A Tottenham fan favourite, who was part of the Mauricio Pochettino revolution at White Hart Lane, has made a startling confession about his six-and-a-half-year spell at the North London side.
While there are many players who made a bigger impact at Tottenham over recent decades than Mousa Dembele, on pure talent alone, the Belgian arguably outranks every one of those legends.
One only needs to listen to how his former Spurs and Belgian teammates talk about the midfielder, with almost every single player naming him as the best player in the side.
Even Dembele’s opponents were in awe of him, with many describing the former Tottenham man as the toughest opponent they have locked horns with (GiveMeSport).
Dembele was a pivotal part of the Pochettino revolution at Tottenham, being the main orchestrator of the side that went close to winning the biggest trophies in the game.
The 37-year-old’s importance was demonstrated by the fact that the Lilywhites’ decline started when he left the club to join the Chinese Super League in January 2019, with Pochettino being sacked before the end of that year.
Speaking about his time at Tottenham, Dembele has now told So Foot: “Amazing! We had very good players, but above all an excellent team. When Pochettino arrived, we started training a lot harder. It was very intense, stricter than before… The results came later: we easily won matches that had given us problems before.
“What’s a shame is not having gotten our hands on a trophy. But hey, above all I try to remember what we built as a team: there were results, great play and we made people happy.”
The former Spurs star has now confessed that he was playing through pain for much of his time at N17. He revealed that his efforts to manage his fitness was one of the reasons why he could not play as important a role as he wanted for Belgium.
Dembele added: “What not many people know is that at Tottenham I was in pain every day. I was playing with under-infusion. Theoretically, the international breaks were supposed to allow me to rest, but I had to rejoin the national team.
“So, in the end, I never got my rest periods. I really wanted to play for Belgium, and I loved it, but sometimes it was too much, the travelling and the load of matches.”
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