We didn’t give Mauricio the credit he deserved’: Hugo Lloris on Pochettino, Levy, Spurs and the USA

Hugo Lloris lived in the intense pressure cooker of international football and the Premier League for so long that there is lightness and even relief as he describes how today began for him in Los Angeles. “I woke up this morning and had breakfast with my kids,” he says with a grin as he chats away happily at home. “I then took them to school and obviously the weather is amazing. Just before our interview I went for a walk and I was still in shorts and a T-shirt … in November.”

Lloris laughs in mild disbelief. We speak on Monday, the day before America goes to the polls, and the 37-year-old goalkeeper says: “Tomorrow is the big day and what’s really surprising when I am walking around the neighbourhood is seeing that people are not afraid to show who they’re voting for. You see the signs outside their houses. We are more private in Europe.”The sunshine and hope in California has dimmed after the election. Donald Trump won only 40.1% of the vote in California compared to Kamala Harris’ 57.3%, but most of America gave him a resounding national victory. Lloris offers a very Gallic shrug when we discuss the returning president’s bizarre and enduring popularity: “I know, but America is a huge country. I feel it when we play away. There are so many different mentalities, different expectations.”

Life goes on, and Lloris can now enjoy the fact that his new club, Los Angeles FC, topped the Western Conference at the end of the regular MLS season. Inter Miami were the Eastern Conference champions with an ageing, star-studded squad led by Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and Sergio Busquets. For Lloris this sparks memories of the 2022 World Cup final as he and Messi captained France and Argentina respectively in one of football’s most thrilling games.

Argentina won on penalties after a tumultuous 3-3 draw and, in his new book, Lloris details his lingering agony: “I’d meet people in the street who’d thank me for the beauty and emotional intensity of this final, assuring me that it was the most wonderful match they’d experienced in all their lives. Maybe when I’m old I’ll be able to see it like that. But not yet: it was a disaster because we lost, because we were crap for 80 minutes. And so the pain was unbearable.”

Lloris has won a record 145 caps for France and he led his country in successive World Cup finals, winning the first in Russia in 2018. He also captained France when they lost the final of Euro 2016 and played for Spurs in their 2019 Champions League final defeat. So, understanding the stark distinction between winning and losing, Lloris was mystified by the behaviour of Daniel Levy, the Spurs chairman, four days before that game against Liverpool.

Levy presented each player with a luxury watch and, on the back, he had engraved the words ‘Champions League Finalist 2019’.Lloris was astonished. “Who does such a thing at a moment like this?” he writes scathingly. “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.”

Lloris’ disdain has softened slightly. “It was a really nice gesture from Daniel but obviously it was a bit weird,” he says. “You receive a really nice gift but, at the same time, this little detail shows you are not used to being in such a place.”

Did he ever ask Levy to explain his thinking which suggested that just appearing in a Champions League final, rather than winning it, was worth such ostentatious celebration? “No, no, no,” Lloris says. “You don’t want to embarrass people. But the general feeling from the players is like: ‘Why? What is this? We haven’t started the game.’”

Lloris is also a diplomat and he adds: “I have a lot of respect for Daniel. I think he has done amazing work for the club. When I look at the position of Spurs when I arrived, [in 2012] and when I left [this January], it’s a different club.”

There have been seven permanent and contrasting managers in that period – André Villas-Boas, Tim Sherwood, Mauricio Pochettino, José Mourinho, Nuno Espírito Santo, Antonio Conte and Ange Postecoglou – and yet the club has still not won a trophy since the 2008 League Cup. Lloris makes it plain that he regards the sacking of Pochettino as a mistake while he was also bewildered by the “unbelievable timing” of Mourinho’s dismissal six days before the 2021 Carabao Cup final. He acknowledges that there were problems on the field and in the dressing room with Mourinho but is still astounded that the club fired a manager, whom they had hired for his silverware winning expertise, and replaced him with Ryan Mason as a caretaker.

Lloris believes that Spurs’ impressive rise under Pochettino, the manager to whom he has always been closest, needed support after the 2019 Champions League final. The club were in a position to enhance their progress but Levy chose to wait and, instead, invited in the Amazon cameras and soon dispensed with Pochettino. Lloris remembers his disdain for the Amazon documentary and his disbelief when Pochettino told him he had been fired.

He is more forgiving of Levy now – which is easier as he and Pochettino, the new US head coach, are both happy in America. “When you look at the last three years, Spurs have been really active in the transfer market, investing lots in new players, on freshness, and that’s what the club needed to create a new dynamic. After the Champions League final the club was not ready to invest because there was also the new stadium to pay back and then there was Covid.

“Daniel always tried to make the right decision for the club and we were also a bit unlucky. At our best with Mauricio, we had to compete with the Chelsea of Abramovich, the Man City of Guardiola, the Liverpool of Jürgen Klopp. It was really tough because if the club was ready to invest £50m, the others will invest £100m.

“But I feel we didn’t give the high credit that Mauricio deserved because he brought a new generation of players – Christian Eriksen, Dele Alli, Harry Kane and many more – to a new level. He created something really special in the building. You could feel the unity and we really enjoyed competing for each other. We brought the club to the next step but we had three finals and we could not score one goal in those games.”

Even if his last year at the club was marred by injury and discontent, and he never played for Postecoglou, Lloris still follows Spurs closely today. “I really like what I see and I believe that they are going in the right direction. They have a proper football style, a mentality, and I think [Postecoglou] brought exactly what the club needed at this moment – freshness and a new fan expectation. That’s probably why I felt really heavy when we were with José or Antonio. It was a different football style.

“As long as you keep winning, there is no problem. But as soon as you start to lose one game, two games, the fans get even more frustrated and you could feel it at the stadium [under Mourinho and Conte]. Ange has a great personality and I think he’s building something important. Everything can change from one day to another but I think this team has character and personality to keep growing. I think they’re going to compete for trophies this season, like a League Cup.”

In his book, Lloris offers fascinating insights into playing football under the brooding Conte – who sounds as ferociously intense and ultimately alienating as you would imagine – and Mourinho whom he describes as being much more likable than his current reputation would suggest. “Yes, he’s a great man. If you are open to improve, to learn, it’s great to have him on your side. The only question that everybody asks is when the club decided to split with Mauricio, we had a proper football style. The club decided to change to try and win [by appointing Mourinho]. All the comments about Mauricio were the same: ‘Oh yeah, his team play amazing football, but they never won.’ So obviously Daniel and the board decided that they need to bring someone that can help the club to win. You cannot reproach anything about that – even if I felt the departure of Mauricio was really hard.”

The Spurs soap opera continues while, in the less frenzied world of MLS, Lloris insists that the standard of football in the US is higher than many expect. “I was talking about it a few days ago with Olivier Giroud [his LAFC team-mate] and if you come to the MLS thinking that, ‘OK, I can put up my feet and relax’ you are totally wrong. It’s more competitive than people think. Obviously you cannot compare it with the Premier League, but it’s still competitive and very challenging, especially away from home with long trips, weather changes, altitude changes.”

As usual, Lloris negotiated his current deal without an agent. It is a sign of his singularity that he has never appointed an agent. “But I like to listen and spend time with them because the best agents are professional and experienced and I respect their work,” he says. “They make the market. But I still believe that a normal person has expectations in terms of numbers when he applies for a new job. So I have that but I took a lot of advice and I had loads of lawyers. I work with lawyers more than agents.”

Does he know of many footballers who work without an agent? “Nowadays there’s not many. But when Kevin De Bruyne signed his last contract with City I think he did it on his own. He just took all his data and compared it with the same profile of player and this is how he justified his numbers. That’s quite interesting. I’m the same. I am really close to all my business affairs. It’s how I grew up and something that my father transmitted to me.”

Lloris explains that, at LAFC, he has “a one-year contract with an option of two more years. I want to go year-by-year because I don’t know if mentally I will be ready to go again. But surprisingly I feel really good. In the last few years I got a little tired because the Premier League is really intense and demanding and there is lots of pressure when you wear the French jersey and are national captain [from 2012 to 2022]. I could have stayed in Europe but I made the right choice coming here. I really needed something new and fresh.”