Eric Dier

nicdic said:

Great interview with Dier in The Times

https://t.co/o3fKj1RPEp

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Wick3d said:

Hope that helps.

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walworthyid said:

Have always liked him. Utd aren't after him for no reason and the fact that Poch sees him as one of his key players should tell us something. He is an excellent player with a fantastic attitude and a real will to win. When we went and kicked the shit out of chelsea on that infamous night, Dier was 22 years old!

For me he is exactly the kind of player that we need to keep at our club.

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DCSPUR said:

fantastic interview....shows how daft some people are when they talk about selling him...
IDEA: We should use the All-Blacks test for our fan base!!!

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Lilbaz said:

Pray tell, what is the all blacks test?

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Colonel_Klinck said:

No dick heads at footy games and you’ve just lost half the crowd.

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hughy said:

If that means I get a £900 season ticket instead of a £1500 one I'm all for it.

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yido_number1 said:

Tip: If you don't want to pay £1,500 sit some where other than the west stand.

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hughy said:

I'm in phase 8 - I'll get what I'm given!

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longtimespur said:

If you're given one can you get another for me please

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bubble07 said:

Can you paste article? I'm not a paid member

Cheers

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Eric Dier: Cars? No, we discuss Brexit and Catalonia at Spurs
Eric Dier tells Henry Winter about his refusal to become stuck in football’s “bubble” and why Dele Alli, his close friend and team-mate for club and country, is no cheat
Henry Winter
March 10 2018, 12:01am, The Times

Whenever Eric Dier needs to keep the most challenging moments of his profession in perspective, the Tottenham Hotspur and England player recalls the story of his grandfather somehow surviving a terrible crash in the RAF.

Ted Croker, who famously went on to play for Charlton Athletic and become secretary of the FA, was thrown 50 feet clear when the twin-engined training plane he was in failed to gain sufficient height in poor visibility to avoid Kinder Scout in the Peak District in 1945. Some of the wreckage still lies there.

“There’s a book [Dark Peak Wrecks] about it which I’ve got,” Dier says. “It’s an incredible story where he broke both ankles, but the other pilots [one under training, like Croker, and the instructor who was flying at the time] were severely injured so he crawled some crazy distance to get help.”

It was more than three miles in the freezing cold with no shoes, a head wound that eventually required 88 stitches and ankle injuries so serious that Croker was confined to a hospital bed for three months afterwards.

Thinking only of his stricken colleagues, Dier’s grandfather wrapped them in RAF parachute silk to keep them warm and then set out. After hours dragging himself over gritstone rocks, across peat bogs and through icy streams, Croker chanced upon a cottage near Edale, gave information to be relayed to Mountain Rescue and collapsed. His fellow officers were saved, and Croker was awarded the King’s Commendation for Brave Conduct.

Christened Edgar, Croker switched to “Ted” on joining the RAF and one of Dier’s middle names is Edgar in memory of his grandfather. Croker’s fortitude is also why Dier is such an enthusiastic ambassador for a remarkable new initiative to help military veterans being launched today. The Tottenham Hotspur Foundation is working with Sporting Force, the military charity, to recruit ex-service personnel to fill 50 jobs as stewards, security staff and hosts at the new ground.

“There’s a crazy stat that military veterans are twice as unlikely to get employment as a regular civilian,” Dier continues. “One of the great things about the new stadium, along with all the fantastic sporting events there, is that it will help the local community in so many ways and will offer jobs to servicemen and women who’ve left the military.

“It’s great what the club are doing. It’s the biggest push by a Premier League club for this kind of veterans’ centre. It’s good for football to show support. What the military do is incredible. I can’t even imagine what they go through in war.”

Dier left Wembley on Wednesday night with a bruised elbow and a broken Champions League dream but such deep frustrations are inevitably placed in proper context by what others endure. He hopes to be fine for tomorrow’s trip to Bournemouth, and knows Spurs have the quality and determination to respond to the setback against Juventus.

“When you’re involved in the world of football it’s such a bubble that sometimes you have to step back to realise there’s so much more to life. You saw the terrible news of the Fiorentina captain [Davide Astori] who’s passed away, and that puts everything into perspective.

“The football community came together for the Fiorentina captain [including a minute’s silence at Wembley]. One of the beautiful things about football is that the football community comes together for all these kind of things. I’m getting goosebumps just talking about it.”

He thinks of football’s support for Ryan Mason, his former team-mate who was forced to retire after a head injury. “What happened with Ryan is terrible. I speak to Ryan a lot and what Petr Cech has done is incredible, visiting him, talking to him as he’s been there through the same experience,” Dier says. “If you go back to when England played France after the terrorist attacks [in Paris in 2015], that was an incredible night to be part of at Wembley because it showed that strength of solidarity.”

With strong people such as Dier at the heart of the Spurs changing room, disappointment like Wednesday’s will not disrupt the camaraderie fostered by Mauricio Pochettino. “The manager is only interested in signing players who not only can perform on the pitch but fit the criteria off it.” Which is? “Being nice guys. But he doesn’t want you always to be a nice guy!”

Dier is reading a book on the All Blacks, who famously have a “no dickhead policy” to selection. “That’s what it is at Spurs too,” he says. “It’s important we’re not nice on the pitch all the time but off it there’s a lot of very good people, humble people, hard-working people. There’s quite a few Belgians, French and Spanish but they don’t stick to themselves. There are no cliques here. One of the beautiful things about Spurs is that everyone really mixes and mashes together.

“What’s also nice about the group is that we discuss anything. We quite enjoy debate.” So talk is not just music and motors? “No! Never! Sometimes it’s music but it’s never about cars or clothes. We talk about day-to-day topics, about Brexit, and when that boy came out with the jumper [the controversial H&M monkey hoodie].

“We talk a lot about technology, natural resources, and electric cars. We talk a lot about VAR. We had a difficult situation with VAR in the Rochdale game. VAR is something that can be very positive but what I don’t want it to do is ruin the emotion that makes football so special, especially in the English league.

“I was watching Sporting [Lisbon] against Porto the other night and it was very stop-start, lots of fouls, anything happens and the ref blows the whistle. The beauty of the English league is it’s so free-flowing, the speed is incredible and I don’t want anything to slow that down. At the same time you have to embrace technology because it’s coming. I just hope they implement it in the right way.”

So much is on the menu in Spurs’ canteen conversations. “We spoke a lot about Pep Guardiola’s yellow ribbon because the manager was in Barcelona [at Espanyol],” Dier says. “We spoke a lot about independence in Barcelona. We were in Barcelona just after it all happened. We went to Madrid and they had Spanish flags in the windows everywhere and then we went to Barcelona and saw all the Catalonia flags in the windows everywhere. Footballers have so much to talk about, so much to say.”

Dier’s interests are broad, including architecture and photography, and when he finally finished getting tips off The Times photographer Marc Aspland he headed to the Hayward Gallery in London to see a retrospective of the German photographer Andreas Gursky.

Curious about life, Dier makes good company, with an intriguing inflexion to his voice that reveals early years in Sporting’s academy, a tweak of genteel Cheltenham and then mixing with the likes of Dele Alli in English dressing rooms. “I’m quite calm, sometimes maybe too relaxed,” the 24-year-old says laughing. “That’s the way I’ve been brought up. I have five brothers and sisters so I’m not calm at home. When we play anything with my brothers, the last thing it is is calm.

“Just yesterday I was playing PlayStation with my brother, and my girlfriend was there and she can’t stand it. She has to leave the house because it gets too competitive. Even my dad [the former GB tennis player Jeremy Dier] would never let us win at anything until we actually could. Never let us win. He knew there would come a day when we beat him so he was going to enjoy it while it lasted. That’s a good education because it made me work even harder to try and beat him at anything.”

On joining Spurs from Sporting, Dier’s competitive streak was first seen at centre back in the 2015 Capital One Cup final during his duel with Chelsea’s Diego Costa. “I love playing against players like him, it’s entertaining. He might not say the same but we liked each other,” he says. “The worst thing you can do to someone like that is try and be their enemy. The best thing is to be their friend and kick them at the same time. That’s what I did. That was a very important game for me to prove I could play on that stage but we did lose, so . . .”

Pochettino has since moved Dier into deep midfield where he first learnt the tactical discipline of the role under Jesualdo Ferreira at Sporting. “If you watch Spurs play, the manager demands a lot that we stand still within our positions and that’s really important.

“Throughout the English age groups, I feel there are a lot of people who expect all their midfielders to run box to box and run after the ball. It has created fantastic players . . . ” Dier nods at the mention of Bryan Robson, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard before continuing, “Yes, some of the best players ever, but there’s another type of player as well.

“Michael Carrick was probably the best English player to play in that position. I was lucky enough to train a couple of times with him with England and I thought he was just incredible.

“He had that different style to the others, but it’s something you need. Gerrard, Lampard and [Paul] Scholes were incredible, they’d run backwards and forward, incredible athleticism and score goals, create chances, do everything.”

Carrick once graced the Spurs midfield now filled by Dier and Mousa Dembélé. Why is Dembélé so good? “Have you not seen him play? Mousa’s just special, full stop,” he says. “He’s incredible because he’s massive. One of his legs is two of mine. His balance is incredible. His movement physically is so superior and then to ally that with the technical ability he has is incredible. I love Mousa, the most relaxed man in football. He’s become a very good friend.”

Dier ponders who has more skills and tricks, Dembélé or Alli. “You might say Dele has more like ‘flashy tricks’, as you call it, but with Mousa it’s so fluid with his skill, I’ve never seen anything like it.

“Dele’s at his best when he just runs, when he doesn’t think, when he just trusts his instincts, everything just happens and that’s what makes him so great. What makes him great? Everything. People don’t see it, but it’s the way Dele plays without the ball, presses people, gets the ball back and runs after lost causes. That’s the beauty of Dele as much as the goals, the tricks and the nutmegs.”

And the diving? “Yes, the diving thing. I think it’s a bit exaggerated. Obviously, there have been some cases of it, but all these attacking players have been through the same criticism in their career. Dele’s not always going to be perfect, not always going to make the right decision, but he’s 21.

“There’s so much focus on anything that Dele does that when he dives, there’s a crazy amount of attention on it which I think is a bit unfair.” But diving’s cheating? “I think Dele knows. He doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. And he’s definitely not a cheat. He just wants to win.”

The pair are close friends, partly because Alli is drawn to those who enjoyed the settled, loving upbringing he lacked. “That’s one of the beautiful things about football is that I’ve come from where I have and Dele’s come from where he has and here we are together today,” Dier says. “We are pretty different characters. I guess opposites attract. And at the same time we get on very well. Dele has an aura about him where you just warm to him. He’s just a very likeable boy. The beautiful thing about Dele is it’s not a show, it’s just who he is. He never changes. He’s the same person now as he was when I met him four years ago. That’s a beautiful thing about this team.

“Harry [Kane] is the same. Everyone talks about the goals but it’s his work rate, humility and aggression that makes Harry so incredible. He’s so focused, full of hunger and constantly trying to improve. Harry epitomises all the players, manager and club at the moment.

“There’s complete trust between the players and the manager. The manager has instilled a mentality where we play without fear, we’re aggressive and on the front foot.

“It’s tiring, but training’s worse. The manager puts us under so much pressure in training. Games are enjoyable because training’s so hard.”

Dier knows how much work they have to do. “The way Man City are playing at the moment is incredible. They’re showing the best level and everyone’s trying to get to that level,” he says.

And then there’s the World Cup. Having led England out in the past two games, against Germany and Brazil, Dier would love to captain his country in Russia. “I can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t enjoy doing it,” he says. “I was captain for two games, but it’s different if you’re captain over a long period of time. The pressure’s different.”

So how can England do this summer?

“Ah the golden question! Hopefully very well. What an England fan wants is to see the team give everything. Once you get into the knockout stage there are so many factors, you need a bit of luck and you need something special — which we have in the team,” Dier says. “The key is to have the mentality where we are aggressive, take the game to teams and play without fear.”

•Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, in partnership with Sporting Force, is recruiting military veterans to work in its new stadium. To apply visit www.sportingforce.org/register

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coys200 said:

I’ve a strong feeling Southgate is going to deploy him as the central CB for England with stones and Maguire either side and Henderson as the DM.

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