Champions League Final – Tottenham vs Liverpool: Toby Alderweireld reveals Spurs are training ‘like animals’

Tottenham are preparing for one of the biggest games in the club's victory

Toby Alderweireld says Tottenham have been training “like animals” in the last couple of weeks, as they prepare for the Champions League final. Even when pressed, he refuses to be drawn on which animal in particular. “It would be a new creature, I think,” he says eventually, which if anything is an even more alarming prospect. “It’s a metaphor,” he adds, helpfully. “The hunger is there.”

Still, it’s an insight into the mindset within the Tottenham camp ahead of what may well be the biggest game in their history. Victory over Liverpool in Madrid on Saturday would bring the European Cup to north London for the first time, and with three weeks to prepare for the game, there are places to be won and lost, strategies to prepare. “The final started two weeks ago for us,” Alderweireld says. “Everybody wants to be there, to be involved and give their best.”

Along with Fernando Llorente, who played for Juventus in Cardiff in 2017, Alderweireld is just one of two Spurs players with previous experience of a Champions League final.

He came on for Atletico Madrid after 83 minutes of the 2014 final against Real Madrid in Lisbon, with the score 1-0. By the time he strode off the pitch, dejected and distraught, Atletico had lost 4-1 after extra time.

“We were so close to winning it,” he remembers now. “In the 90th minute or something, [Sergio] Ramos scored. So yeah, the feeling of losing, of not winning it, is very hard. I will take this feeling to the final and show I want it more than anyone else.”

How did he react afterwards? “It is difficult, because you are 25 years old. That night, I flew to Belgium because we had the World Cup coming up, so there was no time to grieve. It was a strange moment. Two days after, I was playing Luxembourg in preparation for the World Cup. After the World Cup, when I had time to think about it, I thought it was a big chance, a big opportunity and maybe it will never come again.”

But it has, and Alderweireld points out that for all their apparent inexperience, there is in fact a solid back catalogue of big games in this team. “It’s not that we’re all 18 years old,” he says. “We’ve been to semi-finals at World Cups, some have played in the final. Of course, the tension will get more as the week goes on. But we have the maturity in our group.”

Above all, Alderweireld isn’t satisfied with merely having got this far. “Everyone is saying it is unbelievable about Spurs getting to the final,” he says. “But we’re not happy with playing a final. We want to win it. That’s the mentality we need to have on Saturday.”