Hugo Lloris speaks about the 2019 Champions League final

For over a decade, Hugo Lloris was the number one goalkeeper of Tottenham Hotspur. His final game for the club was the humiliating 6-1 defeat at Newcastle United. That was in April 2023, yet he was at the club so long that he played with Gareth Bale the first time round.

It was a tough ending to his career in North London, but the reality is there are not many happy endings in football, and it was certainly not a lesser spotted way of exiting a club - which he did so eight months after that defeat at St James' Park.

The Frenchman's 447 appearances have him all the way up in 8th place in the club's history. Lloris is now winding down his career on the other side of the pond with LAFC, who are currently playing in the 2024 MLS play-offs.

The 37-year old spoke about his disapproval of what happened before, during and after the 2019 Champions League final. "Four days before the final, Daniel Levy called us all together to announce that, with the support of a sponsor, we would each receive a luxury aviator watch from the club. At first, we were excited to see the elegant boxes.

Then we opened them and discovered that he’d had the back of each timepiece engraved with the player’s name and “Champions League Finalist 2019”. “Finalist.” Who does such a thing at a moment like this? I still haven’t got over it, and I’m not alone. If we’d won, he wouldn’t have asked for the watches back to have “Winner” engraved instead.

At the post-match reception at the hotel, I had the impression that some people from the club and certain players were not sufficiently despondent at having lost. I would have liked people to come up to me and say, “Don’t worry, Hugo. Never [lose a final] again. We’ll give you the means for a comeback."

But when I returned to my room on the night of the final, I think I had the same feeling as Mauricio and Harry [Kane]: does the club really want to win? Real Madrid would never have celebrated a lost final, and we shouldn’t have either."

For the rest of the quotes, you can click the hyperlink above. There also quotes from the goalkeeper on his former Spurs manager Antonio Conte, and how it was playing under him and his intense way of managing. He also speaks about how Liverpool would not have had their penalty, had the game been played even one day later.