Ledley King reveals how the magic vanished from Jose Mourinho’s time at Spurs
Ledley Kind admits that his short stint as a coach at Spurs was an emotional rollercoaster and sheds light on the feeling inside the dressing room towards the end of Jose Mourinho’s time at the club.
Jose Mourinho convinced Ledley King on coaching foray
King had been a club ambassador for Tottenham for a long time after hanging up his boots but Mourinho decided to add the Spurs legend to his coaching staff.
However, King’s foray into coaching was not to last long. Although he stayed on until the end of the season after Mourinho’s sacking, he decided to return to his old role as club ambassador at the end of the 2020-21 campaign.
When asked about taking the job, he said on Seaman Says podcast: “I couldn’t turn him (Mourinho) down, could I?”
Things unravelled suddenly for Mourinho
King confessed that when Spurs were sitting at the top of the league towards the end of 2020, he was dreaming about winning the Premier League title.
He said: “It was December when we were top of the league, and I’m thinking: ‘We’re going to win the league. I’ve been at Tottenham my whole life, but now we were talking about Jose. He wins things… and then it took a nosedive in the second half of the season.”
However, the 44-year-old confessed that things had soured in the final weeks and months of Mourinho’s time in North London, with the atmosphere in the changing room being glib at the time.
Speaking about the way things ended for Mourinho, King remarked: “Slowly but surely it just felt like the connection wasn’t there anymore. It happens over a number of weeks, maybe even months.
“I remember playing a game against Everton, it was 4-4 or something like that. As a defender myself, 4-4 doesn’t give me any joy, but after the game, it just felt weird.
“The changing room was dead, and that was the beginning of the end. It’s tough when that happens because I’ve been a player and had loads of managers myself, but actually being on the coaching side of things felt so weird.”
King enjoyed working with Mourinho
King confessed that even though things might have not worked out for the special one at Spurs, he enjoyed his time with him.
The former England man admitted that he would have loved playing under Mourinho but suggested that modern-day players respond to a different type of leadership style.
King added: “Jose was great for me. I enjoyed working under him… He’s very, very intense. He’s meticulous in terms of his preparation and planning, but he’s also clever because he almost reads the game during the game.
“He can tell you what is going to happen by the 70th minute, what the opposition might try to do. So then he prepares his team for that situation. I would have loved playing under him.
“Jose knew when there was a time to try and put an arm on the shoulder, to try to get the best out of someone. He doesn’t suffer fools. He just wants you to go out there and be strong, be tough, give your all, and that’s what he asks. With the way football is now, you probably can’t talk to players the same way that you could do 15 to 20 years ago.”
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