Pedro Porro had to take a pee. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” the Tottenham defender says and then he laughs, which he does a lot. It was late in Bilbao and in the home dressing room at San Mamés, up the tunnel and to the right, players divided by metal bars, the party had begun. But he had been selected for the drugs test and was stuck in a much smaller and much, much quieter room, drinking as much possible as quickly as possible until he could go. And that, he says, took ages. “It was hard for me. You’ve just won something huge, you have all your family there, all your teammates, all the people and …”
And the party would have to wait. Porro missed those moments but at last they did all come together, the Europa League champions in their kit – “clean,” Porro adds swiftly – and winners’ medals round their necks, families joining them dancing downstairs at the Carlton Hotel, a mile east of the stadium where they won the tournament. Around 3am, someone turned the main lights on, so someone else turned them off again; some didn’t stop until they reached Tottenham High Road the next day, although he wasn’t one of them. “We wanted to carry on a bit, that’s normal,” Porro says, “although I had to go because my little daughter was tired. It had been a long, hard year and it was lovely to celebrate together.”
