When you arrive in a new league, things aren’t always easy.
There’s a lot of adapting to do, and, especially if you’ve missed preseason, the odds of you having an instant impact aren’t always on your side.
That is, in short, what happened to Tottenham’s Georges-Kevin N’Koudou following his long-awaited transfer from Marseille in a deal Mauricio Pochettino knew very little about until it was done.
The French winger has struggled to gain his manager’s approval this season, only making bit part appearances throughout the campaign, and with his first year now almost behind him, the player knows exactly what went wrong.
“I was nearly like a child, in a cocoon. I had it easy. I found a lot of answers here, especially thanks to Moussa Dembélé, who told me: “You have the talent, you have everything, but you need to work hard here”. When I dribble past someone, he didn’t cheer, but when I pressed hard, he would tell me “That’s it, that’s good!”
“And when the best player you’ve played with, a guy who has everything, both feet, the physicality, the technique, tells you that, you listen. After that, a lot of people helped me: Rose, Walker, Kane and others. And my two big brothers Moussa Sissoko and Hugo Lloris.”
Never regretting his move to Tottenham in the first place, N’Koudou understands why some felt it was a bit early for him to make the jump, especially because he only had one season with Marseille under his belt, but the forward never once felt like he was behind his peers.
After all, if he hadn’t felt like he could make it at White Hart Lane, he never would have gone through with the move in the first place.
As for his future, N’Koudou knows next year needs to be different: “I can’t live another season like this one. I’ll need to play more. We’ll be in 2018, with the World Cup. You never know. When I was preselected in March, it meant a lot to me. When you see players from the U21s going up to the first team, you think why not?”
Will he be at Tottenham next year? “I want to impose myself, yes. I know I can.”
