Andre Villas-Boas has revealed that he wanted to sign Joao Moutinho for Tottenham Hotspur, but his wish was not granted.
The Portuguese manager spent 18 months in charge of Spurs and produced a few memorable moments during his time there. However, he had plenty of disagreements with the club’s hierarchy as well. Tottenham refusing to sign Moutinho caused one of them.
Andre Villas-Boas says Tottenham refused to sign Joao Moutinho
Andre Villas-Boas was given quite a lot of money to spend during his time at Tottenham.
Spurs sold Gareth Bale to Real Madrid after the Portuguese boss’ first season at the club, and they used that money to bring in a bunch of players.
Roberto Soldado, Erik Lamela, Paulinho and Christian Eriksen all joined the club in 2013, while a year earlier, Villas-boas signed the likes of Hugo Lloris, Jan Vertonghen and Mousa Dembele.
The 46-year-old has now revealed that he actually wanted Tottenham to sign Joao Moutinho instead of Dembele, but Spurs’ recruitment team did not approve his request, which led to ‘massive arguments’ at the time.
Villas-Boas said at Web Summit in Lisbon, as quoted by TeamTalk: “I wanted to sign Joao Moutinho and he was sitting sixth on the list compiled by data people. The first on the list was [Moussa] Dembele and we ended up signing him.
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“It drained me emotionally to the point where, here was a guy that the data was not showing all that he represented from the coach’s perspective, which is a player that knows your leadership, a player that knows your style, adaptability to your style.
“This can be quantified, but it must be done in the view of a coach and not a single view. This was the problem in the beginning and we had massive, massive arguments in the beginning because of this with Moutinho.
“We signed Dembele but missed out on Moutinho and it was unfortunate because we were going to build up a very strong midfield. This is precisely where you have to have that balance to understand, what is your coaching philosophy and how it should be integrated into the data that has been provided to you.”
Moutinho would’ve been great at Spurs
Joao Moutinho was always a terrific player.
The Portugal international made a fantastic name for himself at Porto before moving to France to join Monaco. He then spent five years here with Wolves, where he was branded as ‘brilliant‘ by Charlie Nicholas on Sky Sports.
Moutinho won league titles in both France and Portugal and also helped his country win the Euros in 2016 and the Nations League in 2019. He was fantastic for Wolves in the Premier League as well.
He has had a fine career, and we’re convinced he would’ve been a huge hit had he joined Tottenham all those years ago.