Mousa Dembélé has opened about the struggles he endured during his time at Tottenham Hotspur.
The Belgian has given an interview to So Foot, discussing various subjects, including his time at Tottenham.
Dembélé arrived at the north London club from Fulham in 2012 and spent seven years at Tottenham, before leaving them for Chinese side Guangzhou City.
He played the majority of his time at Tottenham under Mauricio Pochettino, who guided the club to their first ever Champions League final in 2019, which they lost to Liverpool. A few months later, Spurs chairman Daniel Levy showed the exit door to the manager.
Dembélé was asked to share his experience of playing under the former Southampton boss at Tottenham. When responding to that, he talked about the disappointment of not winning silverware with Spurs.
“Amazing! We had very good players, but above all an excellent team. When Pochettino arrived, we started training a lot harder. It was very intense, stricter than before… The results came later: we easily won matches that had given us problems before,” he said.
“What’s a shame is not having gotten our hands on a trophy. But hey, above all I try to remember what we built as a team: there were results, great play and we made people happy.”
The Tottenham fan favourite made 82 appearances for Belgium between 2006 and 2018.
The outlet points out he had limited game time in major tournaments with the national team and asked the reason for that. This is when Dembélé opened up about the difficult time he endured at Tottenham.
“What not many people know is that at Tottenham I was in pain every day. I was playing with under-infusion,” Dembélé explained.
“Theoretically, the international breaks were supposed to allow me to rest, but I had to rejoin the national team. So, in the end I never got my rest periods. I really wanted to play for Belgium, and I loved it, but sometimes it was too much, the travelling and the load of matches.”
