Pedro Porro explains what actually happens in training and what he told Djed Spence

[mawspurs]

Pedro Porro's phone rings late after Tottenham's defeat at Everton. The Spaniard glances across at the screen and it's his grandfather Antonio calling from back home in Don Benito at what was almost 10.30pm there.

Source: Football London

 

[mawspurs]

Spoiler

football.london sat down for an exclusive interview with Tottenham right-back Pedro Porro amid the club's difficult spell in the Premier League

Pedro Porro's phone rings late after Tottenham's defeat at Everton. The Spaniard glances across at the screen and it's his grandfather Antonio calling from back home in Don Benito at what was almost 10.30pm there.

The Spurs right-back shows football.london his phone as evidence a couple of days on. There it was. A call at 9.27pm UK time after the 74-year-old had watched his grandson on television at Goodison Park and he wanted to dissect the painful 3-2 defeat with him.

Antonio might have seen the scenes after the final whistle as the 25-year-old attempted to placate the angry travelling Tottenham fans as they made their feelings very clear to Ange Postecoglou and his players about the first half performance in particular.

"I spoke with the fans to be together as a family," Porro explained.

Porro has felt the pain and anger of supporters before during his playing days in La Liga and he says that during this tough moment at Tottenham the players are gathered firmly behind Ange Postecoglou.

"Two years [before I arrived at Spurs], in Spain we were relegated with Girona, this was a bad moment, but now here it's not only the fans [criticising], it's us because we're self-critical," he said.



"No excuses, but you have now the reality that there are 11, 12, 13 players [fit to play] for four competitions. I think only one other team in England (Liverpool) is in four competitions, the Europa League, Premier League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup. The gaffer and the team are together, this is important."

Porro's character comes from his grandfather. The young Pedro grew up with his grandparents, Antonio and Maria, in the small town of Don Benito in the west of Spain because his parents were always busy working to put food on the table.

When you mention Antonio's name, the Spurs right-back's eyes light up. There's a special bond there between a grandson and a paternal figure who has always been there for him throughout life and football's difficulties. So it was entirely fitting that he rang him after a tough afternoon at Goodison Park.

"For me, he's the most important person in my life. At six-years-old, I went to my first club and my grandfather asked me, 'you want to play football, with everything, the people, the stadiums? You have the character?'," the Spaniard remembered. "I said 'yes'. I didn't care, I just wanted to play football, only football.

"So 10 years later, again he asked the same question 'you have character?', I said 'yes'. This is 10 years on! 'Yes grandfather'.

"I then had my first trial as a right-back at Rayo Vallecano. I came back to the hotel one night because the trial was only for one week. My grandfather told me: 'In one week you go to Madrid and play and after this, I'll talk to you'.

"So I go to the training ground, we train and then played this one game and we came back from the trip. After that he said to me: 'I'm going back to Don Benito and you stay here alone. You go, go, go and remember what I said, you have character, you have a winning mentality and everyday this will be easy for you'.

"'Ok grandfather' I said and in this moment, he is everything to me, the most important person in my life. This is my grandfather Antonio."

Porro has taken on his grandfather's caring, reaffirming nature. On Tuesday afternoon, he was at Haringey Sixth Form College, a hefty stone's throw away from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, to present an award to young football coach Isam Belmoudden to recognise his graduation from Loughborough College.

While there Porro took in the final of the North London Primary Schools' Football Cup, organised by Estudiantes London, and at the final whistle, when he saw a couple of the children on the losing side burst into tears, the Tottenham man quickly went over to console them and chat with them.

"It was the same for me when I lost a game [as a child], we were crying," said Porro, who was a goalscoring striker himself as a youngster. "One child today asked me what's the mentality like when you lose a game. I was like 'wow', because this question is hard because we have a bad situation now in football [at Spurs], not in life because life keeps going, this is clear.

"For me, in this situation, crack on, no excuses. Nothing. This is football, one day you lose, one day you win. Crack on."

Porro has had to crack on and fight throughout his career, whether for opportunities, adapting to foreign lands or teenage years spent away from home and later to overcome criticism.

Right now he is having to fight against a ridiculous load of football weighing on his muscles with three games a week and playing every moment of them.

The full-back has played more minutes than anyone else at Tottenham with a whopping 2,467 to his name across 29 appearances and we're only in January. Dejan Kulusevski has appeared in all 33 of Spurs' games but some as a substitute, meaning 2,335 minutes under his belt.

The next on the minutes list are Dominic Solanke and Brennan Johnson but both are now side-lined on the long list of injured players for the coming weeks with knee and calf problems respectively.

When football.london asks Porro how his body is holding up, he smiles wistfully for a moment before answering.

"It's okay because I work with the physio in the gym. The people outside don't understand this situation, they say Pedro you have to rest, you haven't rested. For me and Deki, we've played full minutes this season, this is normal, this is football," he said.

"Too many games, but I'm ready. If the gaffer asks 'are you ready?', I say 'yeah, no problem'. Everything for the team, for the fans and for the club, it's the most important thing for me."

Postecoglou football places a heavy burden on the full-backs and at times leaves them out of position and exposed if the ball is lost with them high up the pitch. Porro does not care about the criticism that comes with being caught in such moments.

"Sometimes the football is attack and defend. People are screaming I can't defend, but the critics are not important to me," he said. "The gaffer says to me and the team, the most important thing is to stay together.

"The football is to attack and defend and my body is ready, that's important. No injuries (he looks to the sky and makes the sign of the cross on his chest) is the most important. Crack on and focus on the next game."

He added: "For me, it's important to look at ourselves. I'm not focused on what other people are saying, if you just focus on what people are saying all the time you can't live as a footballer.

"Right now we're at a time in the season where we most need to support each other and stay together. Of course internally we're looking at our own errors, what we can learn from now and that's the most important thing that will take us forward."

Some have questioned whether Postecoglou's training sessions have been too intense for a small, jaded group of players but Porro shot down such talk, making it clear that there was no time for heavy sessions among all of the matches and recovery time involved, with each player carefully managed through each week as much as possible.

"We have a plan for all of our training. Those players who aren't playing so much have their own plan to come back and me too, I train at the club but I also do my own work outside the club, recovery work, prevention of injury," he said.

"Everyone has their own schedule, if the training sessions are less intense it's for those players coming back, they have the training they need, and also for the players who are playing, we need a lot of recovery."

It's worth pointing out that Porro is conducting this interview almost entirely in very good English, only checking the odd word or phrase with a translator.

The defender had promised football.london during the club's summer tour in Asia that he would one day sit down and do a full interview with us in English and he delivered just six months on, surprising the translator and club staff as the plan had been to conduct it in Spanish.

"It's good for me, my family, for everything [to learn English]," he admitted. "When you go outside for dinner or anything, it's important. When I arrived here, the first five or six months, nothing, I understood nothing!

"Now it's improved, I think for the fans this is good, for my club. It's important for the fans for a player who comes from Spain to speak English, to show that you're more united with the club and country."

Tottenham need to remain united right now because they are dealing with an injury list the likes of Porro, Postecoglou and the club have never seen before, with at least 10 unavailable players in every match and on Sunday a near bare minimum of 11 first team players fit enough to start at Goodison Park.

"I don't understand this situation, but this is football," said the right-back. "I think it's crazy, when you have too many players injured, the situation for the team and the club, it's a difficult time. This is football, now we focus on recovery and the players will come back stronger."

At just 25, Porro is the old man of the Tottenham backline and he laughs when that's said, before getting serious about it all.

"It's a bad situation because when you have all the back four (defenders and goalkeeper out), seniors, it's a bad situation," he said. "I think it's incredible that I am 25 [and I'm the oldest], but I have been here two years now and every game I push with everything on the pitch."

Alongside him in the backline, 18-year-old Archie Gray has had to play as a centre-back and when you mention the teenager's name, Porro takes a sharp intake of breath that suggests he thinks the midfielder is going to be something special.

"Oh Archie Gray, he's unreal!" gushed the Spaniard. "He's a good guy and he's playing centre back or as a number six, he's top!"

Gray and Lucas Bergvall have had to embark on a fast-track education in Premier League life and Porro can only marvel at what the two 18-year-olds have done in stepping in from the Championship and Allsvenskan respectively to play every game right now in the threadbare Spurs starting line-up.

"When you have injuries and you have signed young players who perhaps are for the future, then you sign them for the future but also so you've got options if you get injuries," he said.

"Lucas, Archie and others have been doing so well, but that, at the end of the day, is why the club have brought them in. They've had their opportunity and it's up to them to take it.

"They're doing a spectacular job for the club and if we go through a bad moment and they're suffering like us all at this moment, then that'll make them great players in the future because they're putting everything out there for the team."

The Spain international has also been blown away by the performances of his fellow right-back Djed Spence. The 24-year-old has gone from someone who looked like their Tottenham career was coming to a close before it had even got going, to an important part of Postecoglou's squad in both full-back slots and occasionally in central defence.

Porro believes the talent has always been there for Spence and he continues to encourage the younger full-back along his new path.

"The same with Archie and Lucas, he is doing a spectacular job for us at the moment, not just now but before I've always looked at him as being a real talent," he said. "It's not just because he plays in my position, you can just see from the way he is, the man he is.

"When he was out away from the club, he kept working hard, kept his ideas clear, just so that when he had that opportunity he would be prepared for it. I just say to him now to keep going as you are and you will keep being important for the team."

Porro is still learning the game himself and the fast and physical rigours of the Premier League after really making his name at Sporting CP in Portugal, following a move to Manchester City that never really involved him spending any time in England.

Life has come fast at Tottenham for the creative full-back and he is the first to admit that despite being the oldest in that makeshift backline right now, he is not a leader yet.

"I'm not someone who’s too vocal in the dressing room, I prefer to let my performances do the talking," he said, "but [the boss] knows that I'm a player who'll step up when it's needed, like now."

The Spurs right-back is giving his all in every single game, even if it's running him into the ground. His grandfather Antonio repeatedly asked him if he had the character for the fight. All these years on, he's no doubt more certain than ever that Pedro Porro does.

Pedro Porro was speaking at Haringey Sixth Form College where he presented an award for a local grassroots football coach, Isam Belmoudden, to recognise his achievement in graduating from Loughborough College.

 

[onthetwo]

Interesting that he says he does his recovery work ‘outside the club.’
Id have thought, Given our injury record over the last few years that the medical staff would be monitoring EVERYTHING (training, recovery, refuelling, eating, sleeping) until we get ourselves out of this mess and have a squad too pick from again.
I get that they need private lives away from the club but the extraordinary situation were in might need extraordinary measure to be taken in the short run.

 

[longtimespur]

That's a great read thanks Mawspurs for posting it and what a fantastic personality this lad has!
I would love a team of players with the same outlook on life and work, which is what this is for them.