Roberto De Zerbi's Transformation of Tottenham: From Tears to Triumph
There was a point last spring when Roberto De Zerbi looked around the Tottenham dressing room and wondered aloud: “Did we pass away?”
Players lay on their backs at the Stadium of Light, some in tears, stunned by a 1-0 defeat at Sunderland in his first game in charge. It was the start of a seven-match scramble to keep Spurs in the Premier League, a club of Champions League nights suddenly staring into the abyss.
They survived, but only just, clinging to safety on the final day of the season. The damage, though, ran deeper than the league table. Confidence was shredded, belief fractured. Spurs felt like a club that had forgotten what it was supposed to be.
Four months later, the picture could hardly be more different.
From tears in Sunderland to table tennis in Sydney
In Sydney, on a private floor of the team hotel overlooking the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, De Zerbi’s players are laughing. Coffees in hand, poured by the squad’s own barista. Competitive table tennis on the go. New signings mingling with old faces, the mood light, almost carefree.
The numbers tell you how serious Tottenham are about this reset. Around £237m invested, a club-record outlay, to drag Spurs back towards the top end of English football and back into the conversation for trophies.
Sandro Tonali, the new centrepiece of the project at £100m from Newcastle. Mateus Fernandes, another record at £85m from West Ham. Jan Paul van Hecke, Andrew Robertson and Martin Dubravka all involved on this pre-season tour of Australia and New Zealand. Marcos Senesi, fresh from a World Cup final with Argentina, granted extended leave but now back at Hotspur Way to start work.
“I deserve to want the top players, because now Tottenham deserves to build up a top team,” De Zerbi says. It sounds bold. It also sounds like a man who has already stared at the worst and decided he is not going back there.
Two plans, one survival, and a promise
Spurs, unusually for a club of their size, had drawn up two transfer plans last season: one for relegation, one for survival. The margins were that fine.
De Zerbi insists he would have stayed even if they had gone down, but he is relieved to be working off Plan A. That includes “respecting the will” of players such as captain Cristian Romero and goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, both of whom could yet move on.
“At the beginning of my time in April I had one million individual meetings,” he jokes. The message was simple. If players wanted to leave, they had to help him keep Tottenham up first.
“‘Yes, help me to stay up, and then I help you to leave. If you don’t help me to stay up, you stay underwater with me.’”
It was part threat, part pact. The kind of blunt clarity a dressing room in freefall often needs.
New faces in the boardroom, a shark in the market
The upheaval has not been limited to the pitch. Over the past 12 months, Spurs have undergone radical change in the corridors of power as well, a response to understandable fury in the stands after consecutive seasons flirting with the drop.
New chief executive Vinai Venkatesham now runs the club on behalf of the Lewis Family Trust. Technical director Johan Lange is the only senior survivor from the previous regime and leads negotiations alongside him. Rafi Moersen, director of football operations, and performance director Dan Lewindon have arrived from the City Football Group, with Lewindon charged with tackling Tottenham’s grim injury record.
In the middle of it all stands De Zerbi, arms in everything, and especially in recruitment.
“In the transfer market, when I want one player, I become like a shark,” he says. “No chance to say no.”
That predator’s instinct delivered Fernandes and Tonali for a combined £185m. De Zerbi does not hide how much he relishes that side of the job.
“I love working in the transfer market. It’s not a pressure, it’s one of the nicest parts in my work, in my job.”
Why? Because the decision – and the responsibility – is his.
“If the coach calls the player, you can build a special connection at the beginning. With Mateus Fernandes, I spoke with the mum, with the father.” He even told Fernandes’ father he would be the midfielder’s “second dad” in England.
Tottenham also landed Van Hecke despite interest from Chelsea, having already outmanoeuvred Manchester United and Manchester City for their two record-breaking midfielders. In a market of bluff and brinkmanship, Spurs chose speed and aggression: pay early, pay big, get De Zerbi on the phone.
After a 2-2 draw with Brighton in April, when Georginio Rutter’s 95th-minute equaliser left Spurs’ survival hopes hanging, De Zerbi turned that pain into persuasion. Van Hecke had assisted the goal.
“You wanted to push down Tottenham for Brighton when you made the assist to Rutter, now you have to come to me, you have no choice,” he later told the defender in a message.
With Tonali, the courtship was just as direct. De Zerbi texted him the day after Spurs secured safety with a final-day win over Everton, then flew to Brescia to meet him at home. That conversation proved decisive. Club staff finished the deal from there.
And he is not done. De Zerbi is already teasing what he calls a final attacking “bomba”, with two forwards expected, including a move for Manchester City’s Savinho.
Big spending, tight control
The spending is eye-catching. De Zerbi insists it is not reckless.
He says he feels “no pressure” from the £100m injection from the Lewis family in June, describing it as essential rather than extravagant and pointing to similar capital boosts at Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool in recent seasons.
There have been exits too. Luka Vuskovic’s £45m move to Brighton brought in a significant fee, while questions still hang over the futures of Lucas Bergvall and England full-back Djed Spence.
“We assessed the request of Vuskovic [to join Brighton], with Vinai, with Johan together, because I consider Tottenham’s money my money,” De Zerbi says. “It’s like the owner is my father, I think you don’t want to ask your father to lose money.
“Like all the big clubs, we have to sell a player at as big of a price as possible and we have to bring a player with a small price, we are starting for a plan of five seasons because we are building.”
That long-term lens also shaped one of the deals they did not do. Spurs walked away from making Joao Palhinha’s loan from Bayern Munich permanent, not because De Zerbi doubted the player, but because the overall financial package did not fit the model.
Discipline, not just ambition, is supposed to define this rebuild.
Cleaning the air after Sunderland
If Sunderland exposed the fragility of the squad, what followed exposed the mood of the club.
The day after that defeat, De Zerbi called a meeting at the training ground. No players, just staff. The message was as blunt as his survival pact.
“The first one I see say something negative, I send you home immediately,” he told them.
He knew the trauma of back-to-back seasons near the bottom – 17th the year before, even if that campaign ended with a Europa League triumph under Ange Postecoglou – had seeped into the walls. Negativity had become habit.
So he attacked it head-on. On the pitch, in the offices, and even at the dinner table.
He took his players out for what he calls “one big dinner in Mayfair, with alcohol”. A release valve, a chance to be people again rather than just professionals suffocating under the weight of the table.
He remains convinced they were unfortunate in their final matches and could have secured survival earlier. The bigger problem, he felt, was how they saw themselves.
“I think they considered themselves in that moment worse than the people thought,” he admits. The healing, he says, is ongoing. “I hope next time they organise [dinner and drinks] for themselves.”
That is the crux of his vision: a change in “behaviour, attitude and spirit” across a club that has lived too long on the edge. Less fear, more ownership. Less gloom, more responsibility.
“With love, friendship and care, you become top, top, top,” De Zerbi says.
From Sunderland’s tears to Sydney’s table tennis, Tottenham have started to move. The question now is whether this rebuilt, re-energised squad can turn that movement into a climb back to where De Zerbi insists they belong.
