Guglielmo Vicario's Journey: From Despair to Defiance at Tottenham
Guglielmo Vicario didn’t so much celebrate survival as explode into it.
On the final day, still recovering from hernia surgery, the Tottenham goalkeeper sprinted from the sidelines at the whistle and hurled himself at Roberto De Zerbi, arms around his head coach in a wild embrace. Moments earlier, Joao Palhinha’s goal against Everton had dragged Spurs over the line and kept them in the Premier League.
For Vicario, that goal – and that hug – belonged to one man.
“He gave us a lot of confidence, good vibes, good feelings and we got the result,” the 29-year-old said. In his eyes, De Zerbi didn’t just steady a listing club. He saved it.
From despair to defiance
Tottenham had been sinking. Confidence drained, football disjointed, hope fading. Vicario admits the season had taken a toll on everyone inside the dressing room.
“A lot of emotion. It has been a very long season. We suffered a lot as a team. Also individually I suffered a lot for many reasons, different reasons,” he said. Staying up became the only objective, the bare minimum for a club of this size. “This club deserves at least to stay in the Premier League. This is the minimum you can get at this football club.”
Yet they were losing focus. Losing belief. Losing “a lot of stuff”, as Vicario puts it. Then De Zerbi walked through the door and the mood shifted.
The Italian didn’t just arrive with patterns of play and tactical diagrams. He arrived with conviction. With a clear message: play for the badge, reconnect with the people, drag the club through the storm.
“He had a lot of talks with the players. I spoke a lot with him,” Vicario explained. Sidelined and unable to contribute on the pitch, he threw himself into the work behind the scenes. “It was important for everyone to get everyone around the environment, very focused and to play for this badge. That was his first message.”
The response from the stands told its own story. “Get behind the people to try to follow us and to stay close to us in these tough moments and they did it brilliantly today. The response from the crowd was unbelievable. We felt it.”
The pressure finally told in the run-in. Spurs took 11 points from their final six matches, clawing their way to safety and changing the tone of an entire season.
“From next season there will be a different Tottenham Hotspur for sure,” Vicario promised.
Kinsky’s redemption
No player embodied that turnaround more vividly than Antonin Kinsky.
The 23-year-old Czech goalkeeper had endured a brutal Champions League night in Madrid, hooked after just 17 minutes against Atletico by interim boss Igor Tudor. It was the kind of experience that can bury a young keeper.
Instead, it forged him.
When Vicario went under the knife, Kinsky stepped in and produced a run of performances that effectively kept Spurs in the division. He threw himself in front of everything against Wolves, Leeds and Everton, stringing together spectacular saves and rewriting his own story in the process.
“He has been incredible, impressive, he did unbelievably well. In every game it was not easy,” Vicario said. De Zerbi had sought his senior keeper’s view early on. “When I spoke to Roberto the first day he signed he asked me how Toni was and I said ‘I think he is fully recovered from what happened because in football it can happen’, and he showed it.”
Kinsky’s biggest weapon, Vicario insists, isn’t his reflexes. It’s his resilience.
“That’s the biggest strength he can put on the pitch. I’m very proud of him, he made some really important saves to keep us in the league and he deserved his moment. Sometimes football is downs, I think he had the brilliance to show his ups. Especially in the last two, three games. He did unbelievably for us.”
De Zerbi’s imprint
De Zerbi’s reputation has long been built on the ball. Possession, patterns, brave passing out from the back. Spurs needed that, Vicario admits. They had been “struggling to play good football”.
But the transformation went deeper.
“Roberto has been massively important for us. He changed everything. He changed all the mood, all the vibes, all the football as well,” Vicario said. The Italian didn’t just ask his side to play. He demanded they defend.
“[Against Everton] we conceded just one shot where Toni did this big save at the end of the match but for 95 minutes we didn't concede any shots. Both on the ball and off the ball I think he did an unbelievable job.”
The numbers in that final game underlined the shift. Everton were fighting for their lives, yet Spurs suffocated them, controlled territory, and gave up almost nothing until that late Kinsky stop. It was the kind of disciplined display that had felt a long way off earlier in the campaign.
Crucially, De Zerbi carried the whole squad with him.
“Also the boys, everyone who was playing or not playing followed him in a great way. That is of course the credit he deserves,” Vicario said. Then came the line that sums up the players’ view of their head coach: “I can say without him this result would not have been possible. I want to thank him from the bottom of my heart because we were suffering a lot and he gave us a lot of joy in every aspect.”
A different Tottenham on the horizon
Vicario himself has not been immune to speculation. Linked with a return to Italy and Inter Milan, he cuts a calmer figure now the season is over and the operation is behind him.
He admits he is “not 100 per cent fit but in a better place”, and says he is “confident and I have a break now to be ready for next season”. The focus, in his mind, is not on what might happen in the market. It is on what De Zerbi can build from this narrow escape.
“Yeah of course we are [excited],” he said of the mood inside the camp. The suffering has hardened them. The survival has energised them. The coach has convinced them.
De Zerbi has already changed the atmosphere, the style, the defensive steel. He has turned a fractured, anxious team into a united, defiant one in the space of a few months.
Tottenham have flirted with disaster and pulled themselves back. The question now is no longer whether they belong in the Premier League.
It’s how far this “different Tottenham Hotspur” can go under the man the players believe has already saved them once.
