Tottenham's Transformation Under Roberto De Zerbi
There was a point last spring when Roberto De Zerbi looked around the Tottenham dressing room and wondered aloud: “Did we pass away?”
Players were on their backs at the Stadium of Light, some in tears after a 1-0 defeat at Sunderland in his first game. Seven matches to save a season. Seven to keep a club of Tottenham’s size out of the Championship. Survival only came on the final day. The scars were obvious.
Four months later, the picture could hardly be more different.
From Sunderland tears to Sydney smiles
In Sydney, on a private floor of the team hotel a short walk from the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, the mood has flipped. Laughter spills out of a room where competitive table tennis matches are being played. Players drift in and out with flat whites and cortados, made by the squad’s own barista.
This is no longer the broken group De Zerbi inherited in April. It is a squad rebuilt and re-energised, stitched together by a club-record outlay of £237m and a manager who has made it clear that Tottenham should no longer think small.
“I deserve to want the top players, because now Tottenham deserves to build up a top team,” he says. It does not sound like a plea. It sounds like a statement of intent.
Sandro Tonali, the £100m centrepiece from Newcastle, is here. So is £85m signing Mateus Fernandes from West Ham. Jan Paul van Hecke, Andrew Robertson and Martin Dubravka have all featured on the pre-season tour across Australia and New Zealand. Only Marcos Senesi, given extended leave after Argentina’s World Cup final, missed the trip, though he has now started work at Hotspur Way.
Tottenham, once braced for life in the second tier, are suddenly talking about the “upper echelons” again and daring to mention trophies without flinching.
Two plans, one survivor
The club went into the run-in with two transfer blueprints: one for relegation, one for survival. De Zerbi insists he would have stayed even if Spurs had gone down, but he is now driving Plan A with a ferocity that has startled some inside the game.
At the start, he sat down with players one by one.
“At the beginning of my time in April I had one million individual meetings,” he jokes. The message in those meetings was anything but light-hearted.
If you want to go, he told them, help me keep this club up and I’ll help you leave. Refuse that, and “you stay underwater with me”.
Cristian Romero, the captain, and goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario could yet move on. De Zerbi says their wishes will be respected. But the tone is clear: Tottenham are no longer a soft touch, either in negotiations or in mentality.
New power structure, same ruthless coach
The club around him has changed almost as radically as the squad. Vinai Venkatesham now runs Tottenham on behalf of the Lewis Family Trust as chief executive. Technical director Johan Lange, the lone survivor from the previous regime, works alongside him on recruitment.
They are backed by director of football operations Rafi Moersen and performance director Dan Lewindon, both signed from City Football Group. Lewindon’s brief is blunt: fix Spurs’ chronic injury record.
De Zerbi, though, inserts himself into almost everything, especially transfers.
“In the transfer market, when I want one player, I become like a shark,” he says. “No chance to say no.”
That edge helped push through record deals for Fernandes and Tonali, both secured ahead of heavyweight competition. Tottenham beat Manchester United and Manchester City to the two midfielders, then fended off Chelsea to land Van Hecke.
The approach is calculated. People involved in the talks describe a club that knew it had to be aggressive and quick, from fees and wages to the manager’s personal charm offensive.
For Fernandes, De Zerbi went beyond the player. “With Mateus Fernandes, I spoke with the mum, with the father.” He told the midfielder’s father he would be a “second dad” in England. Responsibility is something he actively seeks.
“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,” he says. The appeal, he explains, lies in ownership: when he makes the call, he carries the consequences.
Messages, meetings and a decisive trip to Brescia
The stories behind these deals underline how hands-on he has become.
In April, Tottenham were clinging to survival when Georginio Rutter’s 95th-minute equaliser for Brighton in a 2-2 draw felt like a punch to the gut. The assist came from Van Hecke. De Zerbi messaged him.
You wanted to push Tottenham down for Brighton with that assist, he told the defender. Now you have to come to me. “You have no choice.”
With Tonali, the contact came the day after Spurs secured their Premier League status by beating Everton on the final day. De Zerbi texted, then flew to the midfielder’s home in Brescia. That meeting, followed by detailed work from club staff, proved decisive.
And he is not finished. He has teased one final attacking “bomba” in the market, with two forwards expected, including a move for Manchester City’s Savinho.
Spending big, thinking long
The scale of Tottenham’s rebuild invites scrutiny. De Zerbi rejects the idea that Spurs are throwing money around without thought.
He says he is under “no pressure” from ownership, even after the Lewis family injected £100m in June, arguing that Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool have all made similar moves in recent years. The difference, he suggests, is that Tottenham are starting from a lower base after two traumatic seasons, including back-to-back 17th-placed finishes, one of them cushioned by a Europa League triumph under Ange Postecoglou.
There have been exits as well as arrivals. Luka Vuskovic’s £45m move to Brighton brought in a substantial fee. The futures of Lucas Bergvall and Djed Spence remain unresolved.
“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.”
That mindset shaped another big call. Tottenham chose not to sign Joao Palhinha permanently from Bayern Munich, not because De Zerbi doubted his quality, but because the overall financial package did not fit the plan.
Like any major club, he says, Spurs must sell high and buy smart, working to a five-year blueprint. “We are starting for a plan of five seasons because we are building.” The language is long-term, the actions anything but cautious.
Killing the negativity
Rebuilding the squad is only half the job. The psychological damage of last season ran deep, not just among the players.
After that opening defeat at Sunderland, De Zerbi sensed a cloud hanging over the training ground staff as well. The next day he called a meeting without the squad.
“The first one I see say something negative, I send you home immediately,” he told them.
The message was simple: the gloom had to go. Behaviour, attitude, spirit – the internal culture that had absorbed two straight relegation battles – all needed rewiring.
He tried to reconnect the group in more human ways too. One night in Mayfair, he took the players out for “one big dinner in Mayfair, with alcohol”. The evening, he felt, helped loosen the fear and self-doubt that had crept into the dressing room.
He still believes Spurs were unlucky in their final matches and could have secured safety earlier. More importantly, he felt the squad’s view of themselves had shrunk.
“I think they considered themselves in that moment worse than the people thought,” he admits. The healing is not complete. “I hope next time they organise [dinner and drinks] for themselves.”
From trauma to ambition
What Tottenham are trying to do now is unusual: build a Champions League-level squad on the back of a relegation escape. The club that once planned for life in the Championship is now talking about “top, top, top” standards, about love, friendship and care as foundations for elite performance.
“With love, friendship and care, you become top, top, top,” De Zerbi says. It is a romantic line, but it sits alongside a hard edge – the shark in the transfer market, the manager who threatens to send staff home for negativity, the coach who tells players they will sink with him if they do not help him first.
From bodies on the floor in Sunderland to coffees and table tennis in Sydney, the transformation is striking. The question now is whether this rebuilt Tottenham can carry that new energy into a season that demands more than survival – and whether De Zerbi’s ruthless, relational vision can finally drag the club back to where he insists it belongs.
