Defeat in the Champions League Final still weighs heavy on Tottenham and neither Mauricio Pochettino nor Harry Kane attempted to conceal their lingering pain at the start of the club’s pre-season tour.
It is 48 days since Spurs were beaten 2-0 by Liverpool and the events of that sweltering night in Madrid have been running through the minds of Pochettino and his squad ever since.
“The holidays were so tough and [it was] difficult to move on after the final,” said Pochettino, who revealed he would have considered quitting Spurs had they won. “Still it hurts.”
Kane and his team-mates must feel the opportunity of a lifetime was snatched away after 24 seconds when Liverpool were awarded a controversial penalty, although the England captain has refused to watch the footage back.
“Those types of losses always stay with you for a while, I don’t think you ever fully get over them,” Kane said ahead of Spurs’s friendly against Juventus here on Sunday. “I haven’t watched it, I don’t want to watch it. We know [the game] was there for the taking and that’s something we have to deal with and something we’ve had to think about.”
With their manager now going nowhere, Tottenham’s task ahead is clear: they must build on their Champions League run and use the pain of defeat as a springboard to finally reach the promised land of silverware, which has eluded Pochettino in five years of impressive progress in north London.
In Liverpool, they seemingly have the perfect example to follow. Jurgen Klopp’s side recovered from their own heartache against Real Madrid in the 2018 final to come within a single loss of a historic double.
“You have to move on,” added Kane. “It makes you stronger, more determined, it builds the fire in the belly to prove a point. When you look at City and Liverpool last season, they were consistent over the 38 games and it’s down to us to match, if not better, it.”
Pochettino, however, outright rejected comparisons with Liverpool and returned to one of his favourite themes of the last few years: what sets Tottenham apart from their top-six rivals.
“It’s a little bit unfair [to say Liverpool are an inspiration],” the manager said. “People can use Tottenham as an inspiration, not we can use another team as an inspiration. We were in the last few years in a complete different world to them.”
At the end of last season, Pochettino repeatedly called on the club to start “a new chapter” and begin “operating in a different way” and the £65million club-record signing of Tanguy Ndombele — who was presented with the No28 shirt in front of around 1,500 supporters at open training this morning — and ongoing interest in Real Betis’s £67m-rated Giovani Lo Celso shows Spurs are preparing to be more ambitious in the transfer market.
Pochettino was reluctant to go into detail about how that new chapter might look, but his message suggested the club and chairman Daniel Levy will continue to do things differently from the Premier League’s other top-four contenders, although the manager admitted that they can no longer use their new stadium as an “excuse”.
Liverpool spent more than £150m after losing to Real and the contrast between Spurs and the Anfield club is, perhaps, best explained by Pochettino’s attitude to replacing Kieran Trippier, who joined Atletico Madrid for £21.7m this week.
Pochettino this morning declined to say if he would replace the England right-back, but it is thought he is minded to give youngsters Juan Foyth and Kyle Walker-Peters - the club’s only full-backs in Singapore - the chance to nail down Trippier’s spot.
Unlike his rivals, the Argentine is preparing to prove is the master at maximising his resources again and, rather than spending their way through the pain, Pochettino will rely on the bulk of his current squad to find new depths within themselves.
“The players should have their own motivation,” he said. “To sometimes try to make players fight is difficult. They need to motivate themselves.
“When you are at a big club, playing for big things, you need to be a man. Tottenham are in a very good place. In the last few years we have been a massive example for all the other clubs in how to manage a team when the situation is different.
“In the last four years we have arrived in the top four with different tools from the big, big clubs. This season is going to be another massive challenge, but we are ready. We are going to fight to have another very good season.
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