Kyle Walker: 'At first it was horrible under Mauricio Pochettino but now we run every team off the pitch'
By: Jonathan Lieu
Monday night. Hugo Lloris sends a long goal-kick down the right. Kyle Walker towers above Marc Muniesa and heads it on. Erik Lamela squirms, slithers, finds Christian Eriksen. All of a sudden, Stoke are facing an epidemic: a blizzard of blue shirts, all pelting towards goal at different angles.
Eriksen plays it through for Dele Alli. And exactly 12 seconds after the ball has left Lloris’s boot,
Alli is chipping Shay Given and jogging away in celebration.
Just another deadly attack. Just another scintillating goal. Just another three points.
The following day, Walker is sitting outside a photographic studio in east London, soaking up the last of the evening sunshine. He is in a good mood: polite and unguarded, cracking gags about Jan Vertonghen’s dress sense. After beating Stoke 4-0, all the talk now is
whether Spurs can overhaul Leicester to win the Premier League. The gap is still five points, but while
Leicester are scraping draws and 1-0s, Tottenham are winning with style.
If Walker is agitated by all this, he is hiding it well. Does he not feel even a little giddy at the thrill of a genuine title challenge?
“Of course,” he says. “But you have to be professional at the same time. We need to stay humble and keep doing the basics well. There’s still a lot of minutes of football left until the prize is given out.”
A tattoo on Walker’s arm hints at darker times. “To the stars through difficulties,” it reads, and Walker has come through a fair amount in his short career. Four years ago, he was named Young Player of the Year by his fellow pros. The other names on the shortlist were Danny Welbeck, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Daniel Sturridge, Sergio Aguero and
Gareth Bale. That was how highly Walker was regarded. He had the world at his feet.
But things did not go quite to plan. The irresistible momentum that had fuelled Walker’s early career slowly evaporated. Errors began to creep in. Managers came and went. Tim Sherwood even tried playing him in midfield at one point. After a ridiculous tabloid furore,
he was forced to apologise for a photograph that showed him inhaling nitrous oxide. Worse was to come:
a pelvic injury in 2014 put him out of the game for nine months.
Walker had to watch the World Cup in Brazil on television. It was, he later admitted, the most difficult part of his career. Naturally, doubts began to creep in.
“I needed to prove to myself – to the manager, to the fans, even to my mum and dad – that I’m not just an average player,” he says now. “I need to kick on. I’m 25 years old, I’m not a little kid any more. I’m an experienced player.”
Now, hang on a minute. Walker may have had a stop-start couple of seasons, but “average player” is surely pushing it a bit, no?
He sighs. “I’m probably my biggest critic. I’m a perfectionist. I want everything done right. When it’s not done right, I’m not happy. Ask my missus, she probably takes most of it. I want to improve, I want to be the best I can be. It’s a short career.”
And so, in 2014, enter Mauricio Pochettino: Walker’s fourth Tottenham manager in two years. When Walker first clapped eyes on this curious Argentinian with his translator and his gourd of
maté, he was at something of a personal crossroads. Tottenham finished fifth last season with Walker injured for large parts. Then came last summer, and the now-legendary Pochettino boot camp.
“I’m not going to lie,” Walker says. “At the start it was horrible. Horrible. When you reach the first team as a professional, it’s kind of like, ‘If you want go and do gym, do gym. If you don’t, you don’t have to’. But when he came in, gym was compulsory.”
That summer, Walker and his team-mates pushed themselves to the limit. Now, they are reaping the benefits. “We’ve got four games left, and we’re still running almost every other team off the pitch,” Walker says. “The only team close to us, if I remember correctly, is Bournemouth.
“That’s what I meant before about doing the basics right. We can all play football, but one of the basics of this game is that you need to run about and work for each other. That’s what’s pushed us on to the next level. Now, if he says ‘do a gym session in the afternoon’, it’s a normal thing. We just get on and do it.”
Tactically, Pochettino has devised a system that gets the best out of Walker going forward without leaving him exposed defensively. The full-backs – Walker and Kieran Trippier on the right, Ben Davies and Danny Rose on the left – have been the unsung heroes of this side, providing attacking width and tireless energy. When they go forward, Eric Dier drops back from midfield to cover them.
Yet Tottenham’s emergence as title contenders did not happen at once. A defeat to Manchester United on the opening weekend was “the kick up the behind that we needed”, according to Walker, who scored an own goal that day. After that, it would be 15 games until Tottenham lost again.
Along the way, Tottenham’s family unit has only grown closer. Walker grins as he paints a picture of the squad. “We’ve got a lot of different characters,” he says. “I’m probably one that’s known for jokes, but Dele and Eric are probably pipping me at the minute. Jan’s always there with a bit of banter. Then you’ve got the sensible ones: Hugo, Toby [Alderweireld], Michel Vorm, like parents trying to keep us on a leash. We all complement each other well. It’s just a joy to go into work every single day.”
And at the head of the family, the genial Pochettino. “It’s
weird,” says Walker when asked to describe their relationship. “It’s like a friend, but you have so much respect for him because of what he’s done in his football career. The thing I’ve warmed to the most is that you can knock on his door.
“My granddad had a stroke two or three months ago. I knocked on his door and said: ‘I need to go to Sheffield to see my granddad.’ He said, ‘Never mind about the double session. Family’s more important. Go and see your granddad.’ To me, that said everything about the man that he is.” Happily, Walker’s granddad recovered.
And so, here we are now: four games to go, and two of the unlikeliest challengers in living memory. Surely a second-place finish – their best in 53 years – would be a decent result?
“If you’d said to me at the start of the season that we’d finish second, I’d have said thanks,” he says. “But with how the season’s gone? You have to give full credit to Leicester, they’re there for a reason. But there are still a lot of minutes to be played. I hope it goes down to the wire. I just hope we can keep going for these last four games, and we’ll see where it goes.”
Whatever happens in those four games, Walker’s personal redemption is complete. His career is on the rise again. He has Euro 2016 this summer, a first Champions League campaign to look forward to next season, a dressing room that feels like a second family.
“I was talking to [former team-mate] Jermaine Jenas earlier about the players we played with,” he says. “Bale, Luka Modric, [Rafael] van der Vaart. Ledley King. You’d probably have chosen that team on paper. But for work ethic and team spirit, it’s this team all day long. The enthusiasm. The hunger. We’re young, but we’re not immature.
“We’ve set the bar now, and everything below this bar is unacceptable. We’ve had so many twists and turns at the club. Managers have come, managers have gone. Now we’ve got a good foundation, a great manager, a great bunch of lads. Hopefully, we can step on for the next 10 years.”
A dynasty. In a way it is what motivates all fathers, and Walker, who has two sons, is no different. He is yet to win silverware at Tottenham, and while he has not been waiting as long as some of the club’s older fans, it feels long enough.
“I’ve been here six years,” he explains. “And it’s the closest I’ve ever come to being a Premier League champion. That’s why I signed for Tottenham. To say to my two little boys: ‘Look, on that day, daddy won the trophy’.”
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