World Cup Champion Pedro Porro, Spence to Inter Rumours & Youth Transfer Strategy

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0:50Jack:Hello everybody, welcome back to Rule the Roost podcast. The dust has settled on the 2026 World Cup and it's 30 something days away from the start of the Premier League. season already John Bass are you happy about that do you do you lament a life without football or do you fancy a bit of a bit of a rest for a while well I kind of have had a bit of a rest because

1:11Jon Bass:I've basically like been on holiday for what feels like forever because I went to America first not to watch the World Cup I was just visiting a friend while it was on so I was there when the when the World Cup kicked off I had a whole entire holiday there came back for a week then went on holiday again with my wife and the world cup has only just finished so it does feel like it's been on forever and i know that obviously it's a slightly bigger world cup this time around but i am in that weird state where i thought okay i'm ready for a nice long break away from football but then i remembered that we're in a new era of spurs and all the stuff that is going on with the bombers left right and center at the start of the window and you know the excitement around what what we're going to be doing this season has made me unusually more excited at this point than normal I'm very much normally joke I'm very much like I guess pre-season's fine but I don't really care like let give me a kind of fast forward to the week before the season starts I can get really excited and I know where we're at this time around this there's something different in the air at Spurs and it's making me just want to hoover up as much content info chats as possible so yeah I'm really excited so bring it bring it all on mate a bit too long the world cup wasn't it i think i

2:22Jack:think the expanded format there was something there was it just got to a certain point maybe around the quarterfinals when i was just like the energy's gone from this a little bit you know that it's hard to get that back you know hard to get that back with anything in life right when you when there's just that intangible sense that energy's dissipated from something right yeah i

2:42Jon Bass:just i just thought like for me it sort of was peaks and troughs a little bit so for example like most of the groups the best teams if you win your first two games like you're through anyway and then in a lot of cases you only had to win one game basically to sort of guarantee you're through so it made it sort of slightly less exciting a lot of those last games in groups so it's a bit like we we basically know most of this is already done um and then yeah it did get to the point where again it just got to a certain stage where i was a bit like i don't even know where we're at in this tournament now because I'm so confused by this extra game in the knockout stages.

3:19Jon Bass:And it just seemed like, because it took such a long time to get back round, I was like, is this the next round just starting or the end of this round just finishing? And so, you know, there were lots of factors like that. Also think from a sort of more European-centric view, the fact that everything was happening in the middle of the night just made it more confusing to me as like where we're at with things and what's going on. So I know lots of people really enjoyed this World Cup. I personally, because like I said, I was traveling, I was away quite a lot. It didn't sort of grab me as much as it normally would.

3:50Jon Bass:And I saw way less of this World Cup than probably any World Cup since I've been alive. So there's a bit of a shame, but yeah, I kind of, ultimately it was okay. And Spain winning it kind of made it a little bit better because...

4:07Jack:Deserved winners, weren't they? They were. They were. Can't really argue with it. and Pedro Porro. Tottenham Hotspur's Pedro Porro, that's three World Cups in a row now that Spurs have had a significant figure within the squad of the winning team. That new contract for him before the World Cup started is starting to look pretty good, isn't it, mate?

4:27Jon Bass:That was really quite impressive hindsight from the club, which is something that we haven't been able to say for a little while. And this is what I mean about it does feel like there's some changes afoot at Spurs and that we are seeing them behave differently and i guess we'll talk about this subject in a bit more detail as we carry on but that is one in now what is becoming a long list of really good decisions that seem seemingly are being made over the course of the sort of end of last season which was a complete debacle into this like window and pre-season i mean it looks like genius now because if not double maybe his value has like gone through the roof completely there's an argument to be made he's basically the best right back in the world isn't there well i mean there was

5:11Jack:there was some talk when there before the world cup that like city wanted him for 50 million i think even i was like umming and ahhing about it like you know 50 mils probably quite good good deal for pedro poro and now you're like not a chance double that you know yeah double at least

5:26Jon Bass:yeah so this is what i mean i think now it's it's funny isn't it how like context and environment can completely change how you feel about a player and look we've all been guilty of it and i think to a certain extent it's understandable that we're looking at a lot of our players and going well they're rubbish because we finished in 17 two years in a row and they're really bad because their form's been really bad but there are and poro is a great example of that there are good players in our squad that given the right environments and better players around them they can show you where they can perform and i do think poro is kind of a perfect example of that like when he's good in good teams he looks amazing and i'm like we do have him he is our player and And so as we start to see our squad hopefully improve, I think we can very much look forward to seeing him perform really well next season.

6:13Jack:I'm pretty sure a lot of the early chat coming out from Spurs when De Zerbi first took charge was that Pedro Porra, he wants to build the team around. He's like one of the key players that he wants to keep around the team. And I'm fairly certain he's probably led the charge in giving him a big new contract and making sure that he is, you know, he feels important to the club and he feels important around the place because you're absolutely spot on. You know, the surroundings that somebody finds themselves in can bleed into their performances. I think we can feel that in any walk of life, can't we?

6:47Jack:Any type of job. And Porro, I mean, the thing is, it's not some big gotcha. I don't think it automatically means every single criticism any of us have ever had of Pedro Porro is immediately invalid. I think there has been cause to be quite frustrated with him at times this season. But the context, as you say, of seeing him playing in an actually functioning team with players of a certain technical quality around him, it soon becomes abundantly clear actually quite how good he can be if he has the right platform to perform. And hopefully that's what Spurs will be able to provide him with going forwards.

7:26Jack:I mean, I guess another example of this we could say, because, you know, we're in this funny place aren't we when we're talking about three arguably three of the top players of this world cup jed spence pedro poro and christian romero have all played in one of the worst performing defenses in the in the premier league if not in europe for this season but christian romero is another one who he's been a an integral part in argentina's path to the final has as per usual rather frustratingly looked really good every single time he pulls on the argentina show his nice little sort of shimmy move past I think it was Anthony Gordon in the England game just sort of shows you how brilliant he can be with the ball at his feet as a defender we've all had conversations like every single podcast every single podcaster has pretty much unanimously said the time has come to move on from Christian Romero and I think to varying degrees his performances at this World Cup have maybe given some of us some pause for thought because shown, as we sort of said with Porro, quite how good he can be.

8:32Jack:And if Spurs are building a bigger, brighter future, could he be a part of that? Could he be an important part of that? However, I don't really want to look at this from the fan perspective, mate, because I think you and I, I would imagine, still probably align on the point that it's just time to move past him. There's a bit of a stink around him and, you know, he maybe doesn't want to be at the club anymore but what I want to ask you is do you think Roberto Deserbi will feel that way about Cristian Romero do you think Roberto Deserbi has watched this World Cup and seen Cristian Romero playing the type of football that Roberto Deserbi wants his defenders to play and probably being one of the best examples in world football of being able to do that as well as having all the cojones and the guts and the passion and all that stuff that Deserbi loves it's a really it's a

9:20Jon Bass:really difficult question to answer aside from the obvious right which is like we don't we'll probably never really know what any figures in football think because they they'll always give us the sort of uh professional answer or the club answer to make sure that they're not putting themselves in awkward situations down the line but we can only go on really what we're what we're seeing in terms of like what's actually happened and what's actually happened is very very quickly after the end of the season, we made moves for Sonesi and Van Hecker, which to me, if you look at basically what we already have in the squad, right, we already had Van de Ven, Romero and Danso, to add Sonesi and to add Van Hecker very quickly would indicate to me that he's not super happy with the options that are there or that he knows that we're going to move on some of those players.

10:10Jon Bass:Now, we also know that when De Zerbi came in, he basically had more leverage than basically anybody in the history of football and only took it under the sort of proviso that he would really have a lot of control over football decisions so again if we we accept that that is a fair thing to say then nobody's going to sign a player or sell a player that he doesn't you know that he's got strong feelings about either way so that does to me indicate that he is happy with Romero to to leave or that he doesn't you know doesn't see him as being essential to like future success for spurs now that being said that's all taken place before the world cup started and he's now you know performed really well got them got into the final and performed well throughout the tournament but i wonder if it's less about his talent on the pitch because i think that's the one thing that everybody does agree on right no nobody i don't think including myself i'm not his biggest fan is denying that he's got talent and that he's got the ability to be a at times world class player it's everything else that comes with it right and it's that trade-off like is it worth that maybe seven games a season you get this incredible you know ball playing centre back who can do it all but you know for the rest of the season he's either getting sent off getting injured messing about causing problems I just feel like I think that Deserby probably looks at the situation and just thinks like yeah sure if he could play like he does when he plays at his best consistently and didn't have all these issues with him then yeah of course i'd keep him but i'd rather get an eight a seven out of ten player every week who i can depend upon who could potentially grow to become an eight nine out of ten player every week and that would do me better than have this constant up and down and i actually think that you mentioned poro spence and romero being you know part you know three parts of a back four there but they're all kind of similar in some ways i I mean, it's probably a bit harsh on Porro, but Porro gets run into the ground, which means that, you know, because there's no rotation for him, that sometimes his form just drops off a cliff.

12:11Jon Bass:Spence can be electric at times, and other times you're like, well, I don't know where he's going, and he's a left-sided, right-footed left back, right, which is slightly more complicated than just playing on his natural-footed side. And then Romero's up-and-down consistency. So whilst individually they can put on great performances and short spells, when you look at it that way, you're like, no wonder we struggled. Like, of course we did. We're all over the place. And even Van de Ven last season had a lot of games where it was up and down. So that combination suddenly just, you can see why there's issues there.

12:42Jon Bass:So it's a long answer, but I basically feel like he's probably weighed all of those things up and just gone for the betterment of having a more balanced and consistent back line. We should probably look to cash in on him. And if anything, mate, I think we all thought, well, it's going to be difficult to find suitors at an appropriate level. He's done us a favor, Romero, by just performing really well. He's put himself very much in the shop window, and hopefully we can get maximum value for it. Imagine buying your kid a toy only to find the batteries aren't included, or buying furniture but missing the tools to build it.

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13:56Jack:I think it probably, because we sort of spoke at the tail end of last season that your Barcelonas or your Madrids or somebody might think, yeah, Romero's good, but is there a bit of baggage with him? Is he actually that good? But as you say there, when he plays like this again in a World Cup, those teams probably do think, yeah, maybe he is that extra, that extra little something that we need. I mean, I've seen Inter linked a lot. Barcelona have seemingly been tenuously linked. So, I mean, I fully expect him to go. And to the point that I'd sort of made about Deserby may be favoring him because he's got that kind of, you know, the guts and the fire and all that type of stuff.

14:35Jack:It probably undersells the fact that as much as Deserby does like that stuff and it is something of a hothead himself. As Jack Pitbrook told me when I had him on at the very end of last season, Deserby's actually shown already in his time at Spurs a level of emotional intelligence that I think probably isn't often associated with him. um that maybe you know he as a young manager uh as a fairly young guy in the grand scheme of things is himself on a on a you know on a progression of learning if you like that's an awful way of putting that but he's he's he's he is himself a sort of a work in progress right and he is trying to learn and try to become a better manager probably a better person as we hopefully all are trying to do in our lives as we go forward so you know for me to just say well he's gonna like Romero because he's a hothead probably isn't fair even to Deserby who maybe has looked at things like Romero as a club captain disappearing off to Argentina during a crucial game at the tail end of last season and seeing how if rumor is to be believed how the rest of the squad felt about that um which you know I just I think that's a do you know that the point that I always come back to Romero and I mean this genuinely I don't mean this to be hyperbolic I honestly on balance think he is the most frustrating player that has ever played for this club I I really do think that just in that I do think he's brilliant and I do think you can take a step back and when you shelve your own issues with him say at the times during his tenure when Spurs have been at their best it's generally because he's been locked in and he's been at his best he isn't important and he is a crucial player for us however with that comes that responsibility that he is just too selfish to shoulder he's too selfish and he's too pig-headed and he's too obviously arrogant or just doesn't care about the club enough the various reports have seen paul o 'keefe and people talk about the fact he's late constantly for training he sometimes will just disappear midway through a season doesn't tell the club that he's going on holiday or just this lack of respect that he shows for the club for the professionals that work around him it's disgraceful it's like and it's truly disheartening and it's truly it's quite upsetting as a fan to know that the club actually reached out made him captain to try and get him on side and it still just didn't work i mean look probably given too much time to this one already but it's it's just it's such a it's you know this is the club captain for now that we're talking about and this is probably one of our bigger players if you like on the world stage and it's just it's so funny to feel this level of meh about the idea of him going because it should mean more but it just doesn't really and you know you we sort of spoke about energy at the top and you just got to imagine that's probably the feeling behind behind closed doors at Spurs as well about him yeah I think mate as well just on this point I

17:29Jon Bass:think this is like an important moment that happens for a lot of teams that go on to to be successful is they'll have like one or two really top talented players but those players in themselves actually cause more issues. And so there's this constant pull-off going. Aubameyang, Ozil. We've had a few. Adebayor, for example, right, where he was by far the best striker at the club. But in order for the club to move forward, he's got to go, right? And we had to make those difficult decisions where you're going, we're going to have to reduce the sort of quality of the squad, but that will improve, you know, the team.

18:05Jon Bass:And like, there's balance there. And I think there's, you know, albeit very like small level, but when Danso came into the side, Danso is not as good as Romero. I think everybody can agree with that. We just looked better. We just looked better because we knew what we were going to get. We were getting consistent performances and everyone was a bit more calm. He wasn't just going to run up and play up front for the last 10 minutes because he felt like that's what he was going to do. He wasn't going to get himself sent off. He wasn't going to get into rows with opposing players and causing issues.

18:30Jon Bass:He was just going to give us 7 out of 10 every game. That's what he did. And that's what we needed in that way, in that sort of tail end of the season to get us out of the mess that we'd got in and so I think like moving forward into going into this next season what we've looked at has gone like well who's a who's a really steady center back that can improve what we have if we don't have Romero and we can't start down so who's better and Van Hecker is that is an improvement and I think that's kind of where we what we needed to do right which is look at like how you can make these improvements to the squad but also like create harmony within the team and i just think at this moment in time this this is the right thing to do and we should be looking to move him on as quickly as possible what about

19:10Jack:jed spence mate because again it's a very similar in some ways discussion to be had in the respect to great player perhaps hasn't sort of shown it consistently at tottenham as much as we would have liked but again has been a part of a not great functionally side um but he you know again in this world cup has just shown if he if he actually has a bit of belief and the thing about jed spencer there's this conversation that's been had for years about him being arrogant about attitude issues and all this type of stuff and it's something that kind of follows michael elise as well when i think to anybody that's normal can't you just see that like they're both just sort of shy blokes you can see they're both kind of shy i don't really take it for like arrogance or them having this kind of nastiness about them i think jed spencer's like he's grown in this tournament because he's had somebody like jude bellingham put an arm around him and say to him your fucking quality mate your fucking quality go and show it and he suddenly like believed in himself and come out of his shell a bit and has looked like that player that we've seen he can be in bursts at Spurs.

20:17Jack:I mean, look, I'll say it up front, mate. I don't see how we can sell him this summer. Like, I don't see how we can. Destiny a doggy, I think, is a quality player, but is made of Jacob's crackers. Andy Robertson, a quality player, but is 33 years old, is surely supposed to be more for about vibes and playing perhaps, you know, in big games or not week in, week out, if you like. Like, right-hand side, we got Pedro Porro, and that's it, isn't it, if I'm missing anybody? So, you know, Souza is an unknown quantity. To me, Jez Spence can't go. He can't go anywhere. I don't see how we can let him go, even if it is a 40, 50 mil bid from somebody.

21:00Jack:I don't see how he goes.

21:02Jon Bass:It's really tricky, isn't it? Because for a long, long time, we've been saying the club needs to be smarter about transfers, like, both out and in, and, you know, better at selling players at the right time. But when it comes to selling players at the right time, all of us, myself included, you don't want to do it, do you? That's the whole point, right? Because they start showing some real value. You know, people love to do it with Eric Dier, right? People go, well, you should have sold him. But I don't remember a single person going, yeah, let's let him go when he was basically like, at that time, a very crucial part of the team.

21:34Jon Bass:And this is always the difficult challenge is if you're going to get like a lot of value from these players, is because they're performing really well and clubs sniff around them. So you either have to be prepared to lose those players and deal with the consequences for it, or as you go forward, you have to basically make allowances that you might come back and rue that mistake of not selling them at the right time, i.e. Eric Dier, who we, you know, whatever it was, 90 million at United were rumoured to be offering. We should have taken that at the time, but we didn't. And I wonder if this Jed Spence scenario is going to be really similar.

22:06Jon Bass:that i've been a long time supporter of jed spence even before it was fashionable just i really just thought there was something there and i just thought that there's at the time we basically were playing doherty and he was just awful and i was like i don't understand why we've got this kid who's this exciting player we're not giving him a chance so i've really enjoyed his like arc and his kind of um rise into now the england team it's been amazing and so part of me my head is going if someone comes in with a silly offer we should sell him because he's not currently starting in this setup right it will be poro and a doggy as you start in fullbacks robertson is your left back cover and yeah you can make the argument that well he should be the right back cover but if someone's offering you 60 million for argument's sake for your second choice right back 99.9 percent of clubs are selling him for that amount of money and we you know from a mind a brain point of view we should be looking at it that way as well now the heart side of things says to me that I don't want to sell him because we're just about to see the best of this guy and there's clearly this amazing talent there and you made a good point right which is like we only have Porro on the right hand side well we do need a option there and plus there's an argument to say that he's our best left back and that maybe he should be starting left back for us and we should be selling a doggy for example who's constantly injured and you know has also inconsistency issues So I actually think we have quite a messy scenario here that I don't think there's an easy solution to.

23:35Jon Bass:And I think you can make strong cases for both. You know, so for me, it's just like it's a heart and mind battle because some instances I'm like, I'll be really upset if he goes, but I'll also completely understand it. Yeah, I definitely.

23:51Jack:Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely with you on that. like i can understand it and i think there is you know as you're sort of saying there is that element to cashing him while his stock is high if you like if we hold on to him because he's had a good world cup and he just doesn't suit deservey or doesn't get along with him or whatever and then suddenly that idea of a 50 60 million pound transfer suddenly has gone eric dyer the perfect example of that i do just also think on a very practical level we're already so short in that sort of in that area of the pitch um there's been talk that we're after you know nico williams from forest um which i think you know we sort of i joked about a baker on the last pod that we all got very excited that it was the other nico williams not not this one but this nico williams is said to be a very good player as well very talented very you know very versatile in the way that Jed Spence is can play both left and right side, but is probably much more aligned with what it is that Roberto De Zerbi wants from a player in that position.

24:56Jack:So I guess we'll just have to see. I just, yeah, I know what you mean. I think a lot of it is the heart stuff as well, though, because I do, like you, I've just, I've always liked Jed Spence. I've always sort of been rooting for him. And I was, I have been delighted to see kind of the country really get behind him and really recognize his value. And even actually, do you know what? outside of all the kind of shithousing and everything, Argentina Twitter has all been like, that Jed Spence who plays for England is a warrior. Loads of them were all, I didn't even know that he played for Tottenham.

25:28Jack:I didn't realise that. They were all wondering where the hell he'd come from. So, yeah, it was a nice story. It was a nice story and it was a good one to sort of see out the World Cup, especially given that he had been the chosen scapegoat at the start of the tournament. and we'll all scratch our chins and wonder why that one's aged on. Exactly.

25:50Jon Bass:There's also an opportunity, mate, bearing in mind that I know England went pretty far in the tournament, but Spence didn't play every minute of every game and didn't play every minute of every game last season either. So Poro has just played so many games over the last season, two seasons, that it wouldn't actually shock me if Spence starts right back for the first couple of games just to give Spence some time to recover and actually kind of get back up to speed. And if he comes in and plays well on the right-hand side, then we might be, it might be an easy decision for the club to go, we just can't let him go at this moment in time.

26:28Jon Bass:It just doesn't really suit our interests. And then when Poro comes back, he gets some left-back minutes and there's enough to keep him happy because the other thing aside from what we want is what he wants. And he might be like, look, I love it here. And if I was starting right back or I was guaranteed to start left back, this would be a really easy decision. But there isn't a clear pathway for me. And, you know, I've loved it here, but I would, you know, I'd like the opportunity to move on. So if you get an offer that suits and they want me to start, I'd like you to explore that. I think that's completely reasonable for him as well.

26:57Jon Bass:And so that will be the interesting thing. I would love it if he goes, I don't care about anywhere else. I just want to stay here. That's what I would love. And that we double down and keep it. That's my ideal scenario. But like I said, I can completely understand it from what we're trying to do in the new way that we are working, where we're trying to extract value from players that we've got that don't necessarily aren't guaranteed to start. I would understand it if the club decided if they got a big enough offer to sell it. We've got a pre-season friendly

27:25Jack:behind closed doors against Demko Dons tomorrow, John. Are you going to pretend, are you going to sit there now? Are you going to sit there and pretend to my face that you're not going to be searching for a stream for that tomorrow to watch it? Is it not on doing our

27:38Jon Bass:Get Spurs play anymore? is that not included or something what's going on well i would the only the only reason why i