Will Spurs regret betting on De Zerbi?

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. It does take several weeks to really get to grips with how De Zerbe teams play and I'm not sure if Tottenham have that kind of time on their hands. You know, there used to be a tried and tested formula for this kind of thing and it was called Sam Allardyce. When we removed Daniel Levy and he was removed, forcibly removed from the club, that was a massive issue because there was no plan to fill this massive vacuum that was left. De Zorbi really was close to Mason Greenwood, again, as an English journalist covering that, trying to keep things professional, reporting the facts.

0:33But there was a lot of uncomfortable moments in that. So after 44 days in charge, Spurs are part of company with Igor Tudor, making him the third manager sacked since last June. The club are just one point above the relegation zone, and it now looks like Roberto De Zorbi could be tasked with saving their season. So is he the right man to stave off the championship? It's only been a couple of months since his own sensational exit at Marseille, reportedly handing in his own resignation. And after facing down the protests in France, sections of the Tottenham fan base are already voicing their concerns over the very public defence he made of Mason Greenwood.

1:11Welcome to the Sports Agents.

1:21the sports agents with gabby logan and mark chapman hello mark hi gabby how are you uh not bad uh what have you been up to i quite like it i quite like the international break i mean i just watch sports at home as opposed to as opposed to working but I do it's very nice it is it is it's quite nice just I do know the thing I've enjoyed is just being around my area not not being on a motorway has been quite nice and like you I did turn on lots of sport over the weekend but I found myself I fell asleep during lots of it do you think people do that during our broadcasts 100 % yes 100 % before the before the hello was even finished I think some people this is terrible I fell asleep during the sale game oh my god that was a thriller as well i know it was really good but i you were at home weren't you you weren't there yeah no i wasn't in the stand i just imagine can you imagine the camera camera panning towards you i am going because ruben's playing on saturday they're in the quarterfinal of europe and he's uh he's in the squad for the harlequins game so i am going to the stoop so i'm not going to fall asleep there do you know what i think it is when you finally get a weekend off your body just goes doesn't it and i i couldn't imagine doing any sport or doing anything particularly active and so it was nice just to slump on the sofa and I said, I did miss.

2:40This is the weird thing about an international break. It's the time I want to sit on my own sofa watching a bit of Premier League football and there isn't any on.

2:50So it's a kind of paradox. And it has been a difficult international break actually for several of the home nations. What night was it? Was it Thursday? Thursday. Thursday, Wales and Northern Ireland and then the Republic of Ireland as well. I mean, it was a triple threat. Oh, my word. It was awful, awful. I mean, the penalty shootout, everything, the drama of conceding late, it was horrible. And yeah, what could have been, but it's not going to be. But just sticking with rugby, I'm not sure if you saw, I did see this, Jeff Parling, who is a Leicester Tigers coach, having a go at the TNT presentation team who were on the pitch ahead of the match.

3:32And there was a moment where Craig had asked a broadcaster to take a penalty kick because this guy, Liam, who was new to their team, was a footballer. And so I think they were kind of joshing about kind of techniques. Anyway, it wasn't something that had been agreed with the club. And the ball ended up kind of getting quite close to a group of players. And so he went over and had a bit of a go at them and swore. And this was live on TV. and so it was quite shocking the whole thing because like you know you and I broadcast many times pitch side and sometimes on the pitch and obviously most of the time obviously that's very carefully choreographed isn't it and you have specific times you can be in certain places yeah I don't know what you think about I hate it I find it uncomfortable for a couple of reasons one I do feel like I am in the way a little bit of of warm-ups that are going on and that's their that's their place of work and I know it's our place of work I'm talking specifically when you stand in the center circle or you're on the pitch yeah yeah and the other thing is and I've done it for I've done it for football and I've done it for rugby league and back in the day not as a broadcaster but as an in-stadium host thing I would do it for the cricket one I kind of feel in the way secondly I'll be honest with you it's not the safest and and there are different levels of of where it's not safe particularly if a cricket ball comes flying at you when you're in the middle of the of the ground you've seen Ben Stokes head this week well exactly exactly and certainly when we were doing the rugby league in the autumn the Ashes series in England and Australia you know Sam Burgess would always try and put me off by pretending that he was about to catch a ball that was coming my way that was going to hit me on the head so the other part of that is I can understand Jeff Parlin being a little bit annoyed because if a rugby ball lands on your head from 30 yards away that is that is gonna hurt and I know they're used to physical pain in rugby more than TV presenters but it is it is gonna hurt so I can understand his frustration.

5:42No I can understand And afterwards they apologised and said, you know, that they were sorry. He was sorry for his outburst. And it is this kind of dilemma, especially in rugby, isn't it? Where you're trying to get the sport kind of, you know, shown to as many people as possible in the most exciting way as possible and explained in a way that makes people want to come in and follow the sport. And we always talk about American sport. You look at the NFL where you can go into the changing room and you can watch, you know, you can interview players who are half dressed. and access has always been much more widespread in the stadium, hasn't it?

6:15Yeah. But that then gets to a, you know, they've had their debrief after a game and then, you know, open the locker room and that's the time for the media to come in. And they do do touchline pitch side for the NFL, but behind a desk. And I just find being in the middle just a bit intrusive, I'll be honest. I don't mind the pitch side position. It's quite nice, you know, because you're away from the actual. And what's nice about that, I think, which I've enjoyed doing, say, for Prime, is when you're with somebody like Wayne Rooney and whether the player has played with him or they just love him, you could be some of the biggest teams in Europe and you get some of the biggest names in European people coming over and giving them a hug.

6:58It does make you feel close to the action. Being on the pitch, I'm never sure why we're there. Do you know what I mean? I'm never sure what we're getting out of it, that a camera can't get out of it and we can cut to those shots. obviously us being there is just a kind of you know it feels a little bit of artifice sometimes that sort of pre-match when they arrive certainly when you're doing champions league because you're on about three hours before kickoff yeah sorry i've got to go to lisbon see it oh it's tuesday that pre-match when they arrive and that um post-match afterwards when you've got you know Rooney or Shearer or Wright or you know whoever it may be yeah and they come over that is that is lovely that's why you're there you're not there for you you and me standing there you're there for the pundits to then and the players come over for a chat and that that is nice it's just that it's just that being in the thick of it that I just get really quite self-conscious about I'm also not sure about demonstrating things as a broadcaster that the people who play are much better at so I think I just leave it to them to demonstrate those things but um but yeah I'm sure TNT don't mind the attention no no I did uh I did Everton Spurs this season on a Sunday and ended up having to pass the ball back to whoever was in the Everton warm-up and they got that on camera and then and then re re showed it later on I mean it was a very good it was a very good very good I once trapped a ball at Kenilworth Road.

8:29It was Luton Arsenal and I accidentally trapped it. I mean, you know, I think it might have been Thierry Henry. What we do is just do a can-can and then put your foot down. Well, you've seen, have you ever seen the fire shot where I accidentally set fire to a stadium? So I did this with my hand and at the same time the fireworks went off. It's a viral thing, right? So that kind of accident happened trapping a ball. I think I must have just moved my leg and the ball landed underneath it. And Rob Edwards was walking over and looked absolutely kind of blown away by my skills. I know what it was. Thierry, let me show you what I used to do as a rhythmic gymnast.

9:09Have you ever thought of doing this? Yeah, I think we, you know, we do try and kind of push boundaries sometimes. And I sometimes think, are we trying to reinvent the wheel, you know, a little bit? But I'm all for innovation and, you know, seeing what works. Do you want a really terrible link here? Yeah. So we're all for innovation, but you can't fault experience either. And Roy Hodgson is back. Lovely. Beautiful. And see, like that, Roy Hodgson is back. Smooth as a one-show presenter. No. Roy Hodgson is back at 78 in charge of Bristol City till the end of the season, which was his club. Way, way, way.

9:49I mean, it's such a, I thought his press conference was really lovely and nice. Is there any potential for it to be longer term at all? No, I'm too old. I think it was the fact that it was a short-term project, a short-term appointment after the club made their decision to change. I think they were looking for someone who could step in and was prepared to do a job for seven games. and of course that appealed to me because I have retired from the real milestone of working as a professional coach again. I hope to get some enjoyment from being here, to re-energise myself a little bit by being back on the grass and being back with players, something which has always been what I've wanted to do.

10:37I don't know what really prompted me to even consider it because I've been perfectly happy in this retirement period. a little bit bored from time to time. A challenge like this was hard to turn down. But it's only till the end of this. It's not a permanent thing, is it? Yeah, Spurs are just kicking themselves, going, we could have had him! Anyway, we will get more into that, of course. But before we do, make sure you subscribe, follow and leave a review. Do get in touch on socials at the Sports Agents or email thesportsagents at global.com. Next, we will talk Roberto Di Serbi to be the next Spurs manager.

11:12The Sports Agents. The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. Let's speak to Flav Bateman of the Fighting Cock Spurs podcast and George Boxall, who is a Marseille based sports journalist. That's quite niche, George. Let's start with you, because actually in our kind of pre-chat before we started recording this, You said you're a bit of a Deserby follower because you're actually originally a Brighton fan, I think. And so you know a lot about him there. So before we get into his future relationship with Spurs, tell us a bit about the man. Yeah, I mean, I knew him as a Brighton fan. I think I lived in France and my first game at Marseille's velodrome was actually in the away end as a Brighton fan.

12:00So I've kind of been at the genesis of Deserby's story ever since then. ever since then and then I moved to Marseille about a year and a half ago when he was basically halfway through his first season in Marseille. So Roberto De Zerbi, what can we say? I mean, personality wise, he is a fiery character. I mean, he's someone that has resonated a lot with Marseille as a city, you know, a passionate city with a lot of, you know, passionate supporters, ultra groups, you know, lots of tension. And, you know, I think his football represents those highs and lows. and we definitely saw that in his period of time spent at Marseille.

12:35Highs and lows. Does that put a smile on your face, Flav? There's some highs there, so let's focus on those. That'll be good. A general kind of worry and tension around the idea that he can save us. I think if this was an appointment, like a five-year appointment that's been mooted, but he's actually going to do the five years or the 1.8 years that he lasts typically at football clubs, then I think we could really kind of look at this as probably a positive, certainly in a footballing sense, a positive appointment and someone that would bring culture to Tottenham Hotspur and identity and show leadership, which we've been lacking for so far off the pitch, in the boardroom and certainly on the pitch as well.

13:20So in that sense, he would bring that to the club. but we have the more pressing matter of the next seven games and whether or not we're going to exist in the Premier League as a football club and I don't know his record has shown previously that it takes time for his teams to start didn't he yeah you'll correct me I'm sure if this is not right but it took him five games to get a win at Brighton George didn't it yeah that's correct and as well at Marseille he I think that his first game he won 5-1 against Brest and I think it took about again four or five games to really kind of settle into his style of play you know to kind of getting across how he wants the players to play is very specific I remember I saw even an interview with Louis Dunk saying you know it took two weeks and an international break of utter carnage in terms of trying to understand what he's trying to convey you know and there's also the language side of things as well you know he's speaking a lot in Italian and at Marseille there's you know a lot of Italian, a lot of French going on.

14:20So it's actually, it does take several weeks to really get to grips with how the Zorbi teams play. And I'm not sure if Tottenham have that kind of time on their hands. Flav, I promise I'm not just going to keep picking phrases out from George's answer and then relaying them back to you, although I am quite liking this as a technique just for this podcast. Several weeks and carnage. How does that make you feel? Terrible, awful. I mean, I thought I was actually feeling pretty positive before starting this, actually. but now well welcome to our world as we as we yet again make guests feel comfortable and happy thank you chaffers oh yeah of course the biggest worry is about whether or not he can get tottenham playing in in a way that is effective in the league in the remaining seven games the problem that we had with nuno sorry not nuno uh tudor which one it could have been any of them could have been any of the last 10 oh my god specifically the problem with Igor Tudor was the fact that he was trying to do complicated things in a very short manner of time and we've got really good players.

15:25It just makes sense to me and a lot of people out there that have been speaking about this is that we play the players in their best positions in the way that they're most comfortable in a formation they understand rather than trying to reinvent things in a short amount of time which Tudor seemed to want to do which is why there was a clamouring for managers that you know have either represented Spurs previously or understand the league you know the horrible cliche of putting the arm around the player reminding them how good they are but mostly making them feel comfortable I don't think De Zerbi makes players feel comfortable at all in fact the opposite makes them feel uncomfortable and the ones that float are the ones he sticks with and I don't know what you think Gabby here on this But that is the crux of it, as far as I can see.

16:10And we've seen it several times this season. Go back to Wilfred Nonsi at Celtic. Just forget what your philosophy is and just keep going until the end of the season with what has worked. And then when you have a summer, maybe implement your philosophy. Then you can break it down. But play players in the right positions and just keep it simple. But then you go back to the club chappers here who are appointing this man or whoever, you know, they need to put somebody in who they know can do that. So if they're knowingly bringing in somebody who has this reputation, then it is on their heads, isn't it?

16:48And it's in their hands that they are not putting the right person in place. And, you know, there used to be a tried and tested formula for this kind of thing. And it was called Sam Allardyce. and those kinds of managers who we knew would come in and do something they tended to be English coincidentally and they'd come in and they'd salvage something and just keep a team in the Premier League or whichever league they were brought in to do the job and maybe the merry-go-round I hate that phrase but the way that football is quickly disposing of people now and the Premier League in particular nobody's really had that opportunity to develop that skill set anymore.

17:27You can't do that soft management anymore. I know I've been pretty downbeat about Deserby just because it ended quite badly at Marseille but I do have some good news for Flav because Deserby does have the best win percentage of a Marseille manager in the last 5-10 years which is 57%. That is 1 % better than Igor Tudor. That is the downside to that. I mean, look, if he gets to the point where where he can manage and implement these ideas and sort out the squad, the imbalanced, poorly built squad, then I don't have any doubts that this would be a good appointment. I really don't. Next season, when somebody's saved them, that feels like what you're saying.

18:13If he's here, he has to come down with us. You agree you're in this with us and that's it, or that he shouldn't be appointed, in my opinion. And Gabby, you mentioned something just a second ago. the problems at Spurs aren't Igor Tudor they're not Thomas Frank they're not Conte they're not Mourinho they are systematic at the club behind the scenes when we removed Daniel Levy and he was removed forcibly removed from the club that was a massive issue because there was no plan to fill this massive vacuum that was left he effectively over the last 25 years was Tottenham Hotspur he was our institution and if you look at other clubs that had one big ones like Arsene Wenger at Arsenal, Guardiola, Mourinho, or Abram Vich at Chelsea, and Klopp at Liverpool, right?

19:00Those were their institutional characters. Ours was Daniel Levy. To remove him, whether you like him or not, creates this massive issue. Who is going to fill the many roles that he had at the football club? And the answer was Wenger Tessian. I mean, he wasn't even aware he was going to be doing that when he brought in, he was supposed to be working with him. Because his area of expertise is really the commercial side of things, isn't it, as a CEO? But the interesting thing with that, Flav, is that your figurehead person over the last 25 years, everybody else that you mentioned was a manager. So your figurehead was Daniel Levy.

19:37So I suppose it's a two-part question. Did his presence stop any manager, maybe Pochettino was, but any manager since Pochettino being that figurehead? and is therefore short-term pain so that you eventually get a manager who can be a figurehead without the overarching presence of the chief exec. Sorry, that's my doorbell. I thought that was the magic manager fairy coming to deliver good news. If the vacuum allows the manager to become this figurehead, then maybe it could work. Yeah, no, no. I don't think anyone doubted the fact that Daniel Levy's time at Tottenham Hotspur was at an end. It's just how they went about removing him or whether or not he would have...

20:27Should it have been proposed to someone who is a most blatant pragmatist to suggest that he should be involved in this transition to whatever the new model Spurs was? He wouldn't have walked away and gone, no, I'm not doing that. Specifically because he has shares in a company that own Tottenham. So it would be in his best interest to facilitate this transition. however um the short-term pain is is probably gonna certainly give us an opportunity in that vacuum to change the way we operate and the manager all those managers could never have succeeded in the latter part of Daniel Levy's tenure at Tottenham because the game in terms of how you run a football club football it had moved on and Daniel Levy hadn't moved with it no just going back to De Zerbi with George because I think we haven't really kind of established what happened at Marseille you know you've already said you know I think you said this live he doesn't last long necessarily his tenure so far hasn't been average about 18 months at Marseille his first season they finished second second season things didn't go so well in the Champions League um didn't qualify and it all unraveled what from from that that kind of outside the club perspective what was going on there that meant he had to leave so it was effectively the the month of of January where they kind of passed up the opportunity to win the first piece of silverware in 14 years in the kind of equivalent of the Community Shield, where they lost against PSG in the last minute and then in a penalty shootout, actually.

21:57And then it kind of just got worse from there. There was the Champions League elimination against Club Rouge, which was precipitated by that goal from the goalkeeper against the Benfica goalkeeper against Real Madrid. And from then it just got worse. I mean, the results started falling off in Ligue 1. There was sort of mounting tensions as well with supporter groups, a lot of meetings with the Ultras, which historically don't tend to go well. So there was a lot of mounting tension and a lot of inconsistency as well in terms of the starting 11s that De Zerbi was starting to put in. And I think there's the stat that there was by mid-January, there was about 31 different starting 11s in 30 games.

22:44No problems at Spurs there. He's only got 14 players to choose from. So that won't be a problem. The straw that broke the camel's back was really the 5-0 defeat against PSG. And I was at the Pag de Prance for that one. You know when you go into a press conference and you see a manager that is utterly defeated, utterly devoid of the kind of energy that we associate with Roberto de Zerbe. And I think it was all kind of coming in the space of that month. And then his departure basically precipitated a load of boredom change at the club, and it's all been a bit chaotic since. But I think it was really that one month in January where the slide was really quick.

23:28His second season at Brighton was more to do with the extra pressures of Europa League football and not having, you know, selling the likes of McAllister and Kaisiedo and not being able to replace them and struggling with that extra payload of games. And it's ironic because now Marseille are, I don't want to bang too much about Marseille, but they are, in terms of their record, about the same as they were last season. There was loads of investment, loads of new players coming. You've got your Timothy Wayers, you've got your Benjamin Pavards. And it didn't work out in the end, which is surprising.

24:04You talk, Flav, about the constructed squad. If everybody was fit, I know that this is a big if because they've had so many players out injured. He hasn't, in the main, got a decent squad to work with. I think most managers would be happy with the squad. I think the injuries and suspensions to key players at the wrong times of the season have impacted what any manager can do. But yeah, fully fit, there is enough options for De Zerbi or any manager to ensure that Spurs finish in the top half of the table, I think. I would even go so far as to say maybe top seven. However, if you look at our midfield in particular, there's a few players that probably won't fit his systems.

24:47people like Paulinha, perhaps Gallagher, and we have lots of those sort of ball-carrying type midfielders. We don't have a deep-line passer, which was crucial, certainly for Frank's system. And so we ended up playing a double pivot, which was really flat, and we couldn't sort of play out. But on paper, yeah, I mean, it's crazy that we're in this situation. On paper, you would argue that we have a better team than Forest and Leeds and West Ham, and the vast majority of the team's in the bottom half. but there's something else going on with this group of players and my worry is that we are in a situation that perhaps the left back from Brazil aside who was in a relegation dogfight with Santos last year you know, they're not used to playing with this level of attrition aimed at them but these players, Forest players, they understand what this is whereas Spurs players don't seem to and so on paper doesn't mean a great deal right now One of the other things that is rearing its head and increasingly becoming amplified with the voices who are dissenting is the Mason Greenwood issue.

25:49Three different Spurs fan groups have expressed their disdain and their disappointment that Spurs are even considering him and urged Spurs to rethink any potential appointment of De Zerbe. We should say they are the Proud Lily Whites, Women of the Lane and Spurs Reach. Of course, De Zerbe had described Mason Greenwood as a good guy and that he'd paid a heavy price in previous press conferences when asked about him. I feel like this is only going to get louder. Yeah, I mean, as much as I like the football of De Zerbi, I think there's been a lot of uncomfortable moments as an English journalist covering French football and seeing the kind of cognitive dissonance that there is in Marseille and in France in general, maybe because of a cultural difference.

26:37But there's been a lot of times where I've had to almost explain to certain French journalists or speak in the local paper about why Mason Greenwood absolutely shouldn't, in my opinion, play for the English national team again. And De Zerbi really was close to Mason Greenwood. I think he spoke a lot about his father as well, his father's role in his career. And again, as an English journalist covering that, there was kind of trying to keep things professional, reporting the facts. But there was a lot of uncomfortable moments in that. And I think you are right in that seeing this story come back to England again, it's interesting seeing that cultural difference.

27:19Because here it kind of been sweeped under the carpet. I know the mayor of Marseille spoke out about him signing for the club back in August 2024. But there hasn't really been that same level of dissent about it. Do you get that sense? Do you get that sense from Spurs fans perspective? It's surprising the amount of leeway you get when you're good at football and the level of forgiveness perhaps wouldn't be afforded in other sections of society. Am I comfortable with how we defended Greenwood or deflected the attention named him? Absolutely not. I'm a father of a teenage girl and I heard everything that came out about Greenwood and I listened to the tapes.

28:03and so I know what I have heard. And, you know, if the question to me would be, would you prefer to employ a manager who hadn't defended a player in that fashion, then yes, of course. Can I stop following my football club because of it? Absolutely not. So it's a difficult situation. These moral conjuries are thrown up to every football fan and managers and all kinds of things happen all the time. You can look at what happens in, you know, the questions that Eddie Howe actually deflect when the PIF took over Newcastle. So my question, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish this situation hadn't had happened.

28:42Can I control whether or not Deserby is the manager of my football club? No. Thank you very much, guys. Appreciate you coming on. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you. The Sports Agents. Well, if you've enjoyed today's show, get in touch via email, thesportsagentsatglobal.com or message us on social media at thesportsagents and make sure you subscribe or follow and leave a review. See you on Thursday. The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman.

29:08This has been a Global Player original production.