way out. I just hate that this is happening and that a quality young talent, if he blossoms, will do so with some other club instead of Tottenham Hotspur.