From Tears to Triumph: Tottenham's Transformative Journey
There is a line Roberto de Zerbi keeps coming back to.
“Did we pass away?”
He asked it in April, staring at a broken Tottenham dressing room in Sunderland. Players on their backs. Some in tears. A 1-0 defeat at the Stadium of Light and the very real possibility that Spurs, of all clubs, were heading for the Championship.
That was game one of seven to save a season and a reputation. Survival arrived on the final day, dragged over the line rather than celebrated. Spurs stayed up, but they were scarred.
Four months on, the scene could not feel more different.
From tears in Sunderland to coffee in Sydney
On a private floor of a plush hotel in Sydney, with the Harbour Bridge and Opera House framing the skyline, Tottenham’s players sit around a coffee bar staffed by their own barista. Laughter bounces off the walls. Competitive table tennis matches run long into the evening. The atmosphere is light, almost carefree.
It is not just a mood shift. It is a statement.
A club-record £237m has already been poured into this squad. Sandro Tonali, the £100m centrepiece from Newcastle. Mateus Fernandes at £85m from West Ham. Jan Paul van Hecke, Andrew Robertson, Martin Dubravka. Marcos Senesi, fresh from a World Cup final with Argentina, has joined training at Hotspur Way after extended leave. The new Tottenham looks expensive, ambitious, unapologetic.
“I deserve to want the top players, because now Tottenham deserves to build up a top team,” De Zerbi says.
It is a long way from drawing up two transfer plans – one for relegation, one for survival.
The shark in the market
De Zerbi insists he would have stayed if the worst had happened and Spurs had dropped. Instead, he finds himself working off Plan A, fighting to “respect the will” of big names like captain Cristian Romero and goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, whose futures still hang in the balance.
At the start, he sat down with almost everyone.
“At the beginning of my time in April I had one million individual meetings,” he jokes. Players who wanted out were told to say so. But there was a condition.
“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.”
That edge runs through everything he does. Especially transfers.
“In the transfer market, when I want one player, I become like a shark,” he says. “No chance to say no.”
It is not bluster. That relentlessness has already delivered two record-breaking midfielders and a defender coveted by rivals.
Spurs beat Manchester United and Manchester City to Fernandes and Tonali. They signed Van Hecke despite strong interest from Chelsea. Deals that, not long ago, would have belonged to other clubs.
De Zerbi revels in it.
“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 responsibility is his.
“When you take the decision, you take the responsibility. 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 went further. He told Fernandes’ father he would be a “second dad” and look after his son in England.
With Tonali, the move began the day after Spurs secured their Premier League status by beating Everton on the final day. De Zerbi messaged him immediately, then flew to Brescia to sit in the midfielder’s home. That meeting proved decisive. Club staff handled the rest.
Van Hecke’s recruitment carried a different kind of twist. After a 2-2 draw with Brighton in April, when Georginio Rutter’s 95th-minute equaliser punched a hole in Spurs’ survival hopes, De Zerbi remembered who had delivered the cross.
He later messaged Van Hecke: “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.”
The pressure told. Van Hecke signed.
And De Zerbi is not finished. He is teasing a final attacking “bomba” – two forwards to come, one expected to be Manchester City’s Savinho.
New power structure, same ruthless edge
All of this is happening inside a club that has been ripped up and rewired in a year.
Vinai Venkatesham, the new chief executive, now fronts the organisation on behalf of the Lewis Family Trust. Technical director Johan Lange, the lone survivor from the previous regime, works alongside him on negotiations. Rafi Moersen, director of football operations, and performance director Dan Lewindon – both recruited from City Football Group – add further heft behind the scenes.
Lewindon’s job is clear: fix Spurs’ injury record.
De Zerbi’s job is everything. He is in the middle of it all, from the training pitch to the boardroom. He talks about Tottenham’s budget as if it were his own wallet.
“We assessed the request of Vuskovic [to join Brighton], with Vinai, with Johan together, because I consider Tottenham’s money my money,” he says. “It’s like the owner is my father, I think you don’t want to ask your father to lose money.”
Luka Vuskovic’s £45m move to Brighton brought in a significant fee. Lucas Bergvall and Djed Spence could yet follow him out, their futures uncertain.
This is not just about spending. It is about trading.
“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 logic also underpinned a hard call on Joao Palhinha. Spurs chose not to turn his Bayern Munich loan into a permanent transfer, not because De Zerbi doubted his quality, but because the financial package did not fit the model.
The Lewis family injected £100m into the club in June. De Zerbi insists he feels “no pressure” from that money. He argues Tottenham are only doing what Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool have already done: invest heavily to stay relevant.
Reckless? He rejects the idea.
Cleaning the air after Sunderland
The rebuild is not only financial. It is emotional.
After that opening defeat at Sunderland, the gloom did not stay in the dressing room. It seeped into the training ground.
“The day after I organised a meeting without players and I said, ‘The first one I see say something negative, I send you home immediately’,” De Zerbi recalls.
He wanted to suffocate the negativity at source. Staff, not just players, had to change.
This is a squad that has lived two years on a knife-edge. Seventeenth place in back-to-back seasons. One of those years softened by a Europa League triumph under Ange Postecoglou, but the most recent campaign carrying the real fear of relegation.
De Zerbi knows scars do not disappear just because the table says “safe”.
He tried to reconnect the group in simple ways. One night in Mayfair, “one big dinner in Mayfair, with alcohol,” as he puts it. He believes they were unlucky in the final matches and could have secured survival earlier, but the damage to confidence was done.
“I think they considered themselves in that moment worse than the people thought,” he says. The healing, he insists, is ongoing. He wants them to reach the point where they do not need the manager to organise their nights out.
“I hope next time they organise [dinner and drinks] for themselves. With love, friendship and care, you become top, top, top.”
Five-year build, immediate expectations
Tottenham are trying to live in two timeframes at once.
On one side, a five-year plan, a structured build, careful trading, a new executive team and a manager who talks about the club’s money as his own. On the other, a squad that has just welcomed a £100m midfielder, an £85m partner, a World Cup finalist defender and a manager who prowls the transfer market like a predator.
The contrast with that dressing room in Sunderland is dramatic. Then, the question was whether Spurs could stay alive. Now, the question is how quickly they can look like Tottenham again – not the version clinging to safety, but the one that expects to compete at the top.
De Zerbi has his players drinking coffee in Sydney, playing table tennis, laughing again. He has his “shark” instincts in the market and a boardroom aligned behind him.
The trauma of last season still lingers. The spending has raised the stakes. The plan stretches five years into the future.
How long will this new Tottenham take to find out if all that pain was worth it?
