Player Watch: Hugo Lloris

hughy said:

Why not? Chelsea signed Mendy for around £22m, and look how great he has been for them. Milan have just signed Maignan who is tipped to take over from Lloris for France for around £12m.

Deals are clearly there to be had on goalkeepers, the problem is I don't trust our current scouts to find them. Not every keeper is going to cost you a Kepa.

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spids said:

I cannot help but think that Lloris has been with us for too long and gone stale. Similar with Kane and Toby. When your senior players are jaded it sets a bad vibe throughout the club.

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SandroClegane said:

Lloris is stale and jaded? Looked pretty solid to me last year, didn't make many mistakes. Still one of the top keepers in the PL. Not sure where that's coming from

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SandroClegane said:

Lloris is stale and jaded? Looked pretty solid to me last year, didn't make many mistakes. Still one of the top keepers in the PL. Not sure where that's coming from

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carmeldevil said:

Must be this chart. Stale and jaded yep!

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Lloris the overseer of France's 'network of captains': Why Tottenham fans should care about the Euros

Lloris showed his no-nonsense side for Spurs this season and will be desperate to lead his country to more glory on the international stage

theathletic.com

Egos are supposed to clash in a football team. In the chaos of the professional game, combustible elements are meant to collide and, in the right amount, that tension can be healthy.
But Hugo Lloris and Son Heung-min? That was strange. Who even knew that Lloris’ temper could even change gears at all, let alone so quickly. Amazon’s All or Nothing series held few surprises and that half-time interlude in a home game against Everton had actually been caught live by Sky Sports, but there was still something shocking in seeing two of the club’s most placid players having to be separated in the dressing room.
With Lloris, though, perhaps that’s a misconception. He will soon lead France into the European Championship and is heavily favoured to be lifting the trophy at Wembley in just over a month. Meek goalkeepers tend to win very little. Teams with mild captains typically even less. And yet Lloris’s France may soon establish themselves as one of the international teams for the ages.
Does that make him a dynastic leader? Compared with some of the other Tottenham players who will feature at this tournament, that’s a costume that really doesn’t seem to fit. He doesn’t lead with that talismanic aura that England’s Harry Kane possesses. He doesn’t strain with effort like Denmark’s Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg. Nor does he have the unflinching authority of Belgium’s Toby Alderweireld.
There’s a difference between the image of Lloris as a captain and the reality; something doesn’t quite add up.
The Son incident wasn’t actually a one-off. Back in 2011, after conceding two late goals in a draw with Nice, Lyon’s players trudged disconsolately back to the dressing room. Television cameras briefly captured the footage and, before a press officer could revoke their access, Lloris is heard (and then seen) blasting his withering assessment down the corridors of the Stade du Ray.
He didn’t sound angry, he sounded wild. He had his back to the camera and his face wasn’t shown, but he was deeply antagonised and in a way that really wouldn’t have suited his features. To the public, Lloris is soft-spoken and quietly handsome, like some kind of charming French aristocrat. Yet there he was as Trainspotting’s Begbie, screaming at anyone who would listen and ready to swing at any chin going. Claude Puel can be seen nervously checking his phone and Lloris presumably wasn’t anywhere near done when the dressing room door was shut and the cameras were ushered away. Goodness knows what happened next.
But it was a moment in keeping with the expectations around captaincy – particularly when it’s a goalkeeper. Big, muscular and intimidating keepers are a thing of the past, but it’s not so long ago that the position lent itself to a very specific form of leadership. Peter Schmeichel, Oliver Kahn; they governed more than they led, and their faces were often contorted as they did so.
Lloris has never seemed like that sort. Certainly not at club level. Tottenham have had lawless moments since he moved to England back in 2012 and life at the club can hardly be easy now, but there have been few difficult characters to endure. During the Mauricio Pochettino era especially, the team seemed governed by its own culture and there appeared little policing for any captain to do.
The France national team is a separate issue. A country will always be more complicated than any club can ever be and the last few decades of French football have presented some unique challenges. Dealing with the status that followed 1998 and 2000, the calamity of 2002 and — most notoriously — the player power that ripped the 2010 World Cup squad apart at the seams.
Lloris was among Laurent Blanc’s rotation of interim captains in the aftermath of South Africa, before rising to the position full-time ahead of Euro 2012. It was a trying time for a player who remained young and inexperienced and who had been appointed more for who he wasn’t rather than who he was. Harder still because — in the words of L’Equipe journalist Vincent Duluc — the French side he took over was at the centre of a “national moral crisis”.
Duluc first met Lloris in 2008, just after he had transferred to Lyon to replace long-time goalkeeper and former French international Gregory Coupet, and he was struck by the differences on and off the record.
“He was young, just 22. He was shy in the interview and careful. Sometimes it was even a bit flat. But as soon as you finished the formal part of the interview — and this is still true today — he was very interesting.
“We spoke for an hour about football, about Lyon, the French team and about life.”
It’s a consistent theme. Lloris is depicted by several journalists in much the same way: as someone fond of a straight bat before games, but who is articulate, intelligent and worldly after them. And in the wreckage of that chaotic 2010 World Cup, which became an incendiary political issue in France, that caution and security were highly desirable traits in a national captain.
He was a very young captain. Younger at 23 than even Michel Platini had been at 24 and, for a variety of reasons, there couldn’t be two more contrasting figures. Platini was the No 10. He was the emblem of French if not European football at the time, and his role in the side and the strength of his personality made him a natural leader.
Lloris couldn’t be more different. Naturally set apart by his playing position — and hardly comparable to the muscular, monolithic goalkeeper-captains of generations past — he’s also a quieter voice. Unlike Platini, he has never been the poster image of French football, and he bears little comparison to any of the players who have worn the armband in the years between. He’s certainly no Thierry Henry or Zinedine Zidane, quite different to characters like current head coach Didier Deschamps, and has few similarities to Patrick Vieira, Marcel Desailly or Lilian Thuram. Instead, he’s been part of the chorus — a background character within another decadently gifted generation.
But his captaincy works. What’s more, he’s captained France many more times than any other player in history, has already led them to World Cup glory and is tipped to do the same at this Euros.
“Lead” is perhaps a misnomer; the French team is really a network of captains, says Duluc.
“Paul Pogba is the leader of the mood. Antoine Griezmann is more of a technical leader and Varane is a leader of the mind.”
It portrays Lloris as more of an overseer, perhaps — someone with the intelligence to allow the team’s dynamics to churn, but who also knows when to intervene and when the right moment is to speak truth to power or ego. That’s been shown at Tottenham, too. It was of course Lloris who gave that simmering assessment of the Europa League defeat to Dinamo Zagreb, providing a pertinent example of not only what has made him a successful captain, but also what is often missed in the appraisal of his leadership qualities.
The consensus view is that whoever wears the armband should be demonstrative. They should motivate and inspire and hold others to account and, really, it’s difficult to disagree. But another interpretation is that a captain should be the team’s conscience and that the role’s essence is to be honest and blunt in ways that aren’t always likely to be popular.
“One thing is to come in front of the camera and say: ‘I’m ambitious’. The other thing is to show every day in training sessions and to show every time on the pitch.”
That was one of the hostile remarks he made live on BT Sport. It was probably one which upset several members of the Tottenham team that night and made for an uncomfortable journey home from Croatia. It was also one he didn’t have to make. The media were circling over Jose Mourinho’s head at the time and nobody would really have noticed had Lloris condensed his opinions into a bland Instagram post. But he did speak out, because a captain has to be willing to put himself in that situation. Sometimes he needs to stand in front of the television cameras and point fingers and — unfortunately — there aren’t that many players who are willing to do that.
“It’s a disgrace.”
Yes, it was, but there was relief in that honesty.
The portrait is of a player who is a fiercer person than he’s assumed to be. The Son incident surprised people, as the Nice episode had many years before. But, Duluc says, what the Amazon cameras caught was just part of a character rarely seen — one that hates to lose, one who used to brood for days after a defeat, and who remains intolerant of sliding standards.
“It showed everyone that he’s not so shy, he’s not so flat, and that he has something to say.
“When he talks, he talks for the team.”

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SandroClegane said:

Lloris is stale and jaded? Looked pretty solid to me last year, didn't make many mistakes. Still one of the top keepers in the PL. Not sure where that's coming from

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worcestersauce said:

So the only keepers who faced more shots were at Sheffield United, West Brom, Leeds and Villa. Can't help thinking that doesn't say much for our defence even if it proves the quality of our keeper.
Fulham keeper faced 80 fewer shots and they were relegated!
There was one other club worse than us by the way, guess who

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MattPhilpott said:

Apologies to bump the thread I didn’t want to start a new one…

Been linked just now to Pierluigi Gollini, the Atalanta goalkeeper…

by all accounts a very very good goalkeeper, 25/26 years old with a contract that runs until 2023.

the talk of the deal is a 2 year loan with an obligation to buy. Would be a brilliant move as a long term Lloris replacement!!

the best part of it al is that he is classed as home-grown I believe as he spent his youth career at Man Utd, before spending time at Villa! If that’s the case then it would be a great bit of business!

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the yid said:

Didn't ge flop at Villa

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worcestersauce said:

So the only keepers who faced more shots were at Sheffield United, West Brom, Leeds and Villa. Can't help thinking that doesn't say much for our defence even if it proves the quality of our keeper.
Fulham keeper faced 80 fewer shots and they were relegated!
There was one other club worse than us by the way, guess who

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degoose said:

That's what you get playing mourinho style football where we defend the majority of a game.

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