Guglielmo Vicario's Journey: From Injury to Tottenham's Survival

Guglielmo Vicario did not look like a man recovering from hernia surgery as he tore across the Tottenham pitch on the final day, sprinting towards Roberto De Zerbi and almost dragging his head coach to the turf in a wild embrace.

Joao Palhinha had just scored against Everton. With it, Tottenham’s Premier League status was all but secured. For Vicario, watching from the sidelines for a month, the emotion boiled over.

“It has been a very long season. We suffered a lot as a team,” the 29-year-old said afterwards. “Also individually I suffered a lot for many reasons, different reasons.”

Survival felt less like relief and more like vindication. For Vicario, there is no doubt who changed the story.

“This club deserves at least to stay in the Premier League. This is the minimum you can get at this football club,” he said. “Sometimes there are situations that happen that are not more in your control. You lose the focus, you lose hope, you lose a lot of stuff but fortunately Roberto came in and gave us a lot of confidence.”

De Zerbi’s rescue act

Tottenham were drifting. Confidence was thin, belief even thinner. De Zerbi walked into a club drained of energy and ideas, and in six games he dragged them to safety, taking 11 points from the final stretch and rebuilding a fractured dressing room in the process.

Vicario, still not “100 per cent fit but in a better place”, watched much of that revival from the treatment room, but he had a front‑row seat to the transformation.

“He had a lot of talks with the players. I spoke a lot with him,” the Italian explained. “I was not able to help him on the pitch but I tried to do it 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. 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.

“We went through this tough period and we got the result, that is the most important thing. From next season there will be a different Tottenham Hotspur for sure.”

Patterns of play and structure came, of course. This is De Zerbi. But Vicario is adamant the tactical work was only part of the story. The Italian head coach changed the mood. Training had a different tempo. Sessions carried “good vibes, good feelings”, as the goalkeeper put it, and the team began to look like one again.

Kinsky’s redemption

No player embodied that shift more than Antonin Kinsky.

Barely weeks earlier, the 23-year-old Czech had endured a nightmare in Madrid. Against Atletico, interim boss Igor Tudor hauled him off after just 17 minutes in a brutal, public substitution that left scars as well as headlines. A young goalkeeper, on the biggest stage, dragged into the tunnel before he had even settled.

That could have broken him. Instead, in Vicario’s absence, Kinsky became the unlikely hero of Tottenham’s run-in.

He produced a string of outstanding performances against Wolves, Leeds and Everton, throwing himself in front of everything, clawing shots away, refusing to let the season sink without a fight.

“He has been incredible, impressive, he did unbelievably well. In every game it was not easy,” Vicario said. “Now it’s easy to say but I was sure of his mental strength and ability.

“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.

“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.”

Kinsky’s late save against Everton – the only real scare of the afternoon – underlined how far both he and the team had come under De Zerbi. For 95 minutes Spurs allowed just that single shot on target. One lapse, one reflex stop, and a season’s work stayed intact.

A new edge on and off the ball

De Zerbi arrived with a reputation for bold, possession-based football. Vicario insists that label undersells what he has done in north London.

“Roberto has been massively important for us. He changed everything. He changed all the mood, all the vibes, all the football as well, because we needed also the football on the pitch because we were struggling to play good football,” he said.

“But he is probably known very well for the football he wants to play but also the defensive phase since he came in has been unbelievably good. [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.

“Also the boys, everyone who was playing or not playing followed him in a great way. That is of course the credit he deserves, and 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.”

The numbers from the run-in tell their own story. The performances, though, told an even louder one: a team that had looked timid suddenly pressing higher, defending with aggression, and playing with a clarity that had been missing for months.

Vicario’s future and Spurs’ next step

Vicario himself has been linked with a move back to Italy and Inter Milan this summer. For now, his focus is recovery and what comes next under the man he credits with saving Spurs from the drop.

He is “confident” about his fitness and grateful for the break that will allow him to be ready for the new campaign. More than that, he is convinced the club is finally pointed in the right direction.

“Yeah of course we are [excited],” he said of the squad and supporters. “From next season there will be a different Tottenham Hotspur for sure.”

The relegation fight is over. The scars remain, but so does the manager who dragged them clear and the players who grew under the pressure. The question now is not whether Tottenham can survive – it is how far De Zerbi can push a club that has finally remembered what it feels like to believe.