Former Tottenham captain Hugo Lloris has revealed he was left questioning the club's desire to win after chairman Daniel Levy gifted the entire squad an engraved watch before the 2019 Champions League Final.
Mauricio Pochettino's Spurs were beaten 2-0 by Liverpool in Madrid, one of three finals Lloris lost in 12 years with the club.
In a damning extract from his new autobiography, serialised in The Guardian, Lloris says he still has not “got over” Levy's well-meaning gift to each of the squad of an engraved with 'Finalist' before the game, and claims himself, Pochettino and Harry Kane doubted the club's commitment to winning.
“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,” Lloris wrote in 'Earning My Spurs'. “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. 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 had the same feeling as Mauricio [Pochettino] and Harry [Kane]: ‘does the club really want to win?’
“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 and Harry: does the club really want to win? Real Madrid would never have celebrated a lost final, and we shouldn’t have either."
Lloris believes the Final was “snatched from us” by the referee's decision to award Liverpool a penalty after 24 seconds for a handball against Moussa Sissoko, with Mohamed Salah scoring from the spot and Divock Origi adding a late second.
“From 2 June 2019, a change in the rules meant that a penalty would no longer follow if the ball struck a player’s hand after touching another part of their body,” Lloris wrote.
“The final took place on 1 June 2019, and something which wouldn’t have been an offence the following day sealed the fate of the final before it had really begun.”
The former France goalkeeper, who is Spurs' record-appearance holder in the Premier League, also criticised the club's decision to allow Amazon Prime intimate access to the squad for a fly-on-the-wall documentary for the 2019-20 season while they were still recovering from the disappointment of losing the Final.
Pochettino was dismissed in November of that year, with Jose Mourinho succeeding the Argentine.
“When the film crew placed little microphones on some of the canteen tables, we went and sat at other ones,” wrote Lloris, who revealed the squad were not given a cut of Spurs' reported £10million fee from Amazon.
“We had to be careful all the time. The only place where we could speak freely was the training dressing room – we’d got them to agree that it would remain out of bounds.
“Otherwise, they had mics and cameras everywhere - even at some practice sessions, which was no small matter: it was a constraint and it had consequences.”
Lloris also opened up on the tenure of Antonio Conte, revealing the Italian was every bit as “extreme and eruptive” with the players as he occasionally appeared in public and saying the squad “eventually stuck our fingers in our ears” to his furious tirades.
“During matches, Conte was as extreme and eruptive as he appeared, garnering respect and fear,” Lloris wrote.
“Such a strong personality pushed wingers to prefer to play on the side opposite the dugout. I have never forgotten our first defeat under Conte: a 2-1 loss to NS Mura in Slovenia in the Uefa Conference League. 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. He’s a manager who lives only by results, whereas from a player’s perspective, performance is important too.
“That season, when we lost 3–2 to Manchester United, a result which didn’t reflect our performance, I told Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Harry Kane in the dressing room: ‘They may have just beaten us, but I bet you we finish above them.’
“And so we did, ending up in fourth place after battering Arsenal 3-0 on the last day, situating ourselves halfway between Conte’s demanding nature and a little self-management because, by dint of being whipped and screamed at, we eventually stuck our fingers in our ears.”
