Hugo Lloris Slams Daniel Levy For Gift he Gave Tottenham Players Before 2019 UCL Final.
The saying “wait until the ink dries,” meaning you shouldn’t celebrate before securing a win, wasn’t a principle Tottenham followed in 2019 after reaching the Champions League final. Hugo Lloris has shared that four days before their meeting with Liverpool in Madrid, club chairman Daniel Levy gifted the entire squad luxurious new watches to commemorate the historic moment.
Lloris spent 12 years in North London, including a period as captain, but never managed to secure silverware with the club. Levy’s choice to present gifts just days before Tottenham’s biggest match in modern history led him to question if the club truly “wanted to win” against Jurgen Klopp’s side. His time at Tottenham included two League Cup final defeats and a 2-0 loss to Liverpool in the 2019 Champions League decider, with Lloris beaten from the penalty spot early on after a controversial Moussa Sissoko handball.
The Frenchman has revealed he felt unsettled before kick-off by a presentation from Levy to the squad, which celebrated their achievement of merely reaching the final. Lloris believes this reflected a deep-seated issue with the club’s mentality, as their long-time chairman seemed content with falling short of victory, gifting their English rivals their sixth competition triumph in the process as Tottenham remain a lightning rod for criticism amid their trophy drought.
Lloris Calls Out Daniel Levy For Counting His Eggs Before They Hatched
He felt that there was something wrong with the club’s mentality
Hugo Lloris
In his upcoming autobiography ‘Earning My Spurs’, as excerpted by the Guardian, Lloris recalled: “Four days before the final, Daniel Levy called us all together to announce that, with the support of a sponsor, we would each receive a luxury aviator watch from the club.”
“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.”
https://x.com/Daily_Hotspur/status/1854472234099675638?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1854472234099675638%7Ctwgr%5Eefef1c89f58bd90d4263f0dcee5136e72f728a3a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.givemesport.com%2Fhugo-lloris-slams-daniel-levy-gift-tottenham-2019-champions-league-final%2F
“I have considerable respect and esteem for the man and all he has done for the club as chairman,” Lloris, France’s most-capped footballer continued. “But there are things he is simply not sensitive to. As magnificent as the watch is, I have never worn it. 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.
“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. I would have liked people to come up to me and say, ‘Don’t worry, Hugo. Never again. We’ll give you the means for a comeback.’ But when I returned to my room on the night of the final, I think I had the same feeling as Mauricio [Pochettino] 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.”
