Marcus Edwards’ reunion with Spurs could stir a sense of regret
Marcus Edwards will never forget his first meeting with Mauricio Pochettino. “Ah, it’s the best young player in the academy,” the then Tottenham manager said, and he watched how the attacking midfielder tried to conceal the surge of pride. “The one with the right foot …”
Er, hang on a second. “You mean the left?” Edwards replied.
“Oh, sorry. Wrong player,” Pochettino said, walking away.
The Argentinian left it for a while before he turned back. “Only joking.” Edwards would also break into a smile.
It was classic Pochettino, a genial ice-breaker undercut by mischief – one designed to establish a connection – and that early period of his Spurs tenure, after his arrival in the summer of 2014, was coloured by hope and excitement when it came to Edwards.
The idea was that the precociously gifted kid would rise through the ranks and one day be involved when Spurs played in showpiece Champions League fixtures. Which, all these years later, will happen on Tuesday night when the club take on Sporting at the Estádio José Alvalade in Lisbon. Only it will be the wrong way around, everything topsy-turvy – which is one way of describing Edwards’ final years in north London.
Now 23, Edwards will wear the No 10 shirt for Sporting, not Spurs, having joined them from Vitória Guimarães for €7.5m last January. He has been in Portugal since September 2019, when Spurs moved him on permanently to Vitória, and the first thing to say is that some of the old excitement is bubbling around him again.
The Sporting manager, Rúben Amorim, bedded him in during the second half of last season, the club having signed him to take over from Pablo Sarabia, whose loan from Paris Saint-Germain would expire in June. This time out, Edwards has started regularly,