From Sunderland Tears to Sydney Smiles: Tottenham's Transformation
There was a point last spring when Roberto De Zerbi looked around the away dressing room at the Stadium of Light and wondered aloud: “Did we pass away?”
Players were flat on their backs. Some were in tears. Tottenham had just lost 1-0 at Sunderland in his first game in charge, and the club were staring down the barrel. Seven games to save their Premier League status. No guarantees. No comfort. Just a group who looked emotionally broken.
They survived, but only just, scrambling over the line on the final day. Now, four months on, the scene could not feel more different.
From Sunderland tears to Sydney smiles
In Sydney, on a private floor of the team hotel a short walk from the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, the mood is almost unrecognisable. Laughter cuts across the room. Players drift between coffees poured by their own barista and fiercely contested table tennis matches. The tension of April has been replaced by something Spurs have not felt in a long time: possibility.
Around £237m of new signings mingle with the old guard, all of them told to dream big again. Sandro Tonali, the new headline act at £100m, has already pulled on a Spurs shirt on this tour. So too Mateus Fernandes, signed from West Ham for £85m, Jan Paul van Hecke, Andrew Robertson and Martin Dubravka.
Only Marcos Senesi, fresh from Argentina’s World Cup final exploits, has been eased back more slowly. His extended break is over; he has now started work at Hotspur Way, the last piece of a summer rebuild to arrive.
“I deserve to want the top players, because now Tottenham deserves to build up a top team,” De Zerbi says. There is no apology in the line, only intent.
Two plans, one escape
Spurs entered the spring with two transfer blueprints: one for life in the Championship, one for survival in the Premier League. It was a stark admission of how far they had fallen after a turbulent 2025-26 season and a previous year that ended 17th, cushioned only by a Europa League triumph under Ange Postecoglou.
De Zerbi insists he would have stayed even if they had gone down. Instead, he gets to work from Plan A – the ambitious one – while still “respecting the will” of players such as captain Cristian Romero and goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, whose futures remain uncertain.
“At the beginning of my time in April I had one million individual meetings,” he jokes. The message in those meetings was anything but light. If they wanted to leave, fine. First they had to keep the club up.
“Yes, help me to stay up, and then I help you to leave,” he told them. “If you don’t help me to stay up, you stay underwater with me.”
The line is pure De Zerbi: blunt, slightly theatrical, but underpinned by a hard edge. Spurs had been drifting. He did not arrive to drift.
A new regime, with old scars
The club itself has changed shape off the pitch. Fan anger over the chaos of recent seasons has been loud and sustained. In response, the Lewis Family Trust has installed Vinai Venkatesham as chief executive to front a new era.
Venkatesham and technical director Johan Lange – the only major survivor from the previous hierarchy – now run the football operation. They are backed by director of football operations Rafi Moersen and performance director Dan Lewindon, both recruited from City Football Group. Lewindon’s brief is clear: fix an injury record that has repeatedly undermined managers.
De Zerbi, though, is not the type to stay in his lane. He wants his fingerprints on every department, especially recruitment.
“In the transfer market, when I want one player, I become like a shark,” he says. “No chance to say no.”
That mindset has driven Tottenham’s most aggressive window in years. Record deals for Fernandes and Tonali. Robertson’s experience. Van Hecke’s promise. Dubravka’s know-how. A squad that once felt brittle and thin now looks heavier in talent and personality.
“I love working in the transfer market. It’s not a pressure, it’s one of the nicest parts in my work,” he explains. For him, the thrill lies in the responsibility. The decision is his. So is the accountability.
The personal touch
De Zerbi leans heavily on relationships. He calls players directly. He calls their families. He wants a bond before a contract.
“With Mateus Fernandes, I spoke with the mum, with the father,” he says. He told Fernandes’ father he would be a “second dad” in England, a protector as well as a coach.
Van Hecke’s path to north London started with a sting. In April, the defender’s assist for Georginio Rutter’s 95th-minute equaliser in a 2-2 draw for Brighton had cut deep into Spurs’ survival hopes. De Zerbi did not forget.
“You wanted to push down Tottenham for Brighton when you made the assist to Rutter, now you have to come to me, you have no choice,” he later messaged Van Hecke. The tone was half-joke, half-order. It worked.
Tonali’s pursuit was more delicate. The day after Spurs secured survival with a final-day win over Everton, De Zerbi texted the Italy midfielder. Soon after, he was in Tonali’s home in Brescia for what proved the decisive conversation. Club staff then finished the job over several more meetings.
Spurs also beat off interest from Manchester United and Manchester City for their two record-breaking midfielders, and signed Van Hecke despite Chelsea circling. Insiders describe a simple strategy: be fast, be bold, and be willing to go hard on fees, wages and the coach’s personal pitch.
Now De Zerbi is hinting at what he calls one last attacking “bomba” – two forwards, one of them Manchester City’s Savinho, are expected to arrive. The rebuild is not finished yet.
Spending with a plan, not a shrug
The numbers are eye-catching, but De Zerbi bristles at the idea of recklessness. The Lewis family injected £100m into the club in June, money he insists was essential, not indulgent. In his eyes, Tottenham are only following the financial path already taken by Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool.
There has been discipline, too. Spurs walked away from a permanent deal for Joao Palhinha from Bayern Munich, not because they doubted his quality, but because the overall package did not fit their model.
They have also sold. Luka Vuskovic’s £45m move to Brighton brought in a substantial fee. The futures of Lucas Bergvall and Djed Spence remain unresolved, but every decision, De Zerbi insists, is taken with the club’s long-term health in mind.
“We assessed the request of Vuskovic [to join Brighton], with Vinai, with Johan together, because I consider Tottenham’s money my money,” he says. “It’s like the owner is my father, I think you don’t want to ask your father to lose money.”
That is the lens through which he views the next five years. “Like all the big clubs, we have to sell a player at as big of a price as possible and we have to bring a player with a small price, we are starting for a plan of five seasons because we are building.”
Cleaning the air
The rebuild is not only financial or tactical. It is emotional.
After Sunderland, the gloom did not stay in the dressing room. It seeped into the training ground. Staff felt it. The place sagged.
“The day after I organised a meeting without players and I said, ‘The first one I see say something negative, I send you home immediately’,” De Zerbi recalls. It was a line in the sand. Negativity had become a habit. He wanted it gone.
He has worked just as hard on the human side of his squad. One night in Mayfair, he gathered them all for “one big dinner… with alcohol”. Not a team-building exercise dressed up as fun, but an actual night out, with the manager encouraging them to let go.
He believes Spurs were unlucky in their final matches and could have wrapped up survival earlier. More importantly, he felt his players had started to see themselves as worse than the outside world judged them to be.
“I think they considered themselves in that moment worse than the people thought,” he admits. The scars of back-to-back relegation battles had distorted their self-image. The healing, he says, is still ongoing.
The next step, in his mind, is when they no longer need him to organise the dinners and the drinks. “I hope next time they organise for themselves,” he says. That will be the sign of a group that has truly reset its “behaviour, attitude and spirit”.
From survival to standards
Tottenham are not trying to erase the trauma of the last two seasons. They are using it. The club that once flirted with the Champions League places and cup finals has spent the last two years staring at the trapdoor. That leaves a mark.
De Zerbi wants to turn that fear into fuel. He talks about love, friendship and care as the foundations of elite performance.
“With love, friendship and care, you become top, top, top,” he says.
From the broken bodies at Sunderland to the barista coffees and record signings in Sydney, Spurs have travelled a long way in a short time. The question now is not whether they can stay up.
It is whether this new, ruthless, slightly shark-like version of Tottenham can climb back to where the club believes it belongs – and how high De Zerbi’s ambition will allow them to go.
