HUGO LLORIS has taken a swipe at Daniel Levy for his decision to hand out posh watches with the word ‘finalist’ engraved to Spurs players ahead of the 2019 Champions League final.
Frenchman Lloris, who made 447 appearances for the North Londoners, captained Spurs as they lost to Liverpool to finish runners-up in Europe’s elite club competition that year.
But four days before the showpiece Spurs chairman Levy decided to mark the occasion by giving each squad-member a luxury aviator wristwatch, with the support of a sponsor.
It was a well-meaning gesture but it was the message etched on the pricey gift that Lloris found tin-earned at the time and still does to this day.
Writing in his autobiography being serialised in The Guardian, World Cup winner Lloris said: “At first, we were excited to see the elegant boxes.
“Then we opened them and discovered that he’d had the back of each timepiece engraved with the player’s name and ‘Champions League Finalist 2019’.
“‘Finalist.’ Who does such a thing at a moment like this?
“I still haven’t got over it, and I’m not alone. If we’d won, he wouldn’t have asked for the watches back to have ‘winner’ engraved instead.
“I have considerable respect and esteem for the man and all he has done for the club as chairman – I got to know him – but there are things he is simply not sensitive to.
“As magnificent as the watch is, I have never worn it.
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“I would have preferred there to be nothing on it. With an engraving like that, Levy couldn’t have been surprised if we had been 1-0 down after a couple of minutes: so it was written.”
Spurs did indeed go down 1-0 inside two minutes thanks to a controversial penalty dispatched by Mo Salah, before Divock Origi doubled the lead late on.
The spot-kick, awarded when the ball hit Moussa Sissoko’s body and rebounded onto his hand, still narks Lloris.
That is because 24 hours after the final the rules were changed, meaning it would not have been given the following day.
While Lloris, who ended up winning nothing during his 12 years with Spurs, left that final disappointment questioning how much the club really wanted to be the best.
The 37-year-old, now with LAFC in the MLS, added: “At the post-match reception at the hotel, I had the impression that some people from the club and certain players were not sufficiently despondent at having lost.
“When I returned to my room on the night of the final, I think I had the same feeling as Mauricio (Pochettino, the manager at the time) and Harry (Kane): does the club really want to win?
“Real Madrid would never have celebrated a lost final, and we shouldn’t have either.”
Lloris also hit out at the subsequent decision “made without the consent either of the squad or the manager” to allow the Amazon cameras in to film their All or Nothing documentary.
The goalkeeper said the players had to be “careful all the time” with what they said and how they acted, adding that the show which earned the club £10million was a “constraint” in its filming and “had consequences”.
Pochettino’s successor Jose Mourinho ended up being the star of that documentary.
But it was the mind of a manager that came after the Special One who Lloris also gave a fascinating insight into – that of Antonio Conte.
The firebrand Italian was as “extreme and eruptive” behind closed doors as he appeared to be on the touchline, according to Lloris.
A man who struggled to contain his frustration when results started turning for him at Tottenham, whose strong personality meant wingers scared of him “preferred to play on the side of the pitch opposite the dugout”.
Conte took Spurs to the Champions League but it all unravelled for him two seasons ago when he left the club in March 2023 having metaphorically torched the club and players in an unforgettable post-match press conference at Southampton.
One particular defeat, in which Lloris did not even play, against Slovenian minnows Mura in the Uefa Conference League had Conte raging.
Lloris explained: “Even though I wasn’t playing, I was still entitled to his screams and reproaches, just like everyone else.
“After the defeat in Maribor, he had screamed: ‘Mura, Mura, who’s Mura?! We lost to Mura!’ I can still hear him.
“If a player needed a little love, he’d better not knock at Conte’s door. For Conte, trust is earned in training. He has no filter; he’s sincere, honest.”
