Alderweireld all smiles - what changed.

Charlie Eccleshare

It says much about the economic realities of modern football that for more than half of Toby Alderweireld’s first Tottenham contract he and the club were negotiating his next one. Such is the way of things when a club is looking to protect an asset and a player is keen to secure one last big payday as he heads towards his thirties.

But finally on Friday morning, more than two-and-a-half years after Alderweireld and Tottenham debated the inclusion of a release clause in his contract, a new deal was announced. Tottenham had already triggered an extension clause last year to keep Alderweireld, 30, at the club until 2020, but this new deal is a commitment for him to stay in north London until 2023. It’s quite a turnaround given that Spurs, under Mauricio Pochettino, were willing to let Alderweireld leave — and until Jose Mourinho took over expected that he would. And even if they had wanted him to stay, it’s worth remembering Spurs would have been powerless in the summer had a club triggered his £25 million release clause that has since expired.

Instead, come Friday morning, Alderweireld was broadcast beaming into a camera miming signing a contract and saying: “I couldn’t be happier. I’m honoured to play at this club.”

What changed then? How did Tottenham and Alderweireld reach an agreement that for so long has felt like the club’s equivalent of trying to negotiate an exit from the European Union? And with Alderweireld in the bag, will his compatriot Jan Vertonghen follow suit and sign a deal to extend his contract beyond the end of the season?

The indications are that he will, but first let’s deal with Alderweireld — and how a love of his homeland, his wife’s passion for horses and “the Mourinho effect” helped finally break the impasse.

The second half of the 2017-18 campaign was pretty miserable for Alderweireld. He and Tottenham had been locked in contract negotiations for most of the season, but by the turn of the year it was becoming clear an agreement would be elusive. Alderweireld wanted close to £200,000-a-week in wages but Tottenham would not shatter their wage structure to give him that kind of money. The fact Alderweireld turned 29 in March 2018 did not help his cause.

Nor did a hamstring injury that kept him out between November 2017 and the following March. By the time he was fit again, Alderweireld could not get in the team.

This was partly down to Vertonghen and Davinson Sanchez emerging as an alternative partnership in his absence, but to a large extent down to the then manager Pochettino’s anger at Alderweireld not signing a new contract.

Pochettino took the Belgian’s perceived stubbornness as a personal slight and was extremely upset at the situation. He always demanded loyalty from his players and was not one to forgive and forget what he viewed as infidelity (Kyle Walker had been similarly placed on the naughty step a year earlier when he revealed he wanted to join Manchester City). As for Alderweireld, he felt the roughly £50,000 a week he earned was well below the market rate — especially given Virgil van Dijk had recently joined Liverpool for £75 million on wages of around £125,000 a week.

The upcoming World Cup made the situation especially galling for Alderweireld — even if he did eventually play a few games at the end of the season to ensure he was selected in Roberto Martinez’s Belgium squad.

Relations improved after that between him and Pochettino, but by the time of the latter’s sacking this November, Alderweireld had still not signed a new contract and was ready to leave. Pochettino had never explained to him whether he was in his plans long term, and like many of his team-mates, Alderweireld felt drained by Pochettino’s methods by the end of his tenure. He was also wary of him after the breakdown in their relationship during that period in 2018 and felt that with Pochettino you never knew where you stood. In truth, there was mistrust on both sides.

But then Pochettino left and everything changed.

When news reached Alderweireld that Pochettino was to be succeeded by Jose Mourinho, he couldn’t hide his excitement. On the evening Pochettino left and word spread that Mourinho would replace him, Alderweireld was on international duty with Belgium — helping the team thrash Cyprus 6-1 in Brussels. He told his countrymen that with Mourinho arriving, he might just be staying in north London after all.

Alderweireld and Mourinho had history. Mourinho had been interested in signing the defender for Chelsea in 2015 when he eventually joined Tottenham, and then again three years later when managing Manchester United. On that occasion, Mourinho was furious when he was overruled by United’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward and the club’s scouts. But in modern football it’s very rare for a manager not to have had some contact with a player they’re heavily interested in, and so there’s a very reasonable chance Mourinho and Alderweireld would have spoken at that time.

In any case, as he edged towards getting the Tottenham job, Mourinho was thrilled at the prospect of finally working with Alderweireld. He is said to have mentioned extending Alderweireld’s contract as a priority during his Spurs interview, and shortly after joining sat the defender down for one-on-one talks. The pair get on well, and Mourinho has made a concerted effort to win the trust of his players in his first month in the job.

Alderweireld has certainly been impressed, and said after the 4-2 win over Olympiakos in November: “I am happy that I’m playing. I’m proud to work with a manager that has won it all. I am grateful that I can become a better player under him. I want to repay him for the faith he has shown in me.”

This was quite the statement after what was only Mourinho’s second match in charge, and those close to Alderweireld definitely detected a change in his mindset. “He seemed very different, more happy,” one source tells The Athletic.

Mourinho for his part played down his role in Alderweireld’s decision to stay on Friday, but did say that by starting him in all seven of his matches so far, he has made it clear how much he values the player. Alderweireld is the only Spurs outfielder to have played every minute since Mourinho took over.

Still, even with the player and head coach enjoying so much mutual respect, a new deal would have been impossible if relations between Alderweireld and the club had been permanently soured by the failed negotiations of the previous couple of years. Thankfully for all parties involved, that was not the case — and chairman Daniel Levy and Alderweireld’s representatives did not have a major falling out. So a deal was pretty straightforward to resurrect once it became clear under Mourinho that it suited all parties. The fact that no bids ever materialised, even when he was available for £25 million in the summer, also limited Alderweireld’s options. Roma were among the clubs interested, but they, like Manchester United, did not make a concrete offer.

Financially, it appears a compromise has been reached between club and player. The Athletic understands Alderweireld will be paid a basic wage of around £100,000 a week, which is half of what he was pushing for a couple of years ago. The shortfall will be compensated by bonuses, a signing-on-fee, and the security of a four-year deal that will see Alderweireld very well looked after until beyond his 34th birthday. Interestingly, Alderweireld is the second player in their thirties to sign a long-term deal in the last couple of months after Moussa Sissoko in September. Previously Tottenham were extremely reluctant to sign off those kind of deals, but with both Sissoko and Alderweireld these contracts mean they will not have to go into the transfer market and spend vast sums on replacements.

The security of a long-term deal was especially important to Alderweireld because of the importance he places on his family. He and his wife Shani (whom Alderweireld met when a young player at Ajax) have a one-year-old daughter and are expecting a second child early in the new year. They are very settled in London, and Shani is reluctant to move from their home in north-London suburbia from where she is able to indulge in her passion for horse riding.

Living in London also means Alderweireld can easily pop home to see his family in Antwerp. He is extremely close with his family, especially brothers Steve and Sven, whose names he has tattooed on his chest. Alderweireld also has a tattoo of Antwerp’s Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal (The Cathedral of Our Lady), as well as one that reads: “Each day I come closer to the home where I was born”. Alderweireld suffered badly with homesickness when starting his career at Ajax, and a former coach of his there tells The Athletic that he loved living with a host family in Amsterdam because it reminded him of being at home. His tight-knit family means Alderweireld would never consider a move to a league as far-flung as somewhere like China, and there is an expectation he may move back to Ajax when his new contract at Tottenham expires.

And as much as staying in London suits Alderweireld, it also suits Mourinho for him to remain at Spurs. Alderweireld is exactly the sort of leader that Mourinho loves to build defences around, and his accurate long passes give the side another attacking dimension. The two clipped balls that led to goals for Dele Alli against Bournemouth last month underline how valuable the tactic can be.

Temperamentally he is also precisely the sort of character Mourinho likes to work with, according to Ruben Jongkind, who was head of talent development at Ajax when Alderweireld was coming through the ranks. “He was very willing and eager to learn,” Jongkind tells The Athletic. “Very professional. He knew he needed to develop a lot, like a rough diamond that needed to be sharpened and therefore took advice on every aspect of the game very seriously. He was always very focused on his development, whereas maybe some others were a little bit more closed.

“He was much more mature than most of the other young players, even some of the older ones, and was always hard working in training looking to improve himself.”

With Mourinho relishing that kind of work ethic, he and Alderweireld look set for a very happy marriage.

Inevitably, no sooner had the ink dried on Alderweireld’s contract than speculation switched to whether Vertonghen would follow suit. Vertonghen himself did little to quieten the talk on Friday by sharing an Instagram story of him laughing as Alderweireld pretended to sign a contract, alongside emojis of money and a pen.

The Athletic understands Vertonghen is close to following his compatriot by signing a new deal, with the main sticking point over whether it will be a one or two-year extension. At 32, Vertonghen is two years older than Alderweireld so it’s unsurprising that he would be offered a shorter contract.

When pressed on the subject on Friday, Mourinho hinted that the main stumbling block to a deal being signed is Vertonghen’s agent. He was asked if he could expand on saying he wanted Vertonghen to stay, and replied: “No. I think a player will sign a contract when the club wants — I am the club, Mr Levy is the club — when the player wants, when the family wants, when the agent wants. If one of these parts doesn’t want it is very difficult to make it happen unless the player changes agent and gets an agent who also wants.”

Vertonghen is extremely unlikely to replace his agent, whom he has known for more than a decade since they played together at Ajax and is one of his best friends. But nonetheless, he is expected to sign a new contract in the coming weeks.

After months of negotiations, the decision will ultimately come down to whether Vertonghen agrees with Alderweireld’s succinct summary of the situation on Friday: “There is no place I’d be happier.”