Roberto De Zerbi's 'Bombas': Tottenham's Rebuilt Squad

Roberto De Zerbi leans back, smiles, and drops the word that has defined Tottenham’s summer.

“Savio is ‘bomba’. All players we brought, I think are ‘bomba’!”

In his world, “bomba” doesn’t mean chaos. It means quality. Impact. Players who change the temperature of a dressing room the moment they walk in.

Tottenham have just spent around £380m on eight first‑team signings, a staggering outlay for a club that only just dragged itself clear of relegation last season. This isn’t tinkering. It’s surgery.

And De Zerbi is the surgeon who demanded it.

De Zerbi’s ‘bombas’ and a rebuilt Spurs

When he arrived and kept Spurs in the Premier League, he did it with a squad running on fumes. He made it clear he wanted top‑level reinforcements. The club delivered.

“In my vocabulary ‘bomba’ is a great player,” he tells Sky Sports News’ Michael Bridge, still grinning before Saturday Night Football against Newcastle. “I’m very happy. We brought all very good players. Especially because they wanted to come. I want players proud and happy to stay here.”

That last line matters to him. Pride. Happiness. Not just the badge on the shirt, but the fire behind it.

“To play football now you need big motivation, big ambitions. Without that part it’s impossible to make results.”

Right now, he looks around the training pitch and likes what he sees.

“At the moment we have a great squad, a great team. Maybe we have to close with another player but we have to sell a couple of players. But we can consider us very, very happy.”

The power of a phone call

Several of those new signings have already spoken about De Zerbi’s phone calls – the late‑night chats that turned interest into commitment and sold them on the Spurs project.

So what’s in those conversations? Some secret pitch? Some rehearsed speech?

“Nothing special,” he shrugs. “I live off passion. I live for football. I explain our project – not my project – and we were lucky because they accepted and we’re very happy and proud.”

He might play it down, but the evidence is on the pitch. His words pulled players in. His work last season kept the club in the division when nothing was guaranteed.

Those final seven weeks still sit with him.

“Big emotion, big memories,” he says of the post‑match scenes after the final‑day win over Everton that sealed survival. “I think it was maybe the best day in my career.

“Not because of the target. We stayed up with Tottenham. But because they were seven weeks very tough, many emotions. The players deserved to stay up.”

Deserved or not, he knows the league doesn’t hand out anything for free. Every point is a fight.

A harsh opening lesson

The first weekend of this season rammed that home. New faces, new optimism – and then a brutal reality check at the Gtech.

Brentford overwhelmed Spurs. Outplayed them. Outfought them.

Spurs looked like a team still learning each other’s names while Brentford tore into them with clarity and cohesion. The defeat stung, not just on the scoreboard but in what it said about where this project actually is.

Spurs cannot afford a repeat when Newcastle come to town.

“The name of the players are not crucial,” De Zerbi insists. “To make results you have to fight, run, play well. But as a start, I think it’s very important [to have signed such quality].”

The money spent only sets the stage. The rest is chemistry.

Patience, connection… and a response

De Zerbi knows that throwing eight “bombas” into a squad doesn’t instantly produce an explosion of fluency. It takes time.

“The patience is to find the connection, the balance between the players,” he explains. “To give organisation you have to know the characteristics of your team-mates and the connection is not so fast to reach.”

He isn’t hiding from what happened at Brentford.

“In Brentford we had the quality and have to compete better. They deserved to win the game, we deserved to lose the game, we didn’t play well but we could play much better anyway.”

That honesty cuts through any early‑season excuses. The players know where they stand. The fans do too.

Now comes the first Premier League home game of the campaign, under the lights on Saturday night. A rebuilt squad, a demanding head coach, a stadium waiting to see whether all that money and all that talk really does translate into something different.

De Zerbi has his “bombas”.

Newcastle will show whether they’re ready to go off.