Here you are my man........Would you mind posting The Athletic's article about Ndombele's penchant for risk-taking being a headache for NES please,Guido 🇺🇦 ?
Is Tanguy Ndombele Tottenham’s unsolvable enigma?
In France, they have an expression: “Ni avec lui, ni sans lui”.
It translates literally as “neither with him, nor without him” — can’t live with him, can’t live without him.
It was said to me this week about Tanguy Ndombele, the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder who, two years on from his £55 million move to north London, continues to be their unsolvable enigma. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a Cruyff turn.
That French expression feels apt for someone who has produced moments of such sublime skill that the idea of Spurs selling him seems ludicrous. But he has then struggled for consistency or fitness and suddenly you’re left wondering again.
The latest developments, as reported by The Athletic on Monday, are that Ndombele was available to play against Woolwich in Sunday’s friendly but was not selected even in the 25-strong match-day squad by head coach Nuno Espirito Santo. Nuno clearly feels he has not yet seen enough to justify picking the 24-year-old, which given his ridiculous amount of talent is a concern.
Ndombele, for his part, is weighing up his options. A move away from Tottenham is a possibility.
He likes living in London but he is a reserved character, and the expected departures of his close friends Moussa Sissoko and Serge Aurier would be a big setback for him.
Moments like the goal against Sheffield United have been far too infrequent (Photo: Laurence Griffiths/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
He does not like confrontation and has not spoken to Nuno about his omission from the team, The Athletic understands.
Having taken time off in pre-season after the birth of his first child, Ndombele trained last week in the lead-up to the Chelsea and Woolwich friendlies but was then not selected for either. He has not played a minute of Spurs’ five pre-season matches and it would be a big surprise if he featured against champions City in Sunday’s Premier League season opener. Should he continue to be omitted from the team, then a move away before the August 31 deadline becomes a distinct possibility.
There would be plenty of clubs interested but few who could afford him. In an ideal world, Spurs would want to recoup the £55 million they paid in July 2019 and would have to find a club that could match Ndombele’s £200,000-a-week wages. Paris Saint-Germain have expressed interest before, most keenly last summer, but having signed Georginio Wijnaldum they no longer have the midfield need, nor will they have the available funds once the Lionel Messi deal goes through. Barcelona contacted Spurs about a move last summer, but are clearly in no position to make signings now.
Despite that, there is confidence among some sources that, with Ndombele’s talent, a buyer could be found — although others feel he and Spurs are stuck with each other, trapped by the length and value of his contract.
Those who feel more favourable towards Ndombele fear selling him could become a source of regret, given what he is capable of, and the fact that when his talent is properly harnessed, he can be one of the most thrilling players in Europe.
The perfectly executed goal against Sheffield United last season, for instance, or the scooped assist for Son Heung-min against Manchester City, or the dazzling turn away from N’Golo Kante and Thiago Silva that left the Chelsea duo staggering aimlessly as they tried to keep up.
Whether Nuno will consider those moments of genius sufficient recompense for Ndombele’s deficiencies — most notably his fitness — is open to question.
It’s unclear yet what role the new manager has in mind for Ndombele this season, but at Nuno’s previous club Wolverhampton Wanderers, he did not have a lot of time for wildcard-type players. Some have pointed to Adama Traore as an example of an exciting player who excelled under him at Molineux, but that was only really after a season of adaptation and once the Spain forward had taken on a role based largely on direct running and staying wide to help keep the team’s shape.
Maintaining the tactical shape and fulfilling individual “tasks” (one of Nuno’s favourite buzzwords) for the team are two non-negotiables. Ndombele must show his new head coach that he is capable of living up to these standards. By the same token, Nuno is aware that Ndombele has skills, like making line-breaking passes, resisting the opposition press and progressing Spurs up the pitch in a way that none of his other midfielders can.
His predecessors Mauricio Pochettino, Jose Mourinho and interim head coach Ryan Mason had their difficulties getting the best out of the mercurial Frenchman.
Can Nuno succeed where they struggled? Perhaps more pertinently, should he even try, or should he and Spurs cut their losses?
So much of Ndombele’s time at Tottenham has been pored over already, so it’s not worth relitigating it all.
We know about Mourinho’s public criticisms of the player, then the rebirth last season, before only starting once under Mason, and not featuring at all in the Carabao Cup final loss to Manchester City. Then there was the impromptu training session with Mourinho on Hadley Common last April during the first lockdown.
It is worth remembering that when Ndombele joined from Lyon, he did so at a time when he was so highly regarded that Real Madrid and PSG were after him. After completing his move, Ndombele explained to club staff that he had chosen Spurs rather than Real or PSG because he wanted to learn and improve.
Pochettino appeared to be the perfect manager to help him and perhaps things would have been different had the Argentinian not been sacked four months later.
Though even by then, it was apparent that Ndombele would take some time to get used to the rigours of the Premier League. Concerns were voiced about his physicality soon after he joined, and these had followed Ndombele throughout his career. Pochettino said before that 2019-20 season began: “For him it’s difficult. We cannot expect too much.”
A few weeks before he was sacked, Pochettino then said that it would take 18 months to two years before his summer signings Ndombele, Giovani Lo Celso and Ryan Sessegnon were fully up to speed. He never got to see first-hand whether that prediction was accurate, but two years on from his arrival Ndombele remains a work in progress.
His first season could largely be written off given the frequent injuries he suffered and numerous clashes with Mourinho. It was those mitigating circumstances that meant Ndombele decided to stay last summer after, a few weeks earlier, he had found himself in a situation similar to the one he is in today.
Back then, remember, Ndombele played 64 minutes of Spurs’ nine post-lockdown matches and started none of them. As a result, as The Athletic reported at the time, he was strongly considering leaving. “I was even calling home to my friends in France saying I wanted to come back,” Ndombele has said subsequently. “I did want to leave.”
In the end, chairman Daniel Levy, whom Ndombele likes and vice versa, convinced him to stay. Then, as now, Levy wants his considerable investment in the player, which includes a six-year contract that runs to 2025, to pay dividends.
The decision to stay initially looked like being an excellent one as Ndombele started last season brightly. The Athletic was told in September that he felt “better than ever”.
But even last season cannot be viewed as an unequivocal success.
It had its moments, as outlined above, and Ndombele was a reason for Spurs topping the table in November and December. He made 35 starts in all competitions after only 17 the previous campaign (and only six under Mourinho). But by the end of the season, the perception remained that this was a hugely gifted player capable of great moments but who struggled for consistency.
After all, he was not selected in France’s European Championship squad by Didier Deschamps and is said to have become something of a forgotten man in his homeland.
Mason left Ndombele out of the team for the Carabao Cup final (Photo: Tottenham Hotspur FC/Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images)
Like the rest of the Tottenham team, Ndombele’s performances tailed off in the second half of last season.
The question that naturally follows is the extent to which he was let down by his team-mates, or vice versa. And this is the crux of it with Ndombele — how much his talent means a manager should build a team around him, or how much they should expect his talent to lift the team.
Even Mourinho overlooked Ndombele’s weaknesses so he could get him in the team, and some believe the 24-year-old’s skillset is so unique that everything possible must be done to accommodate him.
“You have some players with creative freedom and some that have technical skill and footwork, and then others with unique physical attributes like a low centre of gravity, or how low you can get your knees. But I’ve never seen one with all three like Ndombele,” says one coach.
“I’ve never seen a player like him, but the only way you can really harness that creativity is by giving them a platform and allowing them to express themselves. Football has become very systems-based, but there has to be a place for this type of player.”
Ndombele’s problem is that Nuno is an especially systems and structures-based manager. That is not to say Ndombele cannot be a success under him, but it will take a degree of compromise on both sides. After all, Ndombele told The Guardian in February that: “I’m someone who plays on instinct. I never ask myself too many questions on the field. Thankfully, things come quickly into my head. You try stuff and taking a risk is part of the job. All teams need players who are ready to take risks.”
Generally, Nuno demands that his players give up everything for the sake of the team, and if that means more flair-based players are jettisoned, so be it. Although clearly not at Ndombele’s level, Helder Costa and Ivan Cavaleiro were moved on during his four years at Wolves.
As well as tactical considerations, the key to whether Ndombele is a success at Spurs will likely lie in the extent to which Nuno can understand the midfielder’s personality. This was something Mourinho was never fully able to do, and perhaps comes down to how Ndombele’s shyness can be mistaken for indifference.
Those who have worked with him speak of someone with a great personality but emphasise how reserved he is. Even when dropped and publicly criticised by Mourinho, Ndombele never demanded to speak to the head coach about it. So far, he has been the same with Nuno, who is not big on one-on-one conversations with his players anyway.
“If you know the player, you know he is not very vocal; he doesn’t speak very much,” a source close to Ndombele says. “That’s his personality. He’s not someone who has hour-long or 30-minute conversations with people. He’s more a few minutes. He is generally very calm.”
Ndombele rarely gives interviews, and some in his homeland think this can make him an easy target for criticism — it feeds into that sense he doesn’t care as much as some of the other players. From his own perspective, though, it is simply that he wants to focus on his football.
In this context, it is also easy to understand why the potential departures of Aurier and especially Sissoko would be such a blow to him. The latter has been a huge help to Ndombele, integrating him into the dressing room. Ndombele struggled with speaking English during his first season and has referred to his compatriot as his “little brother”.
Maybe we are witnessing the endgame for Ndombele at Tottenham, and maybe that would be the best thing for all parties.
But then you remember what he is capable of — and suddenly selling him feels like a desperate shame.
Ni avec lui, ni sans lui.
