Danny Rose admits that he never expected to reach a Champions League final with Tottenham but says that their place alongside Liverpool in Madrid this weekend is vindication for the club’s progress in the five years since Mauricio Pochettino took over as manager.
Spurs have travelled through an unlikely path to the final with elimination staring them in the face after three group stage matches, a last-gasp VAR reprieve against Manchester City in the quarter-finals and an injury-time progression from the semi-finals against Ajax courtesy of a Lucas Moura hat-trick.
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“Since I've been at the club, being in a Champions League final has never ever entered my thought process,” Rose says. “I wanted so much to win the Carabao Cup, the FA Cup, the Premier League. We've got to one final in the Carabao and two (FA Cup) semis, we've huffed and puffed in the league and ultimately never come close.
“To think that we're 90 minutes away from maybe lifting the Champions League, I never thought that could happen at Tottenham, it shows you anything can happen in football.”
Pochettino has always tried to convince his players that Spurs were capable of challenging at the sharp end of the world’s biggest competitions and, Rose says, that message has finally got through.
“Now I understand what he means,” he says. “It wasn't that I didn’t believe him, I just didn’t understand. Now I definitely understand, it shows that's why he's the manager and I'm the player.”
There has not been a new arrival at Spurs since January 2018, when Lucas signed from Paris Saint-Germain. Rose has been vocal in the past about his frustrations regarding the lack of new signings but takes it as a sign that Pochettino completely trusts the players he’s got.
“Obviously we don't know the full ins and outs and why the club hasn't signed anybody,” he says.
“You can either take it that the manager has got full confidence in what he's worked with in the last two years, that he believes in you and doesn't want to bring in anyone to challenge for your position, or you can take it that nobody wants to join Tottenham, the club hasn't been able to provide the funds to buy anyone.
“The whole squad has taken it as the manager believes in us, despite what's in the media and what I may have said in the past, that the manager needs to sign somebody.
“The manager believes in his way, we're all behind his way and looks what it's brought us, it's brought us to a Champions League final, another year of Champions League football next season, a lot of credit should go towards the manager. We've all done ever so well.”
It will have been one day short of three weeks since their last match by the time Spurs clash with Liverpool in the Wanda Metropolitano on Saturday and Rose says the mood around the camp has been good since the Premier League season ended.
“The message that the manager is trying to get across to us is that he wants us to be relaxed, obviously not to treat it like any other game because it's not like any other game but he doesn't want us to overthink certain things overall," he said.
“He wants us to go out and express like we did against Ajax and City and we know he's fully confident in us.
“You can't switch that on in three weeks, it's part of his philosophy as a manager, he always wants you to treat every game the same, he expects you to train the same.
“We've trained exactly as we would do for a Premier League game, we've not done more or less. We've had three weeks, he wanted us to work on things each week. It's difficult for a manager not having a game for three weeks, you don't know how hard to work the team, [but] they’ve done it really well, it's a tricky balance to try and keep but he's done it really well.”
Spurs have not won a European trophy since the UEFA Cup in 1984 and Rose says that it is time for the current crop to look to their potential status as history-makers as a motivating factor and to their place in the final as a confirmation of the progress made.
“I've been here a long time to think that we could become legends after one 90 minutes is amazing,” he says. “That's got to be our motivation as well.
“No-one expected us to be here at start of competition, no-one expected us to be here [at] the quarters or the semis.
“We want to win for ourselves, the manager, the club and especially the fans.
“We want to win, we want to show the world that the project the manager started five years ago is coming, it's on its way.
“We've got the stadium now, the training ground, we hope this is the first of many steps as long as the manager is here.”
