Roberto De Zerbi's Pact with Spurs Players

Roberto De Zerbi has never been shy about straight lines and hard truths. When he walked through the doors at Spurs in April, he made a deal with his players – a pact as blunt as it was simple.

Help me keep this club afloat, and I’ll help you walk away if you want to.

“I had, I don’t know, one million individual meetings,” he recalled, speaking about those early days. In those talks, players laid out their ambitions. De Zerbi laid out his terms. Survival first. Futures later.

The message was clear enough. “Yes, help me to stay up, and then I help you to leave,” he told them. “If you don’t help me to stay up, you stay underwater with me!” It was half joke, half warning, and entirely De Zerbi.

Cristian Romero kept his side of the bargain.

The Argentine defender, now seeking what the coach calls “a new challenge,” did not agitate, did not down tools, and did not disappear when the pressure rose. De Zerbi went out of his way to underline that point, painting a picture of a player who bought in completely.

“Romero with me was unbelievable. Top, in his behaviour, his respect,” he said. The coach highlighted how much the centre-back suffered when he missed the final game, a detail that matters in a climate where commitment is constantly questioned.

Then De Zerbi went after one particular narrative. Reports had suggested Romero’s absence late on was linked to a desire to prepare early for Argentina and the World Cup. The Italian dismissed that outright.

“It is not true that he wanted to leave for Argentina to prepare for their World Cup. It’s not true.”

That denial matters, because it cuts to the heart of the relationship between player and club at a delicate moment. Romero wants to move. Spurs want to move forward. De Zerbi, by his own account, is standing exactly where he promised he would.

“After the semi-final [against England] we text a message,” he explained. There was no dramatic late-night phone call, no emotional plea to reverse a decision. “I never called him to convince him to stay. I respected what he told me.”

The same principle, he stressed, applies across the squad. He namechecked Guglielmo Vicario as another example, folding the goalkeeper into a broader stance: if a player has given everything and wants to go, De Zerbi will not stand in the way.

“Like for [Guglielmo] Vicario, like for every player,” he said. “Romero as a player is one of the best centre-backs in the world, but at the end I said I want to respect the will of the players.”

So Spurs face the prospect of losing one of the elite defenders in the game, not in a blaze of acrimony, but under the terms of a promise made in those first frantic weeks. De Zerbi asked for commitment in a relegation fight. Romero delivered. Now the coach is prepared to honour the other side of the deal.

In a market where clubs often cling to assets and players push for exits, this one may come down to something rare: a handshake kept.