The New York Times

As Tottenham Hotspur prepare for Wednesday evening’s Europa League final against Manchester United in Bilbao, a mix of friends, family, former coaches and team-mates offer unique insight into the squad determined to end a 17-year trophy drought.

Son Heung-min

Kevin Wimmer, friend and former team-mate at Spurs

Early on in my time at Spurs, I remember Allan Dixon, our team manager, telling me the club were signing another German-speaking player and asking if I could help him settle. I was expecting a German or maybe another Austrian, but of course it was Sonny.

I knew him from the Bundesliga but not on a personal level, but from that first day you could see that he was such an amazing guy. The mood in the team for sure with him is much better than without him because he brings this positive energy and is always joking. Of course, he can be serious as well, but most of the time, when it’s not on the pitch, he’s always happy and making jokes. The impact he has is even more obvious now he’s captain, I think.

We were together at Tottenham for two years and we spent nearly every day together. We’d play PlayStation after training, sometimes go out for dinner. His parents lived with him at the time; I would go to their house and his mom would cook for both of us — she always took care of me like I was family.

Sometimes in football when you change clubs, you lose contact with old team-mates but that was just the start of our friendship, and will still speak regularly to this day. I visited him in London earlier this season, and we were messaging towards the end of the Bodo/Glimt game when it was obvious Spurs were going to the final.

I know it would be a dream come true for Sonny if he can win this trophy with Spurs. He has been at the club for so many years and done an amazing job. He has always sacrificed himself for the team. I will be watching from my holiday in Bali — it would mean so much for him to win it, and I really, really hope he does.

Cristian Romero

Miguel Veloso, team-mate at Genoa

I remember Cuti arriving at Genoa in 2018 as a 20-year-old kid, coming to a new country, a new culture, and a new language for him. But he came with a lot of personality and character — a kid who worked hard every single day. He was training with us in the first team but the coach, Davide Ballardini, had him playing with the Primavera (youth team).

But when Ivan Juric came in as coach in October, his first game was against Juventus, and he put Cuti straight into the first XI for the first time.

He played extremely well, and from there he played all the games for us. I always believed he could achieve big, big things because he has a strong character, and personality on the ball.

When he moved to Juventus I couldn’t believe they didn’t play him, but when he went to Atalanta I knew that with Gian Piero Gasperini he would become a top, top centre-back. I am very happy for his success. When we played together, I had a connection with him because he was a good kid, a good person, and a leader by example.

I am happy and proud for him to have the success that he deserves.

James Maddison

Steven Pressley, manager at Coventry City

There have been very few players that I can honestly say I’ve seen play just once before knowing they’re going to be a top player. But I could see from the moment I laid eyes on James that he was something special.

From his first session training with the first team he had that confidence, that belief, where he wanted to control the game even as the youngest player on the pitch. He already had that special ingredient of being able to actually control the tempo of a game. You see it in him all the time now — he can take the game from a slow phase into really quick football. When you see him taking responsibility as one of the senior players at Spurs, that’s exactly the character he was as a 16-year-old, dealing with much older team-mates. He would be taking a grip of training sessions, wanting the ball, setting the tempo.

I never felt that I needed to influence the technical aspects of his game a great deal — he already had all of those attributes. The areas I felt we could help him were his mindset, and his understanding of what it takes to be a professional, an elite player. That was where I was able to influence him most.

There was one time — I can’t remember exactly what he had done, I think maybe he hadn’t cleaned the dressing room or boots properly — but his punishment was cleaning my car. It was just about installing those standards into James, making him understand what it takes to be a real football player, about every minute of every day living that life, not cutting corners. He’s really developed into a terrific player and a terrific young man. And behind that, he had a great family which I think is really important for every young player. I’m proud to see him get to the top.

Pape Matar Sarr

Go Sarr, coach at Wally Daan FC in Thies, Senegal

Pape came to my training centre in Thies from the age of four. And from an early age, we saw he had certain attributes that meant it was possible that he could reach the very top.

The first quality of Pape Matar Sarr is mental. He does not play with pressure. It doesn’t matter if things go against his team, he finds a way to pick the team up. He’s so positive: I must pass, I must win, I must play, I must progress. The second quality is psychological: his tactical reading of the game. He understands what to do and when. He sees what is happening and interprets it in an intelligent manner. And he has an unbelievable running ability to keep going, an innate quality that makes him an extremely good runner from midfield. You can see that quite a lot with Spurs when he brings the ball out, has really good endurance as well, a very good base level of fitness and running ability.

Senegal is proud and happy to see one of our sons playing in the final of the Europa League, the first from Senegal. It was Sadio Mane who played in the Champions League final in 2019, and Pape Matar is the second Senegalese, inshallah, who will play in a final of the Europa League, also a prestigious European competition. Senegal is happy. The town of Thies is happy. The family is happy. And we are happy.

We pray for a Tottenham victory.

Archie Gray

A letter from cousin Nick Gray

Dear Archie,

The Leeds fan in me was beyond gutted when you left the club last year and made the move to Tottenham. We knew we were losing our prized asset and one of our top players. But as a proud family member, I knew that even at such a young age you needed and wanted to test yourself at the highest level and against the best players in the world.

Little did we know that, less than a year later, you would find yourself in a major European final and within 90 minutes of securing the first major piece of silverware of your career.

I can’t tell you how proud myself and all the family are of you and all that you have achieved in your career to date. It’s testament to your character and to your ability as a player that you have been able to adjust so quickly to life in the Premier League and to European competition, especially as you have had to play much of the season outside of your preferred midfield role.

It seems like only yesterday that you were playing in the back garden at Eddie and Linda’s with the rest of the kids, trying to get the better of your cousins and brothers and always giving 100 per cent to get one over on them. No doubt some of these games were almost as competitive as the games you find yourself playing in now, and you’ll be glad to hear that nothing has changed! Only last Sunday, your two youngest brothers came to blows in the very same garden over a ‘mistimed’ tackle and had to be pulled apart before a full-scale brawl ensued. We wouldn’t have it any other way!

From back-garden games to Elland Road, and now onto Bilbao for this final, it all seems to have happened in a blur.

Myself and all the family will be watching on next Wednesday with great pride and will be hoping you manage to get the win. But win or lose, know that we are all incredibly proud of you. Proud of the career you are forging for yourself, proud of all of your achievements as a player, of which I’m sure there will be many, many more, but most of all proud of the man you have become and the way you conduct yourself on and off the pitch.

It’s not too often I find myself cheering for another club side other than Leeds United, but I will certainly be making an exception next week. Best of luck Archie, we’re all behind you!

From Nick and all the Gray family.

Pedro Porro

Filipe Çelikkaya, coach at Sporting CP

The first time I met Pedro was when he came to Sporting CP when he was 20. He came to be a very important piece at Sporting during his time there. Everyone liked him a lot because of his amazing personality, always with a smile on his face. He had all the ingredients for success: he was a very hard worker, he was really humble, he was ready to listen.

He had quality in the final third, and intensity that he put into every challenge. He was playing as wing-back, in a different system from other teams in Portugal. The challenge for him was to take that responsibility. I think it was very good for him. We saw him evolving during his first season, understanding what the coach asked him to do better. It was the stage and the place that he needed to go to the next level, and the next level was the top level, the Premier League.

Of course, it is interesting for us that on Wednesday he will face Ruben Amorim, the coach who signed him for Sporting..

Everyone at Sporting is happy for Pedro and wishes him all the best. I know the players here still miss him a lot. We are always proud when any player who has passed through our club has success in his career.

Micky van de Ven

Wim Jonk, coach at Volendam

I first saw Mickey when he was 18, playing for Volendam Under-19s. We saw some strengths — his physical ability was so high, but there was also so much to grow.

Mickey, when he started, was sometimes lazy. We brought some focus to him. He needed to develop some other things, not just rely on his pace and physical ability. As a defender at the top level, you have to be two steps in front, being alert on every small detail. Sometimes he was a bit, ‘I can do that tomorrow’. You have to do it today as well!

The player must make the decision. We as coaches can have a good plan, we can help him, we can speak with him — and we did all that a lot. But most of it must come from the player himself. He has to focus on every small detail. And that’s what he now does all the time.

Sometimes I give him a call, to help him, to check his focus still in the right place. I see a lot of him and he’s so focused now these days. I’m so happy for him, and so proud that he is playing in this kind of game.

Radu Dragusin

Svetlana Simion, mother

Radu was always a very good boy; he was always either at school, at football practice, or back home doing his homework. His two big dreams were to be a footballer and to get good marks at school!

He was about seven when he started to play football. And since then, other than a small injury he had before going to Juventus, and the surgery he had this season, he did not miss one practice, for any reason.

I played basketball for the Romanian national team, and won the European Championship. Radu’s father, Dan, was a volleyball player, who played at the national level. So Radu has good genes for sport.

That knee injury (in January), was a shock for us all because it was his first serious injury. But Radu is very strong mentally, he realised that he will come back stronger than before. His recovery is amazing, and he’s working very, very hard.

Everybody is very excited for the final, we keep our fingers crossed. Part of the family will be there, part will be in front of the TV. I will not be in Bilbao because that day my mother, Radu’s grandmother, turns 80. We will have a celebration, then we are all going to watch it on TV.

This is the beauty of team sport. It doesn’t matter if you play or don’t play, if you’re injured, it’s a big, big family. I always feel like being in sports is being in a second family. Because you spend more time practising and on the field than you spend at home. The team is the second family for us. It will be a good game. I hope we are going to be winners.

Let’s go Spurs!

Dominic Solanke

Dan Du-Heaume, teacher at Brighton Hill Community School

When Dom joined our school at the age of 11, we found out from his primary school that he had been at Chelsea’s youth academy from a very young age. We had a pretty good idea that he must be a talented footballer, but we didn’t realise just how good he was until we saw him play.

I was his PE teacher for those first three years. I would love to be able to tell you he learned it all from me, but that was absolutely not the case. He was a natural. He wasn’t a trickster, but he had such poise and grace on the ball. He had this ability to take the ball past three or four players and then just lay it off for a team-mate so that they could take the glory. He was such a gracious, humble boy.

That was one of the striking things about Dom. He was living a different life to his classmates, training with Chelsea, going away with England to play in various tours and tournaments. You sometimes hear of a stereotypical “prima donna footballer” attitude when they join one of the big academies, but Dom was always so down to earth. He would mix with all sorts of different characters and get on with all of them.

He was such a good team-mate and such a good pupil. He was so quiet and so focused. He wasn’t especially academic, but he worked hard and he was never in trouble.

As things got more and more serious for him at Chelsea, it became that he needed to be in a school closer to there. He left us at the end of year nine, but we have followed his career — from Chelsea to Liverpool to Bournemouth and now with Tottenham and England — with great interest and great satisfaction. His success resonates with the pupils and teachers here.

My only regret is that I didn’t take the opportunity to put a bet on him playing for England one day. I was pretty sure he would.

Richarlison

A letter from Guilherme Xavier, former team-mate at America

Querido Richarlison,

I can still remember your first training session with the first team at America in Minas Gerais. I knew how good you were but some of the older guys? They couldn’t believe it. You surprised everyone with your strength and your intelligence. And you have repeated that trick so many times throughout your career.

I’ll never forget all the time we spent together in the youth team. Not just on the training pitch but in the dorm rooms, talking about the future and giggling at stupid jokes. I liked you because you were a simple guy, very honest. There was no ego, even when bigger clubs started calling your agent. You were pure, one of life’s good guys.

Even in those early days, I thought you’d go far. I was probably even more confident of it than you were, to be honest. You weren’t just a natural on the pitch; you were such a hard worker. Nothing else mattered to you. You knew when to joke around but when the whistle blew, you were a picture of focus. That intensity made you the player you are today.

I know you’ve been through some tough moments in the last couple of years. I saw you crying in an interview, talking about your struggles with your mental health. It was really hard to watch. I’m so glad that you seem to be doing better now. You look happier, like the old Richarlison again.

We haven’t spoken for a few years now. That’s completely normal: it’s nearly a decade since we played together. But I want you to know that I’m always here for you, always in your corner. I know that winning the Europa League would be massive — for Tottenham and for you personally. I’ll be cheering you on this Wednesday.

Ben Davies

Leon Britton, team-mate at Swansea City

Ben was never one I thought was nailed-on to get into the first team at Swansea, and that’s just me being totally honest. You have to give a lot of credit to Michael Laudrup (Swansea’s manager at the time), who obviously had confidence that Ben could step up. When Neil Taylor broke his leg early in the 2012-13 season, Ben totally proved me wrong. The way he came into the team — he just settled into it like he’d been playing in the Premier League all his life.

I remember at the time Ben had a VW Polo. He had the old wind-down windows and they got jammed, so they couldn’t go up or down. Ashley Williams, our captain, said something like, ‘For f***’s sake, Ben, you’re playing in the Premier League, you can’t be driving into the stadium in that!’

A lot of players in Ben’s situation would have got a new contract and come in the next week in a brand new Mercedes, But I think it’s testament to Ben that he probably didn’t want to be seen as, ‘Oh, I’ve played five games in the Premier League — I’ve made it.’

To see where Ben is now — he’s had over 10 years at Spurs — says everything about his professionalism, his character, his personality and, of course, his ability. I’m just so chuffed for him that he’s had such an incredible career. It couldn’t happen to a better person and, hopefully, he can win a European trophy now — I’m sure that would mean more to Ben than a lot of the players because he’s been at Tottenham so long.

Brennan Johnson

Gareth Holmes, coach with Nottingham Forest Under-18s

I always remember the game when a young Brennan really came to life. He was 16 and he’d moved up to play for Forest’s under-23s. Then we played one game at Birmingham City and I came away thinking, ‘That’s the start of something special.’

Brennan was a quiet young man, but he had an inner confidence. There was an aura about him and on that day it felt like he was telling everyone, ‘This is me, I’ve grown into myself now, I know what I’m capable of.’

Even at a young age, Brennan had an incredible ability to glide with the ball and see things on the move while travelling at speed. He was always very slight as a boy and, at the age of 14, he had a difficult injury. We had to wait for his physicality to catch up with his technicality. But he had those extra levels in his locker and, with time, I always felt it was going to flourish. When it did, it was so exciting to see.

He always wanted to score goals and affect games. He had an inner bravery that we saw grow and grow over time.

I remember another game against Leicester City in the FA Youth Cup, when we went down to 10 men in the first half. Brennan didn’t get a lot of the ball after that, but he was prepared to be part of a team rather than playing as an individual. You should have seen the amount of hard work and tireless running he put in. His attitude was brilliant.

It helped that his parents, David and Alison, were excellent behind the scenes, especially with David being an ex-player and understanding how difficult it is to become a footballer. He and Alison knew the end goal for Brennan was not to become a scholar at Nottingham Forest, it was to become a professional. So they understood the hard yards he had to put in and pushed him to work hard, to be driven and single-minded.

He’s a tremendous young man from an excellent family and, very often, you find that the best footballers are the best people, too. Brennan has gone on to great things, first at Forest and now with Spurs, but he still found time to send my son a message on his eighth birthday.

Rodrigo Bentancur

Horacio Anselmi, talent scout for Boca Juniors

I was doing a lecture in Colonia Valdense in Uruguay, talking about children and football. I was looking at a match outside and there was a little boy playing against grown men, and he was fantastic. A man called Daniel Fernandez Tocci who had been with River Plate asked me if I liked the boy and how he played. I said yes, he is fantastic! I asked how old he was, expecting him to be 17. He told me that the boy was only 12!

I spoke about him in my lecture, telling the students about how to make the first steps to make the transformation from being a kid to a first-class footballer. His family spoke to me after the lecture and asked if it was possible for him to join the club I scouted for, Boca Juniors. His family were fantastic, very kind people. They later gave me a present of local specialty cheese from Colonia Valdense.

A few weeks after I found him, Rodrigo was with us in Buenos Aires, living with his aunt, and we began to transform him into the fantastic player that he is today. I always knew that he would become a top player. My job is to find sporting talents, not just in football but in track and field, weight-lifting and wrestling. So I am very happy when I saw Juan Martin Del Potro or Guillermo Coria play tennis. I remember when Coria was just a small kid from a small town, and he became number three ranked tennis player in the world.

When you see the kids you saw at 10 years old, playing at the top, winning medals, it is incredible happiness that you have. Knowing that history depends on you.

Lucas Bergvall

A letter from parents Andreas and Malin Bergvall

Dear Lucas,

Where do we even begin? From the moment you came into the world on February 2, 2006 as the middle son and beloved brother to Theo and Rasmus, you were surrounded by passion and love.

Football was a big part of your life from an early age. You were so competitive and determined from the beginning. You always made sure to eat the right foods, prioritise your sleep, and do whatever was necessary to maximise your potential — with support from mum and dad along the way.

Your love for football was absolute — you practically slept with the ball, carried it everywhere, and let it shape who you are. That passion has never faded. To this day, you remain grounded, family-oriented, and incredibly social, someone who thrives in the presence of others. You are a man of principles and integrity, steadfast in your ways, determined to do things as you see fit.

We want you to know how deeply loved you are. Your kindness, generosity, and happy attitude are part of the man you have become. Despite your young age, you have already accomplished a lot, but we know your journey is far from over and there is still so much more to come.

Your first year abroad has been incredible. Seeing you being a part of a Europa League final is surreal, an unforgettable moment for everyone who has supported you. Words cannot express how proud we are!

We wish you all the success in the world.

All the best!

Mom, Dad and your brothers xx

Ange Postecoglou

Micky Petersen, former team-mate, assistant coach and lifelong friend

Where do I start? It’s crazy, we go back to 10 or 11 years of age. He’s just a boy from Prahran in Melbourne. We played school soccer and junior soccer, and then I joined him at South Melbourne. It was the biggest club in Australia at the time. From knowing and playing with and against him at junior levels, it’s been the best part of 45 to 50 years of knowing him intimately. You know what I love, mate? He hasn’t changed as a bloke.

We’ve all got to put on different hats sometimes, whether it’s fronting up to media, the changing rooms or the board, but I caught up with him here in Australia when Tottenham played a friendly game in pre-season last year, and it was just great. We had lunch together. He’s just living his best life. He loves football; he’s a football historian. If you didn’t know, we had posters of Glenn Hoddle and Kenny Dalglish on our walls. For him to be managing a club of the ilk of Tottenham, it’s just freaking crazy. I love it. It’s kind of a dream, parallel universe thing.

The first thing that sprang to my mind when he made the final — obviously I’ve been paying attention to the narrative in England — is back in the day when Craig Johnston was playing for Liverpool and Australia. Australia wanted him to commit to the national team, and he said, ‘Playing soccer for Australia is like surfing for England.’ Soon after, Martin Potter won the world surfing championship for England. I thought, how funny is that now? An Aussie has gone to England, the home of football, and he’s on the cusp of doing something which feels like a glass ceiling moment for us Australians. It used to feel impossible.

That’s what life’s all about, isn’t it? Shocking the systems that we all think are in place. Ange has done that his whole career, and it doesn’t surprise me. Going back to our junior days, he’s always been such a student of the game. His ability to navigate all tiers of the club, whether it’s the people in the cafeteria right through to the owners, he can galvanise everyone. He’s always made the game the hero, not himself. He accepts responsibility and gives credit to the people around him in success.

We played Man United at the World Club Championship with South Melbourne 25 years ago, and the irony is just, wow. All that time later, he’s back again with Spurs taking on Man United in a European final — what a story.

What a dream for Ange and Australian football, and I know he’s encompassing Australia in his journey. We’ll be riding it hard Thursday morning for him.

Interviews: Jack Pitt-Brooke, Jay Harris, Elias Burke, Daniel Taylor, Phil Hay, Stuart James, Jack Lang, Oliver Kay, Charlie Eccleshare

The flight from London to Bilbao only takes two hours, but my journey will take two nights.

I leave London on Sunday afternoon, take the train to Portsmouth, and then walk through the empty city to the port. I prepare to board the ferry. It will be my home for the next 34 hours.

Why am I doing this? In part because I had been joking about it for months on our Spurs podcast, The View from the Lane. I realised with a jolt one night that there could be nothing more humiliating than making a promise on a podcast and not following through with it. There is a bond of trust between podcasters and listeners that I did not want to break.

So after Tottenham won 1-0 at Eintracht Frankfurt in the quarter-final second leg, turning everything we knew about them on its head, I knew I had to book.

It struck me that a long, slow, almost quixotic adventure was precisely the right way to prepare for the final of the Europa League. This is a competition with its own distinct energy. The Champions League belongs to the world of money and celebrity; the frictionless lives lived by the one per cent of the one per cent; a world of private jets and black Mercedes Sprinter vans.

The Europa League is different.

When I arrive at the ferry terminal, I hope to see it already taken over by football fans. I want to feel that I am in the right place. I want a meaningful communal experience. I want the journey to teach me something profound about the game.

I confidently ask a middle-aged man sitting next to me whether he is here supporting United or Spurs. He looks at me blankly and says that he is walking a section of the Camino, from Bilbao to Santander. I tell him about the Europa League final. Something clicks and he realises why it was so hard to book a cabin at this time of year, and why he was given one meant for wheelchair users.

Eventually, the football fans start to arrive. Most drive onto the ferry. Some, like me, are on foot. It is no surprise that so many have decided to forego flying. And not because they want to hold themselves to promises made on podcasts. Following the cost of flights to Bilbao over the course of the season has been like following a stock market crash in reverse: every time you check, the numbers have shot up.

Fans confident enough to book flights months ago were able to get good prices, but if you waited until your team was in the final you will have to pay close to £1,000 ($1,300). People are being forced into increasingly complicated journeys. The ferry is slow but simple.

I meet two Spurs season ticket holders, Ben Islin and Paul Jackson, who have just arrived via a train to Petersfield, a long taxi and a trip to the Ship & Castle pub. They booked the ferry on their phones from their seats in the south stand at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium just as soon as James Maddison put Spurs 2-0 up against Bodo/Glimt in the first leg of the semi-final.

They did not want to take the risk of waiting until full time, never mind until after the second leg. Ben has packed a match-worn Nicola Berti replica shirt to wear on Wednesday night. Paul says he will cry if Spurs win.

My one-way ticket was £170 with another £125 on top for a four-berth cabin. Three or four people to one cabin was far cheaper than the same number of people booking three or four plane tickets to get to Spain.

I meet three Manchester United fans from Yeovil, sharing the same cabin. They plan to drive to a rented villa in Santander on Tuesday morning, then take the slightly quicker ferry back from Santander to Plymouth on Thursday.

As we leave England behind on Sunday evening, the bar starts to fill up. The mood is positive. Spurs and Man United fans are getting on well.

The fact that both teams have had such poor league seasons encourages something approaching solidarity, a shared misery that removes any possibility of hubris or presumptuousness. No one can be arrogant when they are below West Ham United with one game left.

I join a group of Spurs fans for a drink. We talk about the finals Tottenham have played in recent years. Everyone has their own memories of Madrid, of the 2015 League Cup final, of the 2021 League Cup final, which only 7,773 fans attended.

Spurs did not even score in any of those games. They have not scored in a final since Jonathan Woodgate’s header in 2008. Of course everyone wants to win on Wednesday, but even a goal would be a change.

We weigh this European campaign against Spurs’ disastrous league form, and how Mauricio Pochettino worked wonders at Tottenham but never won anything, whereas George Graham and Juande Ramos were never popular, but did win Tottenham’s last two trophies. “We only win things when we’re shit,” says Paul.

On Monday morning, it dawns on me that we still have more than 24 hours to go.

I have breakfast and walk around. I begin to feel restless. There is only so much time you can stare into the sea and think about whether Son Heung-min, Richarlison or Mathys Tel should start on the left.

Or whether Spurs’ tactics in their three wins against United this season will be at all replicable without Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison on the pitch.

Or who Spurs’ five penalty takers might be. Could Pedro Porro take one?

We swing past the western tip of Brittany and turn south. In the afternoon, there is a quiz. I join a team with Spurs fan Alex and his mother Sue. Her first Spurs final was the 1981 FA Cup replay. “I’m a constantly pessimistic Spurs supporter,” she says. “I just call it being a realist.”

They decided to take the ferry, along with Alex’s brother Luke, because of their experience of travelling to the 2019 Champions League, when they took the coach from London to Madrid and hated it. “The coach in 2019 was so bad, 24 hours, 24 hours back, we could never do that again,” Alex says. “No legroom, no sleep, and the toilets… This is a lot nicer. It’s nice to make it the adventure that it should be.”

I struggle with the quiz but Sue carries our team. The first round is ‘Classic Telly’ and the first question is about the 1970s sitcom Rising Damp. With one question left, we are one point behind the leaders.

“What was the highest-grossing film of 2000?” I confidently insist it was Gladiator. The correct answer is Mission Impossible 2. We have to settle for second place. I feel like I have put the decisive penalty of the shootout over the bar.

I try to get over my disappointment by standing on the deck and seeing if I can spot a dolphin or even a whale.

On Monday evening, I return to the bar. It is full of fans and there is a singer with a guitar playing. He starts to play songs that specifically appeal to each team. Spurs fans sing, “I’m loving Big Ange instead” to Robbie Williams’ “Angels”. United fans sing their version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. Tottenham go again with “Can’t Smile Without You”.

Football songs briefly take over. For a moment this feels like a floating fan zone, a nautical BoxPark. But Jimmy on the guitar brings everyone back together with “American Pie”.

On our second night, we go through the Bay of Biscay, where the seafloor suddenly drops from 200m to 4000m as you leave the edge of the continental shelf. These are notoriously choppy waters. It is not as bad as I feared, not as bad as watching Spurs defend a 2-0 lead, or United play out from the back, but bad enough to stop me from sleeping.

Early in the morning, I leave my cabin and go up to the top deck. I see someone jogging laps around it and feel jealous. (My Monday step count: 4,957.)

I arrive early for breakfast on Tuesday morning. The restaurant is at the front of the ship and, at roughly 7am, I finally make out the shape of dry land in front of us. First I see the outline of the cliffs and hills, then the port of Zierbena, 20km north of Bilbao. I picture the thrill of walking on dry land again.

We file on to a bus and drive to passport control. I realise what an overwhelmingly English experience the last 34 hours have been. The songs at the bar. The gallows humour about the game. The quiz in which one of the answers was Noel Edmonds.

Ben had remarked to me that after Spurs got Liverpool in 2019 he would have preferred a foreign opponent in Tottenham’s next European final, simply for reasons of exoticism and difference. Many United fans would surely feel the same way.

But this is the nature of modern football. There were all-English Champions League finals in 2021 and 2019. There was another all-English Europa League final in 2019 too. Of course, other countries have done this: all-Spanish Champions League finals in 2016 and 2014, all-German in 2013. But only the Premier League could produce two European finalists who are this bad.

Even as they both suffer through their worst league seasons in modern history (Spurs have never lost league games at this season’s rate), in Europe they have summoned a clunky power that opponents find difficult to cope with. Both semi-finals were remarkably one-sided.

It feels like a vision of the future — two sets of English fans heading to another final in another European city, without either of the English sides succeeding or even impressing at home. I wonder about getting to Budapest or Istanbul next year.

(Top photo: Jack Pitt-Brooke)

Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United are in Bilbao for tomorrow's Europa League.

A shiny trophy and a place in next season's Champions League are on the line for the two drastically underperforming Premier League heavyweights and we have several reporters on the ground in Spain.

We will be bringing you their thoughts as well of plenty of analysis, quotes, insight, and more ahead of a huge game in the Basque Country.

Essential Europa League final reading:

Bruno Fernandes is a one-man football team

Should Son Heung-min start for Spurs tomorrow?

Micky van de Ven: The centre-back of the future

Follow our Manchester United WhatsApp channel here

UEFA has been accused of “disproportionately excluding” disabled fans from Wednesday’s Europa League final between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.

Level Playing Field, a campaigning group for the rights of disabled football fans, has highlighted the number of wheelchair and easy access seating spaces made available at San Mames falls well below UEFA’s own guidelines.

Each club has been given just 26 wheelchair and 15 easy access spaces for the final, when they should have been provided with around double that. Proportionately, each club should have been given 58 wheelchair spaces and 28 easy access seats.

Read more via the link below.

I've just gone through airport security here at Manchester airport. I've got two packs of cards because I want to introduce Laurie Whitwell to a card game known as ‘Tommy Two Hands’.

I'm taking the circuitous route to Bilbao — I'm flying to Paris, then I'm going to Biarritz, and then i'm going to get a coach from there into San Sebastian in Spain. Then from there I will take a train into Bilbao.

So planes, trains and automobiles.

If you want a mildly funny story, when I went through airport security there were two gentlemen there looking giddy and holding a mobile phone. I thought they recognised me from the Talk of the Devils podcast as they asked me to take a picture.

Anyway, he handed his phone to me and spun around and there was Denis Irwin. That's fine, I always want to take a photo with Denis Irwin too.

Take care, up the Reds and glory, glory Man United!

Zirkzee, Yoro, and Dalot's returns are a huge boost to Amorim ahead of Wednesday's final, meaning Matthijs de Ligt is now the only doubt alongside long-term absentee and fellow centre-half Lisandro Martinez.

Zirkzee's return is the biggest surprise.

The 23-year-old's hamstring injury had threatened to rule him out for the rest of the season but he revealed last week — on Alphonso Davies' Twitch stream no less — that a return for the final was ‘difficult, but not impossible’.

Whether he is ready for minutes is a different question, though — one Amorim may be able to answer in his press conference later.

Dalot was hopeful of returning in time from a calf injury when speaking at United's pre-final media day last week, while Yoro's potential availability is a relief after coming off in worrying circumstances in the recent defeat against West Ham United.

They weren't the only new additions at open training — of sorts. Winger Alejandro Garnacho has a new peroxide blonde haircut for the big occasion.

Manchester United have an open training session this morning at their Carrington training ground and our man on the ground Mark Critchley has spotted the return of some familiar faces.

Joshua Zirkzee, Diogo Dalot, and Leny Yoro are all back in training, which will be a boost to Ruben Amorim if they are available tomorrow.

There is no Matthijs de Ligt, though.

We'll bring you full team news from press conferences throughout the day.

On the lookout for some unusual bets to liven up the final?

A 4-3 win for either team, as happened in the Carabao Cup quarter-final in December, is priced at 150/1, while an over-4.5-goals goal-fest is at 180/1, combined with 13-plus corners and nine or more cards.

Looking at aggressive United midfielders Manuel Ugarte and Casemiro, the former is 13/8 to register three-plus fouls and the latter 11/10 to register two-plus, while Alejandro Garnacho to hit 5-plus shots is 11/4.

*All odds courtesy of Betfair

We've reminded you of how Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United made it to this year's Europa League final... but what about the journey for some fans and journalists?

Well, our Spurs writer Jack Pitt-Brooke took the scenic route and boarded the ferry to Bilbao.

Here he is at the start of the journey — let's hope we get a game worthy of spending all day at sea!

As you might be able to tell from the clear skies over Bilbao when Spurs arrived in the Basque Country yesterday, the rain in Spain is largely on the theoretical plane.

Sunny intervals with a gentle breeze is what the meteorologists are telling us is on the cards for the next two days, with only an outside chance of a downpour come game time.

I have woken up nervous.

Deep down, I always knew that Tottenham would lose to Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool in 2019 and — as we all remember — the negativity set in pretty quickly after that game began in Madrid.

This time? They have a puncher’s chance and I’m not comfortable with that dash of hope.

I’m just not built for finals as a fan. Football Manager has hidden ratings out of 20 for how players deal with Big Occasions. I’d get a 2.

Tottenham’s night at home to Frankfurt started catastrophically, with Hugo Ekitike firing in a fine opener for the visitors, but Pedro Porro’s backheeled goal drew them level before the interval.

Spurs worked feverishly in the second period in search of a winner, but despite creating some fine chances, they could not find another breakthrough.

Advantage Frankfurt, or so it seemed. But in one of Europe’s most intimidating arenas, Spurs delivered the performance of their season.

Frankfurt’s Waldstadion was a seething swirl of noise for but Spurs kept their heads and eked out a 1-0 victory courtesy of Dominic Solanke’s first-half penalty.

Tottenham 1-1 Frankfurt (Porro)

Frankfurt 0-1 Tottenham (Solanke)

It was April 2019 and Wim Jonk was preparing to come home. The former Ajax and Holland midfield legend was about to take over at Volendam, his home-town club and the team where he launched his career.

Jonk and his staff had previously worked at Ajax with Johan Cruyff, overhauling the academy in line with Cruyff’s specific vision. Now he needed to know the young players he would be working with. So he went to watch Volendam’s youngsters play in the Under-19 Division 2. Jonk was not impressed with the level of the players — Volendam were bottom of their league — except for one boy, just 18, who caught his eye. Jonk called Jasper van Leeuwen, his incoming technical director, to come and watch their next game.

This was the week when Van de Ven’s life changed forever. Within days he was sat down in the Volendam boardroom with Jonk, a local hero, agreeing his new deal at the club. “After that,” says Van Leeuwen, “a whole new dynamic started.”

Six years on, Van de Ven is now one of the most exciting and distinctive young centre-backs in European football. He is coming to the end of his second year at Tottenham Hotspur, where from his first game he has become arguably Spurs’ indispensable player, the man who makes their ultra-aggressive style work on the pitch. At his best, he looks like a defender from the future.

The story of the last two years at Spurs has largely been the story of whether or not Van de Ven is fit. And, while his long spells out this season with two different hamstring injuries effectively capsized Spurs’ Premier League campaign, his return from injury has been integral to Spurs’ progress to the Europa League final. He has started their last five European games, playing the full 90 minutes in four of them.

Without him, Spurs would be watching Wednesday’s final at home on TV. Now they are one game from a historic achievement.

None of what Van de Ven has achieved would have been possible, at least not in the same way, without that crucial week in 2019. But the story goes further back. Like so much of the top end of modern football, all roads lead back to Cruyff.

You have to go back to 2010, when Van de Ven was just a boy whose dad would take him to Ajax games. This was when Cruyff returned to Ajax, the club where he made history as a player. His goal was to bring the whole club back into line with his principles, to reassert the identity that had been lost. And his particular focus was the academy. He worked with his former players Jonk and Dennis Bergkamp, as well as Van Leeuwen and Ruben Jongkind, all trying to implement his radical vision.

At the heart of it was a sense of what academies were actually for. Cruyff never saw the point in building dominant youth teams that could routinely beat their peers. The real challenge — and the real reward — was in developing the individual players themselves. This was what he had done to the academies of Ajax and Barcelona in the past. And now he wanted to do it again.

“We were in the lucky situation to be working with Johan Cruyff at Ajax,” explains Jongkind. “Not focusing on the results of the teams, but more on the development of the individual players. We basically were the first ones in the Netherlands to really have a focus on individual development with a club. And our vision when we watch matches, we put on our glasses to really look at individuals.”

The other part of the plan was to look at the upsides of young players, the special skills they had that they could use on the pitch, rather than worrying about the things they could not do or whether they fitted any particular mould. “The most important thing is to look at what players could be able to do in the future,” Jongkind says. “The other thing is to look at the weapons of players, the things that really stand out, that are peculiar or striking. Those are the things, the talents you can build on. Can we develop and help this player to make his talent world-class?”

This policy had flourished when Jonk, Van Leeuwen and Jongkind had worked together at Ajax. After a poor few years of youth development, their reforms led to a flowering of young talent in the mid-2010s: Matthijs de Ligt, Frenkie de Jong, Donny van de Beek, Justin Kluivert, Noussair Mazraoui, Ryan Gravenberch and Sergino Dest — players who helped Ajax to the 2017 Europa League final, the semi-finals of the 2019 Champions League and who all went on to earn the club hundreds of millions in transfer fees.

“It’s a system that is a little bit diametrical to the normal system of development,” Jongkind says. “People look at the teams — under-19s, under-17s — and put the players in. But we approached all 200 players in the academy as individual potential diamonds. Stones that we have to make into diamonds.”

When Jonk, Van Leeuwen and Jongkind showed up at Volendam, stones that could become diamonds was exactly what they were looking for. Find a few of them, develop them in the right way, raise the value of the squad, and Volendam would be back on the right track.

And so when they first saw Van de Ven with the under-19s, it was a revelation. If you are looking for strengths — or as Jongkind calls them “weapons” — then what could possibly be better than a teenage centre-back with Van de Ven’s unique athleticism? “His physical ability was so high,” says Jonk. “So that’s the starting point.” “It was exceptional what we saw,” says Van Leeuwen. “Not everything exceptional, but some exceptional things. And other things were quite poor, and really had to improve.”

Even Van de Ven’s weapon — his athleticism — had to be worked on and developed. Being fast is one thing, but being able to use it on the pitch time after time is something else. His only experience at this point was in the second tier of under-19 football. The physical demands of the senior game at the top level are very different. Especially when you have to play 50 or 60 games every year.

“He was a tall, skinny boy, super-fast, but his movement — the mobility, the agility — was really poor,” Van Leeuwen explains. “So he had to really be rebuilt.”

“We basically took him apart and re-assembled him,” says Jongkind. “With the ideas we already had a lot of experience with from Ajax. With specialists, people who understand the body, who came from athletics and American football.”

Once the fundamentals of Van de Ven’s running mechanics were changed, he was ready for more power. With training and nutrition changes, he added almost 10kg in his second season there. The key was to add strength without compromising his speed. And as Tottenham have found this season, perfecting the mechanics of a unique athlete remains a work in progress.

Of course, football is not just about athleticism alone. “We basically treated him as a youth player of 12 years old,” Jongkind says. He had so much ‘over-capacity’ athletically but he needed more to his game. So they gave him a tailored approach, working hard on his first touch and technical skills. Jonk took him aside and worked on his defending and game intelligence. He had played on the wing as a boy and needed more specific instruction. They made him a captain to improve his leadership skills, and to make him an example for the rest of his cohort to follow. Jonk always told him he was good enough to win 80 caps for Holland and that should be his goal.

The influence of Cruyff was not just limited to the development coaching. It was also true of how Volendam played on the pitch.

Jonk wanted Volendam to play in the way that Cruyff taught him back at Ajax: attacking, proactive, dominant football. Their meagre resources were to be no restriction from playing the way he wanted. Right from the start Jonk showed his players footage of Barcelona and Manchester City and told them what they could learn.

So Jonk would always encourage Van de Ven to take the initiative — to drive forward with the ball, to become the extra man in midfield, to use his pace to catch the opposition off guard. “You can go!” Vonk would shout from the sidelines. “Make an extra man in midfield! Do it!”

After two years in Germany, he came to Spurs in summer 2023 and found a new manager in Ange Postecoglou who wanted to play his own brand of aggressive, front-foot football, playing out from the back and defending high up the pitch. Postecoglou’s football is as Cruyffian anything in the world game right now: constantly on the front foot. And it only works when Van de Ven is there at centre-back.

Van de Ven may in fact be less brave in possession now than he was at Volendam. “He took more risk (with us) than he does these days,” Jonk says. “Now I see short passes, not long passes or through passes. He is playing a little bit conservative.”

Even if he does not take as many chances in possession as his team-mate Cristian Romero, there is still something distinctly Cruyffian about Van de Ven. “His drive to take the initiative is definitely Cruyffian,” says Van Leeuwen. “Also his dribbling is. Personally, I think taking more risks with passing would make him a really Cruyffian defender, that part is still missing a bit. But nobody is perfect.”

Jonk is an assistant coach for the Dutch national team and even now, four years after Van de Ven left Volendam, he is still working hard to develop his game. Only a few weeks ago, he sent Van de Ven some clips on how he can keep improving. “The through passes, and defending forwards, because that is his strength,” Jonk says. “He can defend half the pitch, because he is so pacy. And then you have a smaller area to play in. And that is really Cruyffian. Because you want to play in the other half of the pitch rather than in your own half.”

This remains Van de Ven’s greatest weapon. If Cruyffian football demands pushing your defence up to the halfway line, it means defending the largest space possible. It is impossible to do that without defenders quick enough to cover it. And no centre-back in world football does this better than Van de Ven.

Of course, Cruyff himself was happy to have Ronald Koeman and Pep Guardiola at centre-back for Barcelona, both selected for their skill rather than their speed. But that was 30 years ago, and in the sped-up football of the 2020s, pace is indispensable. So many of Europe’s best teams — Manchester City, Barcelona, Bayern Munich — want to defend high up the pitch. It is so much harder to do that without a player like Van de Ven.

When Van Leeuwen watches Hansi Flick’s Barcelona, he knows how valuable Van de Ven is. “They are very high up the pitch, they are being killed all the time with these counter-attacks,” he says. “I was constantly thinking that top teams, to play high-pressure football, are going to need guys like this.”

There is something futuristic about Van de Ven at his best; implausibly fast, technically smooth, transforming not only how the team plays but also where they play, allowing them to set up camp in the opposition half. He is the missing piece that allows Tottenham to function. Take him out and the whole thing falls apart. But put him in and they can play Postecoglou’s Cruyffian game. Lifting the Europa League on Wednesday would not just underline Van de Ven’s current excellence but offer a glimpse of the football future inherent in him.

Top photo: John Walton/Getty Images

Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur were the two English representatives in this season’s Europa League and, despite both occupying the spots above the Premier League relegation zone in 16th and 17th respectively, have successfully navigated their European challenges to meet in Wednesday’s final.

There is much at stake: a trophy, a season’s redemption and a place in next year’s Champions League.

After navigating the league phase, Spurs then beat AZ, Eintracht Frankfurt, and Bodo/Glimt on the way to the final, while United saw off Real Sociedad, Lyon (in incredible style), and Athletic Club, the San Mames home of whom the final will be held.

Arguably helping United and Spurs this season is the fact that Champions League teams no longer drop into the Europa League after changes to the format. Sevilla (2022-23) and Atletico Madrid (2017-18) both won the Europa League after starting their European campaigns in the Champions League.

In this season’s revamped format, teams from the same nation could meet from the knockout phase play-offs onwards, but United finished third and Spurs fourth in the competition’s league phase, meaning both avoided that round and were drawn on different sides of the bracket for the knockout stages, which leads us to the sixth all-English European final.

Perhaps ominously for Spurs, in the five other all-English finals, the teams with the higher league position at that time went on to win three of them. Here we look at how the other five finals played out.

Manchester City 0-1 Chelsea — 2021 UEFA Champions League

Thomas Tuchel inherited this Chelsea team from Frank Lampard, the club great who was sacked in January 2021 following a run of two wins in eight Premier League matches, leaving the west London club sitting ninth in the table.

Tuchel, now the England manager, completed a remarkable turnaround as Chelsea won their second Champions League trophy. By reaching the final, Tuchel also went one step further with Chelsea than the season prior with Paris Saint-Germain.

Kai Havertz scored the winner against a Manchester City side chasing a first Champions League title. His 42nd-minute goal was his Chelsea career highlight in a mixed time at the club, and a high, too, for Mason Mount, who provided the assist but has been regularly injured since his move to Manchester United in the summer of 2023.

Pep Guardiola selected an all-attacking line-up as he went in search of his third triumph in the competition as manager, but his tactics fell flat and striker Sergio Aguero ended a magnificent City career with defeat.

Tottenham Hotspur 0-2 Liverpool — 2019 UEFA Champions League

The 2019 Champions League final in Madrid was far from entertaining, failing to capture the tournament’s previous highs. Not that Liverpool would have cared much, as they were able to correct the 3-1 defeat to Real Madrid in the final the year before.

Liverpool and Spurs both completed almighty comebacks that campaign. Liverpool lost 3-0 to Barcelona in the first leg of the semi-finals at Camp Nou, only to win 4-0 at Anfield and prevail on aggregate. Trent Alexander-Arnold’s quick corner into Divock Origi for the fourth goal was one that sticks in the mind.

Spurs, under Mauricio Pochettino, had magical moments, too. Facing being knocked out by Manchester City, Fernando Llorente scored the goal at the Etihad that brought Spurs level on aggregate at 4-4, helping them advance on away goals. Spurs were then 3-0 down on aggregate to Ajax with 55 minutes to go at the Johan Cruyff Arena, before Lucas Moura scored a hat-trick to see them through on away goals again.

In the final, Liverpool were marginally the better team, though they had far less possession than Spurs. Mohamed Salah put Jurgen Klopp’s team ahead from the penalty spot and Origi made sure of the win, which secured Klopp his first trophy as Liverpool manager.

It was also the night Alexander-Arnold uttered the now famous words: “I’m just a normal lad from Liverpool whose dreams came true.”

Chelsea 4-1 Arsenal — 2019 UEFA Europa League

Both the Champions League and Europa League had all-English finals in 2019.

Eden Hazard dominated this game for Chelsea in Baku’s Olympic Stadium, his final match for the club before an £89million (then $115.7m) move to Real Madrid.

The Belgian winger scored twice and assisted Pedro to give Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri the first trophy of his managerial career. Former Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud was the other Chelsea scorer that night as the club won the fifth European title in its history.

The next month, Sarri left Chelsea, the Italian’s reign lasting just one season. His counterpart that night, Unai Emery, didn’t last too much longer at Arsenal, and was sacked in the November of that year.

Manchester United 1-1 Chelsea (United win 6-5 on penalties) — 2008 UEFA Champions League

This all-Premier League final is best remembered for John Terry’s slip in the penalty shootout. At the time, the former Chelsea captain said the miss would “haunt me for the rest of my life”.

With the score 1-1 after extra time — Frank Lampard equalising on the stroke of half-time after Cristiano Ronaldo had put United in front in the 26th minute — the game went to penalties.

As torrential rain poured down in Moscow, Ronaldo — who won his first Ballon d’Or that year — missed his penalty (United’s third). Chelsea went four for four, so it was on Terry to win Europe’s biggest prize for his team. But the defender slipped, his effort hitting the post. In sudden death, Nicolas Anelka had his penalty saved and so it was Sir Alex Ferguson’s side celebrating a third European Cup win in the club’s illustrious history.

Terry sobbed on the pitch. He said afterwards: “I feel I have let everybody down and this hurts me more than anything.”

In a poignant moment, 50 years after the Munich air crash, Sir Bobby Charlton, a survivor of that tragedy, joined the United players as they went up to collect their medals.

Wolverhampton Wanderers vs Tottenham Hotspur (2-3 on aggregate) — 1972 UEFA Cup

Spurs winning a trophy? Unheard of in recent times, with the club currently enduring a 17-year trophy drought. Yet, 53 years ago, they did win the equivalent of today’s Europa League (formerly the UEFA Cup until 2009).

These meetings between Spurs and Wolves in 1972 — the UEFA Cup was a two-legged affair until 1997 — were the final of the inaugural UEFA Cup competition. It was the first UEFA club tournament final overall to involve two teams from the same association.

A Martin Chivers double won Spurs the first leg 2-1 at Molineux, and a 1-1 draw at White Hart Lane secured the title 3-2 on aggregate.

(Top photo Javier Soriano/AFP via Getty Images)

It is the statement that may come to define Ange Postecoglou’s time as Tottenham Hotspur head coach.

“Usually in my second season I win things,” the 59-year-old told UK broadcaster Sky Sports ahead of the first match of his second campaign in charge of the north London club. “That’s the whole idea. The first year is about establishing principles and creating a foundation. Hopefully, the second year is going on to win things.”

In light of the mixed start Spurs then experienced, he could have backed off from that statement and emphasised the process they were going through following a 1-0 home defeat in September by north London rivals Arsenal; they remain a young side in transition, and their form had been wildly inconsistent since the opening months of the previous season.

Instead, he doubled down. “I’ll correct myself — I don’t usually win things, I always win things in my second year, nothing’s changed,” he reiterated to the same broadcaster post-match. “I’ve said it now. I don’t say things unless I believe them.”

Postecoglou has flipped fortunes before, ending decade-long droughts or winning silverware in Australia and Japan.

If that’s not enough to make you buy into the Ange mythology, his declaration does ring true.

Since breaking into top-flight professional management in 2009, Postecoglou has consistently won a trophy in his second season, turning Brisbane Roar, Yokohama F. Marinos, Celtic and the Australia national team into winners after periods without silverware. Without that belief, Postecoglou — a relative unknown in the British Isles until moving to Scotland with Celtic in 2021 despite a managerial career spanning two decades — could never have got to lead a club like Tottenham.

This week, he has the opportunity to bring glory back to their part of the UK capital in Wednesday’s Europa League final against Manchester United, and continue a record he is clearly so proud of.

Postecoglou’s first taste of success as a manager came in his first job, taking South Melbourne, the club where he began as a youngster and had a nine-year career as a player, to the league title in his second season at the helm.

It was at South Melbourne where Ferenc Puskas shaped Postecoglou’s philosophy — which had already been influenced by his Greek father’s ‘Κάτω η μπάλα’/’Keep the ball down’ mantra — with the footballing icon stopping off in Australia in the latter years of a nomadic coaching run which spanned six of the seven continents.

As his interpreter and occasional personal driver during Puskas’ three-year spell in Melbourne, Postecoglou picked his brain about his legendary football career, with the three-time European Cup winner providing a comprehensive footballing education. Postecoglou first put those learnings into practice at his hometown club, implementing the 4-3-3 style with flying full-backs that he continues to lean on at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

“I’d often pick him up from his house and drive him to the ground,” Postecoglou told UK newspaper The Guardian in 2014. “I spent a lot of time chatting about football with him — people talk a lot about me being an attacking coach, and that was where the seed was sown. I loved it. He was so much more open than the previous coaches who were so regimented and structured.”

After leaving South Melbourne, Postecoglou coached Australia’s Under-17 and Under-20 sides, where an infamous interview with TV host and former Crystal Palace and Australia international midfielder Craig Foster left him, in his own words, “unemployable”. Following short spells with third-tier Greek side Panachaiki and semi-professional Melbourne outfit Whittlesea Zebras, Postecoglou impressed enough as a TV pundit to get the Brisbane job. There, he rescued his reputation and got his career back on track.

Postecoglou took over a struggling Brisbane side partway through the 2009-10 league season, but could not rejuvenate their fortunes immediately. Brisbane finished second-bottom in that debut campaign, with the A-League’s closed-shop system (similar to MLS and Liga MX) protecting them from relegation. However, as has become typical during his managerial career, he used his first season to prepare his side for his high-octane style, and took advantage of the following off-season to sign players to bring an added technical or physical quality with the goal of competing for silverware in his second year.

“The one thing that stands out in my mind was the way that he wanted to create something that Australia hasn’t experienced before,” says Matt Smith, who was signed ahead of that 2010-11 season from local semi-professional side Brisbane Strikers. “I was part of a new group of players coming in to change the shape of Australian football. I was a ball-playing centre-back, and at that point, there were not too many of those in Australia.

“He has a very keen eye on players, Ange. He’s very planned. He’s one of the most intelligent people that I’ve met and so organised and clear on how he wants his team to play and where he wants to take them.”

After a busy summer where Postecoglou made five signings and conditioned his players to implement his style in pre-season, Brisbane stormed to a first-place finish, collecting 65 points from the 30 regular-season matches, eight more than Central Coast Mariners in second, while losing only once.

“It was just a matter of time,” says Smith. “As a playing group, we had so much belief in the system and how we wanted to play that it was ingrained into us. It became an obsession for us to focus on each of our roles independently and collectively work out our processes. We were fascinated with it as a playing group and were all steering in one direction.

“We saw the coaches and everyone pushing and pulling in one direction, and we knew we were always going to get that win and then continue improving. At that point, it wasn’t focusing on the wins: they’re important, but we were so focused and fascinated by improvement. Working hard all the time. We knew, with the style of football that we were playing, that we were going to get the results in the end.”

That focus on the process in light of poor results in the league has been integral to Postecoglou keeping the belief within the playing group at Tottenham. Ahead of the Europa League semi-final, Postecoglou spoke to his players about the Stonecutter’s Credo (also known as pounding the rock), an allegory for persistence even when progress may not be visible.

Having finished first, Brisbane then had a two-leg play-off against runners-up Central Coast to book their place in the Grand Final, where the league title would be decided. After beating them 4-2 on aggregate, the sides met again in the final a couple of weeks later (Central Coast had subsequently defeated the winners of play-offs involving the third- to sixth-placed teams in a match to decide their opponents) and won 4-2 on penalties after drawing 2-2 following extra time.

In his third season in charge, Postecoglou missed out on the regular-season title, but won the Grand Final, Brisbane becoming the first team in the league’s short history to win back-to-back A-League championships.

While Postecoglou has made slight reconstructions to Tottenham’s tactical plan en route to the Europa League final, implementing a 4-2-3-1 system against Eintracht Frankfurt and Bodo/Glimt in the quarter- and semi-final respectively, and pressing less aggressively, the main adjustments with Brisbane came in how he motivated the players for the special occasion.

“From my experience in winning finals, he is the best communicator that I’ve ever worked with,” says Smith. “How he can motivate a team is something I’ve never experienced in a sporting landscape. I’m pretty confident you’ll be able to speak to anyone involved in that Brisbane Roar team, and every single one of them was ready to run through a brick wall for him. He didn’t change anything during those final points of the season. Everything is built up over a longer period of time.

“That was something which was installed into everybody. I was there two years with him, so it was like, ‘What’s he going to say today that’s going to make us run through a brick wall?’, and every single time he hit the nail on the head.”

Postecoglou’s next challenge was to take a job he had interviewed for 13 years earlier — head coach of Australia. When he took the reins in 2013, the national team were on a steep decline, seen as too dependent on a fading generation of players that had just suffered successive 6-0 defeats to Brazil and France. Realising he could not implement his Brisbane philosophy with that side’s ageing core, Postecoglou reshaped the squad before the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil.

“I think we were all quite fresh,” says former Australia defender Jason Davidson. “Because of everything that happened pre-World Cup, Ange came in and pretty much shook everything up and brought in a lot of youngsters that were breaking through. He wanted to go into the World Cup with a younger squad, probably an inexperienced squad. Looking back, I was fortunate enough to be one of those youngsters. On a personal level, I was very grateful because that shaped my career, going to a tournament like that.”

That World Cup proved a steep learning curve for a young side. Australia were drawn in the tournament’s group of death with a Chile side who would win the following year’s Copa America, defending champions Spain and a Netherlands team who would get to the semi-finals, and lost all three matches. However, it allowed Postecoglou to learn more about his players ahead of the 2015 Asian Cup, that confederation’s version of the European Championship. And while Tottenham’s current league season has spiralled in a way that many will argue cannot be justified even if it’s accompanied by Europa League final success, his approach ahead of Australia’s Asian Cup triumph bears some resemblance to the side he is building in north London.

Several Spurs long-timers have departed under his watch, including Eric Dier, Davinson Sanchez and Hugo Lloris, and the team has been refreshed with younger replacements who are more physically and technically capable of playing his style, such as Micky van de Ven, Mathys Tel and Wilson Odobert. And as a motivator, Postecoglou’s ability to unite his playing group despite outside pressure with stirring pre-match speeches and activities were key to their success just seven months after that World Cup disappointment.

“I really noticed his motivational side at the Asian Cup,” says Davidson. “We were the host country and had probably been together for around six to eight months by then. Leading up to the Asian Cup, I remember him getting us into a group with an Australia jersey, and he made every player throughout the camp step up and speak in front of the group. He asked everyone to explain what playing for our national team meant. He’d had the honour of doing that, so he did it too. It was very emotional for some players, talking about their past, their upbringing, how hard they had to work, what they had to sacrifice.

“I remember doing that exercise fondly, and it brought the group together. You could see the belief and unity as we got further into the tournament in the way he galvanised the squad to push through and try to create something special, and we were fortunate enough to do that.”

Australia met South Korea in the final, and in front of a home crowd in Sydney, they won 2-1 following extra time.

After their 2-0 away win at Bodo/Glimt in the semi-final’s second leg, Tottenham released a clip on their social channels of an inspiring Postecoglou post-match speech. Watching it made Davidson think about how he motivated the Australia players before that final.

“(The video) reminded me of him with the national team,” says Davidson. “It was how he created that environment where we were all family and everything else was outside noise. He wanted to make sure that everyone in the changing room had each other’s backs and would go out there and give it their all. We win together. We lose together. But above all, we make sure we do it together.”

The next stop on his globetrotting tour took Postecoglou to Japan and Yokohama F. Marinos in 2018.

The Marinos are one of the J-League’s original and most famous sides, but at the time had not won the league title in over a decade. They were wildly inconsistent in his first season, only escaping the relegation play-off on goal difference. One three-game stretch where they beat Vegalta Sendai 8-2 before losing 5-2 and 4-1 to FC Tokyo and Sanfrecce was a microcosm of their campaign. Marinos were the only side in the bottom half of the final league table without a negative goal difference, scoring 56 goals (only one fewer than the champions, Kawasaki Frontale) and conceding the same number, the third-most in the league.

Similar to that 2018 Marinos side, Spurs sit just above the relegation zone with a positive goal difference — the most similar case in the Premier League era being Manchester City in 2003-04, who finished 16th with a +1 goal difference. However, like he did in Brisbane, Postecoglou revitalised the team with a busy transfer window ahead of the 2019 season, identifying several areas which would take them to the next level.

“It was clear that this was a process, and everyone trusted in it,” says Dan Orlowitz, a football journalist based in Japan. “They made some smart off-season moves.

“All of them understood the kind of football that Ange wanted to play. All of them carried that out, and they were unstoppable. You saw what he was doing come to fruition in such an entertaining way — it was a blast to see that team play, whoever they were playing against.”

Title rivals FC Tokyo got out to a flying start with a front-loaded home schedule due to their stadium being used for the 2019 Rugby World Cup, but Postecoglou’s men closed the season with 10 wins in 11 matches to claim the title. Interestingly, Marinos were also bounced from their 69,000-seater Nissan Stadium by the rugby tournament, but they thrived in the tighter 14,000-capacity NHK Spring Mitsuzawa stadium, known for its intense atmosphere.

During their Europa League run, Tottenham performed best against Glimt and Frankfurt, where they encountered passionate supporters home and away. If they are to lift the trophy on Wednesday, their ability to thrive in the face of adversity will have been integral in doing so.

After Postecoglou left for Celtic in 2021, Marinos appointed three more Australians as manager in succession (Kevin Muscat, Harry Kewell and John Hutchinson), attempting to re-create the magic. Muscat did win the J1 League the following year, but the attachment from the fanbase is still strongest towards Postecoglou.

“I think they’ll build a statue of him outside the stadium one day,” says Orlowitz. “In his own way, he was one of the most charismatic coaches the league has seen in a long time. He believed in what he was doing and so did everyone else — it was contagious.”

At Celtic, Postecoglou won the Scottish title and the League Cup in his debut season and followed it up with the domestic treble in his second term. In year two, his team upped the intensity, slightly increasing their passes per defensive action (a statistic that effectively measures how intensely a team press their opposition) from 9.2 to 8.0, became more dominant in possession (72 per cent to 70) and averaged three goals per game (up from 2.6).

The consistent improvement in his second season in charge throughout his career is notable, but, according to Malaysia head coach Peter Cklamovski, Postecoglou’s assistant at Panachaiki, Brisbane, Australia and the Marinos, it’s due to the processes put in place on day one.

“The statement he made early on in the year about always winning in the second season… that’s factual,” says Cklamovski. “But it’s built on a daily approach, which begins from day one. The consistency of his messaging, football and building that narrative, mentality, and football that links to that, connects as the journey continues.

“It’s all built in a day’s work. That continues daily, and if the mentality to get better every day exists, you’re going to win something in the second year because of it.”

Nine months after Postecoglou foreshadowed silverware for Spurs in 2024-25, the Europa League final is his last opportunity to quieten those who doubted him.

While it won’t mask a historically poor season domestically, success in the Spanish city of Bilbao will live much longer in the memory for a club who have gone too long without a trophy.

(Top photos: Getty Images)

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Aston Villa swept Tottenham Hotspur aside at Villa Park to put pressure on their rivals in the race for Champions League qualification and consign Ange Postecoglou’s team to their 21st defeat of the Premier League season.

Unai Emery’s side found a breakthrough when Ezri Konsa steered the ball home from a set piece on 59 minutes, before Boubacar Kamara doubled their lead to put the result beyond doubt.

Postecoglou rested a number of first-team players with one eye on Wednesday’s Europa League final against Manchester United, but one positive for his team was the bright performance of Son Heung-min, the club captain making his first start for more than a month.

The win takes Villa up to 66 points and into fifth — with five teams qualifying for next season’s Champions League — while Tottenham are 17th in the table with one game remaining.

In the night’s other match, Chelsea beat Manchester United to go level on points with Villa, but above them on goal difference and into fourth place. Sixth-placed Manchester City play their game in hand on Tuesday against Bournemouth.

Jacob Tanswell and Jay Harris analyse the key talking points…

Where does this result leave Villa in the race for fifth?

Villa knew they had to be peerless in the final two games to give themselves the best chance of sneaking into a Champions League spot. Until Tottenham’s visit, they had virtually been so, with only Newcastle United accruing more points in the previous eight fixtures.

Any dropped point felt costly, which added to the anxiety around Villa Park from the outset. The atmosphere was nervy and sometimes desperate, knowing Villa had to break down a defensively-minded Spurs team who were just looking to run the clock down and get out of the Midlands with any kind of result.

There was always a suspicion that if Villa could score first, the game would become much easier to manage. Konsa’s goal eased the anxiety and was dispiriting to a Spurs side with their minds focused on a European final.

Villa moved into fourth spot for the first time since November, momentarily anyway, until Chelsea broke the deadlock at Stamford Bridge to beat Manchester United and go above Villa on goal difference, on the same number of points (66).

If City win or draw against Bournemouth on Tuesday, it would push Villa to sixth with one round of matches to play next weekend. Villa’s final game is away to Manchester United at Old Trafford.

Jacob Tanswell

How many of this Spurs team will start the Europa League final?

Over the last couple of months, Postecoglou has heavily rotated his team for Premier League fixtures in an attempt to keep his best players fresh for the knockout stages of the Europa League.

But with the final only a few days away, would Micky van de Ven, Cristian Romero and Dominic Solanke benefit from playing in a competitive match to keep them sharp?

Postecoglou dropped a hint that he would do something radical in his pre-match press conference when he said: “In a normal world you use this to sharpen up but we’re not living in a normal world. That’s the reality of our existence at the moment where we can’t lose another player to an injury. It’s just too finely balanced for us considering what’s at stake.”

Nobody expected to see Sergio Reguilon, whose contract expires next month, at left-back, while 17-year-old winger Mikey Moore made only his third start. Van de Ven, Romero and Destiny Udogie were not even included in the matchday squad. It means they will not have played a single minute since the semi-final second leg against Bodo/Glimt. Will the two-week break benefit them on Wednesday against United or make them rusty?

The only players who started against Villa who could retain their place for the final in Bilbao are Son, Mathys Tel, Wilson Odobert and Pape Matar Sarr. Postecoglou will have a decision to make between Son, Tel, Odobert and Richarlison at left-wing, while injuries to Lucas Bergvall, James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski have opened up a space in central midfield for Sarr.

The Senegal international was replaced in the 51st minute by Yves Bissouma. It looked like Postecoglou was managing his minutes but the 22-year-old walked straight down the tunnel with a member of Tottenham’s medical staff.

Even with such a radical line-up, Postecoglou still ended the game stressing over the fitness of another player.

Interestingly, next Wednesday’s opponents Manchester United were at full-strength for their match away to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

Jay Harris

How did Son look on his first start since April 10?

Son Heung-min made his first start for Spurs in over a month as he attempted to prove his fitness ahead of the Europa League final against Manchester United on Wednesday evening.

The South Korea international has underperformed this season. He has only scored seven goals in 30 appearances; the last time he failed to reach double digits in the Premier League was his debut campaign in 2015-16. The 32-year-old forged part of an unconventional attack with Moore on the right, Odobert operating as an attacking midfielder and Tel as a centre-forward.

It was a surprise, then, that Son looked sharp and was Spurs’ biggest threat. There were multiple times in the first half where he spun in behind Matty Cash and caused Aston Villa problems on the counter. Just before half-time, he received the ball inside his own half following a defensive corner and raced past Kamara into Villa’s box. Son aimed his cross towards Tel and Odobert but it was slightly behind them.

On another occasion, intricate play between Odobert, Son and Reguilon down the left created a promising goalscoring opportunity. Son moved inside past Cash and curled an effort towards goal which went just over the bar.

This has been the frustration with Son this season. At his best, he is electric and an elite finisher but there have been too many games this season when he has failed to make an impact. Postecoglou has a huge decision to make next week as to whether he starts Tottenham’s captain, and their most influential player over the last decade along with Harry Kane, or leaves him on the bench. Son’s performance on Friday evening was a reminder of what he can offer.

Jay Harris

Villa have been able to grind out results when it matters most

Villa recorded their sixth clean sheet in nine fixtures since a galling 4-1 defeat away to Crystal Palace in February, which in retrospect, proved the start of a turnaround in form thereafter.

The number of clean sheets is twice as many as Villa had registered before that in the campaign and they have now kept three in succession — all in league wins.

At the defining juncture of the season, where nerves are understandably visible among players and the home supporters at Villa Park, they have found a way to grind out wins, turning one point into three and, consequently, move into fourth spot for the first time since November.

Rediscovered defensive solidity has proven the bedrock of Villa’s upturn in form and, crucially, has found a balance with Emery now being able to lean on goals from all areas of the pitch — as Konsa and Kamara demonstrated in the 2-0 victory.

Jacob Tanswell

This is a historically terrible league season for Spurs

Nobody learned anything new from Friday night’s defeat to Aston Villa but more grim records are about to be broken. Spurs have never finished below 15th in the Premier League but they are 17th with only Brighton left to play on the final day of the season. Postecoglou’s side need to win and hope other results go in their favour to avoid any further embarrassment.

They have not finished outside the top 10 since 2007-08 when they lost six of their opening 11 games and Martin Jol was sacked. This was their 21st league defeat of 2024-25. Southampton are the only team they have beaten in the league in the last three months.

If they do not lift the Europa League trophy next week, then they will have failed to qualify for a European competition for the second time in three years. Despite spending lots of money on Van de Ven, Romero, Maddison, Solanke and Brennan Johnson since Postecoglou became head coach, they have gone backwards.

Winning the Europa League might offer them salvation but defeat will confirm this as their worst season in recent memory.

Jay Harris

What did Emery say?

On Leon Bailey and Emiliano Martinez crying at full-time of Villa’s final home game of the season, with their futures at the club uncertain: “We are focused on the matches we are playing. Of course it’s the last match here. But I don’t know. We will see about the team and the players but they are responding on the field. They are so, so focused on how we are preparing and playing each match.

“Of course Leon Bailey is playing now less because other players are responding and performing very well. We are going to play in Manchester for the last three points and for us it will be important to prepare and to focus everybody. After then, of course we will see about everything in how we are going to try and get better for the next season.”

What did Postecoglou say?

“Pape (Sarr) felt something in his back so we took him off as a bit of a precaution,” Postecoglou said afterwards. “I don’t think it’s anything too significant speaking to him afterwards but he just felt something in his back.

“I think Mikey (Moore) was okay. It was fatigue as much as anything else (with Moore). He hasn’t played that sort of amount of minutes before.”

What next for Villa?

Sunday, May 25: Manchester United (Away), Premier League, 4pm UK, 11am ET

What next for Spurs?

Wednesday, May 21: Manchester United, Europa League final (Bilbao), 8pm UK, 3pm ET

(Top photo: DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images)

Tottenham Hotspur will face Bayern Munich in a pre-season friendly in Germany on August 7.

Spurs played Bayern twice last summer as part of their preparations for the 2024-25 campaign.

They faced each other in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, before Bayern travelled to London.

The second game, which Bayern won 3-2, marked the first time that Harry Kane and Eric Dier had returned to Spurs since they left and they were presented with special awards before kick-off.

The same opponents will play each other again this summer at Bayern’s home, the Allianz Arena.

The game will see former Tottenham striker Kane face his former side after winning the Bundesliga, the first trophy of his career, with Bayern this season. The 31-year-old said last week that he hopes that the title is the first of many.

Spurs announced in March that they will travel to Hong Kong in pre-season and take on Arsenal in the first north London derby held outside of the United Kingdom.

Spurs will take on Mikel Arteta’s side on July 31 at the 50,000-seater Kai Tak stadium.

(Photo: Warren Little/Getty Images)

Try telling any Tottenham Hotspur supporter that their club has enjoyed a positive Premier League campaign and they’ll doubtless think you’re winding them up. But it is, in one sense, positively true.

Despite lying in 17th, and being fortunate that the bottom three clubs have been completely hopeless, Tottenham have a positive goal difference of +4. It’s a higher goal difference than Brighton & Hove Albion, who are eight places higher in the table and have won 17 more points. It seems statistically unlikely that Tottenham have scored more than they’ve conceded and yet have lost nearly twice as many matches as they’ve won — 20 to 11.

Is this simply statistical trivia? Or does it say something about Ange Postecoglou’s side?

As you’d expect, the relationship between goal difference and points is fairly solid. Liverpool have won the most points and recorded the highest goal difference this season. Southampton are the opposite in both respects.

The same applies to the (nearly) 33 seasons of the Premier League era: the best points tally (100) and the best goal difference (+79) were both recorded by Manchester City in 2017-18, while the team who recorded the lowest points tally (11) Derby County in 2007-08, also had the worst goal difference (-69), although this was equalled by last season’s wretched Sheffield United side.

All this is very straightforward. But the interesting elements come when there are major outliers.

The strangest anomaly were Norwich City in the inaugural Premier League campaign. They were genuine title challengers for much of 1992-93, finishing third. They did so, remarkably, with a goal difference of -4. On average, a -4 goal difference has otherwise resulted in an 11th-placed Premier League finish. The ‘secret’ was that 16 of Norwich’s 21 league wins were by a one-goal margin, whereas they suffered heavy away losses: 7-1 against Blackburn Rovers, 5-1 against Tottenham, 4-1 against Liverpool, and 3-0 against Southampton and Wimbledon.

Notably, all those heavy defeats came away from home. Norwich offered, by the standards of the time, a commitment to brave passing football that didn’t seem to work on the road when home advantage played a bigger role in football compared to today, and many teams played for a draw on their travels. Besides, away trips from the relatively isolated city of Norwich, before players were accustomed to luxury travel, were somewhat arduous.

But Norwich seems an isolated case. The other sides who recorded good finishes despite a mediocre goal difference tended to be cautious, cagey teams. The only noteworthy example came when David Moyes’ Everton finished in fourth in 2004-05 despite a goal difference of -1, although that figure is slightly skewed by a 7-0 thrashing by Arsenal in their penultimate game, when they were already assured of a spot in the Champions League qualifiers. Harry Redknapp’s West Ham United, meanwhile, finished fifth in 1998-99 with a goal difference of -7.

As for the other end of the scale, has anyone ever finished as low as Tottenham’s current position while also having a positive goal difference? Well, no — as the below graph shows.

The closest case were the Manchester City side of 2003-04, managed by Kevin Keegan, who finished 16th with a +1 goal difference. That works neatly, because Keegan was, perhaps, the Postecoglou of two decades ago, favouring all-out attacking football with little regard for the situation in the game.

City endured a run of 14 games without a win midway through that season (although they recorded possibly the most memorable comeback in FA Cup history during that period, winning 4-3 at Tottenham with 10 men, having been 3-0 down at half-time), but a 5-1 win against Everton on the final day pushed their goal difference into positive numbers.

Everton of 1999-2000 are also noteworthy, finishing in 13th despite a healthy +10 goal difference. This owes much to thumping home wins against the division’s minnows.

There has been an element of randomness about Tottenham’s numbers this season. Maybe the league table does lie a little. Earlier in the season, there was a five-game run when Tottenham recorded a trio of three-goal wins (against Manchester United, West Ham and Aston Villa) alongside one-goal defeats (against Brighton and Crystal Palace).

Ideally, Spurs would have shared their goals across the games more evenly. In the comfortable wins against West Ham and Villa, they significantly overperformed their expected goals tallies — the pattern was more about inconsistency in terms of finishing rather than performance.

But it’s also surely about a lack of tactical nuance. Postecoglou has varied his system more than critics have suggested, but his commitment to open football, almost whatever the circumstances, has often left Tottenham exposed.

Goal difference can be seen as a good indicator of a side’s natural footballing ability, whereas the points tally, in relation to goal difference, is a good measure of how canny a side is — how strategically clever they are, how they can squeeze out results.

Postecoglou might leave at the end of the campaign, and his two-year spell will inevitably be linked to Tottenham’s result in the Europa League final. But should he achieve this odd and unwanted record — the lowest Premier League finish for a side with a positive goal difference — it will somehow feel fitting.

(Graph: Conor O’Neill)

(Top photo: Ange Postecoglou by Ben Whitley/PA Images via Getty Images)