- The Observer
12 25.08.19 Football
Premier League
‘I want to be in the starting XI
but I respect Pochettino’s choice’
E
ven now, with the
benefi t of distance, it is
a remarkable detail of
last season’s Champions
League fi nal. Lucas
Moura, the hat-trick
hero of Tottenham’s semi-fi nal
second-leg epic at Ajax, the man
who wept tears of joy as he watched
the replay of his 96th-minute
winner, could make only the bench
for the fi nal against Liverpool.
Football can be the cruellest of
pursuits but how about this for a
twist of the knife? The fi rst that
Lucas knew of his demotion – at the
expense of the fi t-again Harry Kane- was when Mauricio Pochettino
announced the line up at the team
hotel. There had been no quiet word
in advance from the manager, no
sympathetic heads-up.
“He didn’t speak with me, he
didn’t explain anything but it’s
normal,” Lucas says. “He chose and I
need to respect. I needed to be ready
to come on and play. To be honest,
in the hotel when he gave the
starting XI, I was a little bit sad. Of
course, I would like to play but the
most important thing was to win the
game. The coach needs to choose
11 players, he can only choose 11
players and we need to respect.
I don’t have a problem with this.
“Of course, I was sad inside.
I want to play. But I know how to
understand, I know how to respect
and I know how diffi cult it is for
him to choose 11 players. So that’s
football. We need to be professional
and keep working.”
Lucas did come on in the 66th
minute as Spurs trailed 1-0 but
there was to be no repeat of the
fabled Amsterdam comeback.
Liverpool closed out a cold-blooded
2-0 victory in Madrid and Lucaswould be overwhelmed by tears
of a different kind at the full-time
whistle. “Only football can give such
different feelings in a short space of
time,” he says. “The semi-fi nal was
the best day of my life, in my career,
and after the fi nal it was sad because
after everything we did we wanted
to win. When I saw Liverpool
celebrating, it was diffi cult. Do
I keep that pain inside me? Yes,
of course. When I cried, it was so
diffi cult because I really believed
that we would win.
“But I am also very proud of the
season that we did. It’s not easy to
arrive in the Champions League
fi nal and you need to be happy
for this. And we need to keep it as
motivation. We showed everyone we
are capable to win trophies, to do a
good season. I hope to do the same
this season but to win a trophy.”
Lucas has never made any secretof his ambition to win the Premier
League and/or Champions League
at Spurs and there is a boldness
about him as he considers the
new season, which has begun
promisingly with a home win
over Aston Villa and a point at
Manchester City. Today they host a
Newcastle side without a point in
their opening two fi xtures.
Lucas headed the equaliser at
City, 19 seconds after coming on
as a substitute, to demonstrate
further his knack of scoring in big
away games. He was on target in the
league last season at Manchester
United and Liverpool while everyone
remembers his vital Champions
League equaliser at Barcelona – not
to mention what happened against
Ajax.
Can Spurs really compete with
City and Liverpool for the domestic
title? “It will be so diffi cult, they areLucas Moura, Spurs’
tear-prone supersub,
the hat-trick hero
of Amsterdam, is
prepared to play a
patient game in the
pursuit of a trophy
this season, he tells
David Hytner