{"id":591866,"date":"2026-05-19T05:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T05:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/591866\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T05:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T05:13:11","slug":"roberto-de-zerbi-tottenham-boss-says-rival-fans-wanting-spurs-down-is-motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/591866\/","title":{"rendered":"Roberto de Zerbi: Tottenham boss says rival fans wanting Spurs down is motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tottenham<\/a> boss Roberto de Zerbi says knowing rival fans are willing the club to be relegated from the Premier League is a “big motivation” to stay up.<\/p>\n

Spurs are two points above West Ham<\/a>, who occupy the final relegation place, and have a vastly better goal difference (-9) than their London rivals (-22) having played a game fewer.<\/p>\n

That means a point from either of their last two fixtures – at Chelsea<\/a> on Tuesday or against Everton<\/a> at the Tottenham<\/a> Stadium – will safeguard their top-flight status bar a set of freak results.<\/p>\n

Chelsea<\/a> supporters will be keen to pile the misery on to Spurs when the sides meet at Stamford Bridge. <\/p>\n

But De Zerbi said his players have to “enjoy this pressure”, calling a “good thing” for them to have.<\/p>\n

“We have to find new motivation from this pressure. If everyone wants Tottenham<\/a> relegated, it’s a big motivation for me and I hope for my players as well,” he told a news conference.<\/p>\n

“We have to accept that football is nice because of the rivalry. It’s good to imagine ourselves celebrating the win in their stadium. It’s the reason football is like this, no?”<\/p>\n

The Italian insists the external pressure should serve as fuel rather than a distraction for his squad.<\/p>\n

De Zerbi said: “It’s a motivation, it’s a challenge. If a challenge is tougher, it’s better for us to find new motivation and to be focused on staying together from the beginning to the end of the game.<\/p>\n

“The pride is amazing motivation. The pride, if everyone wants Tottenham<\/a> relegated, I think for one Tottenham<\/a> player, one Tottenham<\/a> fan, all the people who work inside Tottenham<\/a>, it has to be the biggest motivation.”<\/p>\n

Even though Spurs only realistically need a point, De Zerbi has warned his players not to approach the game playing for a draw.<\/p>\n

“We can’t start the game thinking to draw,” he explained.<\/p>\n

“We have to start the game and we prepare the game and we speak in the meeting to win the game.<\/p>\n

“Everybody wants to stay up, everyone wants to achieve this goal and then we can speak about everything.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tottenham boss Roberto de Zerbi says knowing rival fans are willing the club to be relegated from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-591866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}