Kyle Walker remembers how Andre Villas-Boas and the Tottenham Hotspur team were reduced to tears following Liverpool’s 5-0 thrashing.
Kyle Walker remembered being in tears with his teammates following a crushing loss to Liverpool, which led to the unwelcome dismissal of their manager.
When Manchester City’s captain lost 5-0 at White Hart Lane in December 2013, he was still a member of Tottenham Hotspur. The day’s most decisive wins in North London were secured by goals from Jordan Henderson, Jon Flanagan, and Raheem Sterling, with Luis Suarez scoring twice for Brendan Rodgers’ team.
Paulinho was sent off shortly after the hour, with the score still 2-0, and Spurs ended the game with 10 men. Andre Villas-Boas’s managerial career would come to an end as a result of the loss.
While the win left Liverpool second in the Premier League table, Tottenham were down in seventh – eight points behind leaders Arsenal – as they continued to struggle after selling Gareth Bale to Real Madrid.
The club had not lost at White Hart Lane in sixteen years. ago to losing to the Reds, Spurs had been undefeated for five games in all competitions.
However, the Portuguese manager was under increasing pressure because, only three weeks ago, Spurs had lost 6-0 away to Man City and had only won one of their previous six home games. Less than twenty-four hours after the final whistle at White Hart Lane, on December 16, Villas-Boas was fired by Tottenham.
And recalling how the Spurs squad found out about their manager’s dismissal, Walker revealed that Villas-Boas burst into tears when addressing the squad, with the England international then one of a number of players who also started crying.
“He was just so, so nice. He was so nice and sometimes I think that probably killed him,” he admitted on his BBC podcast, ‘You’ll Never Beat Kyle Walker’. “He was too nice.
“I can remember when he left, and I will never forget it, I swear to you, I will never, ever forget it. We were sat in the auditorium and we got wind that he was going.
(Daniel) Levy sacked him but he was still in the building and we were still ready to train. He came downstairs and started crying in front of us, he started crying in front of us.
“And I remember his assistant was telling him to pull it together. He started crying, I’ve got tears running down my eyes.
“A lot of the lads had tears, Michael Dawson is welling, he’s just like he can’t stop crying. He’s emotionally crying, because that is how much he meant to the lads.
Now we probably didn’t do him justice on the pitch because that’s why he got the sack, but for 10-12 men to be crying because the manager has gone, he has done something well in the dressing room.
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