Despite some doubts at first, it seems Tottenham Hotspur really celebrated Lucas Moura’s arrival at the club. The player had a pretty warm reception at Wembley during halftime of Spurs’ 2-0 win over Manchester United last night.
Lucas is obviously a talented player who’s shown his qualities for Paris Saint Germain in the past few seasons, so there aren’t big concerns from Tottenham about him.
However, there’s always two sides to the story.
There’s still a reason to wonder if Tottenham are really the best club for a Brazilian to sign for, believe UOL.
In an article from UOL this Thursday, they show that Lucas’ compatriots could never achieve much success at the club, and he will be the one to break this flow.
It’s not hard to recall the four Brazilians who played for the White Hart Lane side before: Gilberto, Sandro, Gomes and Paulinho. None of them had a very succesful spell there.
UOL recalled each one of them to prove their point. Gilberto barely played. He featured in ten matches, seven as a starter. In three of them, he was replaced at half time.
Sandro, who played for Spurs between 2010 and 2014, even managed to have a solid spell at first, but then struggled with constant injuries and ended up being sold to Queens Park Rangers.
Both Paulinho and Gomes had past interviews with UOL, so this story brought back a few of their quotes about their time in London.
“I had a good first season at Tottenham, but in the second there wasn’t a sequence of games,” Paulinho told UOL last month. “So when I didn’t feel happy, I waited for the season to end and then asked the president to let me go to try another challenge.”
Goalkeeper Gomes had some stronger words in an interview from two years ago. He claimed that Brad Friedel’s arrival is what ended his Tottenham career.
“He was a friend of the manager, right? When I came to the locker room for a game against Manchester United, Harry came to me, 20 minutes before the game started, and said ‘It’s Friedel who’s going to play’. I didn’t want to accept it and it really messed me up. I told Harry ‘I don’t play for you anymore’.”
Now there’s no doubt that Lucas arrives to a better team, on a different level, and Mauricio Pochettino certainly knows how to deal with young South American players.
That’s why his mission is to go against Tottenham’s history with Brazilians, and he seems to be in a favourable position to do that.
