José Mourinho knew when he accepted the job that the challenge posed by Tottenham was very different from those he had faced during his last two decades of career. For the first time since 2002, the Portuguese technical laureate assumed a bench with the season already started, with no room for maneuver to build a custom-made team. On the contrary, what was found in London was an exhausted and decaying project, which on Tuesday has many ballots to be expelled from the Champions League in the round of 16. Rarely in football has seen a decomposition as fast and evident as that suffered by this Tottenham that a few months ago played (and lost) the final of the European Cup against Liverpool .

Of the 11 players who started that day in the Metropolitan, three are gone, the two strikers ( Kane and Son ) are long-term injured and almost everyone else is a shadow of what they were. And Pochettino, of course, is gone, dragged by the tide in the fall. Among the signings, Lo Celso is offering a good level, but Sessegnon and Ndombelé are far from what Tottenham expected of them. Young Bergwijn and Gedson , meanwhile, have arrived in January and are still in the process of adaptation.

Something has been broken in Tottenham and Mourinho has not yet found a way to fix it. Although, in reality, everything was already cracked before he arrived. Trippier was transferred to Atlético and his replacement, Aurier, is at a much lower level than his. Alderweireld, Eriksen and Rose also tried to leave, although in the end they stayed. The Belgian is still on the roster, while the other two came out in January before their contracts expired. Lloris and Vertonghen are no longer what they were and Sissoko is demonstrating what was already sensed, that his level last season had been an anomaly. Players like Dier, Winks, Davies and Davinson Sánchez do not go beyond being players of complement, without soccer capacity to give a jump of quality to the equipment.

Although the big problem of this Tottenham is in attack. It's not that his strikers are bad, it's that he hardly has any. Llorente, decisive in the last Champions League, came out in the summer with the freedom card and no one replaced him. He tried in January the club with Willian José, but did not forge his incorporation or any other. With Kane and Son's injuries, Lucas Moura is the closest thing to an attacker that Mourinho has left. In recent weeks he is improvising with Dele Alli, whose dramatic level drop is the perfect summary of the crisis that is dragging the Tottenham. And in England it is already rumored that Kane, the only star with capital letters of the team, is considering requesting the transfer at the end of the season.

This Tuesday, against RB Leipzig , without Kane, Son and Bergwijn, the 'spur' team can put an end to its attempt to repeat the feat of the past year. Go to the Red Bull Arena with the need to overcome the 0-1 achieved by the Germans in London to access the quarterfinals. And his arguments for such a mission, written remains, are scarce and not at all flattering. As if all that were not enough, he drags three defeats and two draws in his last five games, results that have left him out of the FA Cup and that take him away, already eighth in Premier, from the Champions League positions. The fourth, Chelsea, is seven points right now. And although the sanction against Manchester City is confirmed and the fifth of the Premier will keep his place, the Tottenham does not issue any sensations of being able to face that fight. A reconstruction is urgent and in London he already plans the doubt: Is Mourinho the right coach to carry it out?

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