Doomed Igor Tudor is ‘absolute tool’ but was Kinsky sub the right move?

Would it have been more cruel from Igor Tudor if he had left Antonin Kinsky on the pitch? There are partial defences of the boss.

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Kinsky HAD to be subbed by Tudor

Igor Tudor is clearly an absolute tool who is way out of his depth and needs sacking forthwith. With that being said…

Hiring Tudor in the first place – bad decision. Starting Kinsky in a game of that importance – worse decision. Not seeing if the studs were the right length – schoolboy error (literally).

However *once* these decisions are made, Spurs are 3-0 down and Kinsky has gifted Atletico 2 of them – he had to hook him surely?

Not acknowledging him, hugging Kinsky etc as he was substituted was really bad man management from Tudor. No argument there, obviously. But he *couldn’t* leave him on, he just couldn’t.

If Tudor had waited until half time, Christ knows what the score would have been. 6? 7? *10?* Ordinarily those figures would be just exaggerated to make a point, but in this case, they were genuinely possible – maybe even probable.

The kid’s confidence was *gone*. Atletico would have peppered him with shots from every angle possible looking for more mistakes. And they’d have got them too.

Sometimes you have to do something horrible to save someone from something worse down the line. And much worse it would have been.

I’m sure that Tudor was undoubtedly doing it to try to save himself and not Kinsky. But I still believe that under *those* circumstances, the boy had to be subbed.

His evening, bad as it was, could have been a lot worse.
James, Liverpool

READ: Liverpool, Man Utd keepers among six who never recovered from Kinsky-like calamities

…What happened with Kinsky and Tudor last night was painful to watch. There was a lot of genuine anger from ex-professionals especially GK Hart.

Yet I am frustrated and baffled by the conclusions drawn that have a self-fulfilling prophecy whiff about them.

The main one is ‘Igor Tudor has killed Kinsky’s career.’ Without defending Tudor, I ask how?

Let’s break it down.

1- Tudor started Kinsky in a crucial CL game.

OK this was generally seen as a risky call. There is always a chance it won’t go well. There was no outrage at the starting line up. Mainly confusion around the manager dropping his 1st choice keeper in a big match. It has a sort of logic, by far the biggest priority is PL survival. It isn’t going to shock anyone that Spurs crash out of the CL. Why the GK of all positions only Tudor knows but the man seems out of his depth.

2- Kinsky drops two howlers. Whose fault is this? It would be incredibly harsh to blame Tudor too much here. Again perhaps a misjudgement in putting him in a match on the biggest stage behind this Spurs defence. Yet he didn’t send him out knowing it was going to be a car crash for the lad personally. He didn’t put WD40 on his boots in some kind of sadistic sabotage. Clearly the pitch had been left ‘greasy’ though.

Nothing stopping the prince of the dark arts ordering the Spurs 6-yard box to receive more attention. Alternatively, perhaps Kinsky isn’t that good. If so, his career will go down hill regardless when the errors creep in. The worst case is if he simply was a bag of nerves and Tudor was uncaring. The manager is responsible to look after a player’s early development of confidence, but I guess that’s less of a concern for a man dubbed a firefighter with a very short shelf life and no goal other than to save the team from the drop. You reap what you sow bringing him in.

3-The substitution. This was just awful. I suppose to sub or not to sub is a fair question, when leaving Kinsky on may have been just as cruel. Alternate timeline we are getting to half time and the guy has dropped another howler or is just generally playing badly. Cruel, cruel Tudor leaving him to burn under the spotlight. I can see at least a reason to get him off early even if it was in hindsight seen as the worse choice.

What happened next is obviously the worst of Tudor’s actions by a country mile. The cold shoulder. Was he angry? Was he uncaring? Was he oblivious? Whatever the reason, he has utterly let a distraught and humiliated player down and piled on further shame and negative attention, when the proper course of action was demonstrated by the rest of the bench.

Ok so where does that leave us? Tudor surely is gone. The fact Spurs haven’t taken action already should surprise me but it’s Spurs so I can’t be. He will have lost all semblance of the dressing room, moving from holding the charred remains of their fight to now downright hostility. They will be livid and their heads will full of shame by association when they need to find some pride. That’s likely the last time we will see him at this level.

But Tudor’s actions after the errors surely can’t alone damn Kinsky’s career anymore. The errors happened and how Spurs and any future potential employers will view them can’t naturally be made worse by Tudor’s own poor actions.

Maybe I’m just missing something, but I can’t help but feel such a cruel substitution experience only serves to increase sympathy for him, rather than make him look worse. You’d think it was a Bridgerton plotline the way the commentators were talking about it, as if Kinsky was a Lady whose reputation had been forever tainted by Tudor groping her in public. What can we do? It’s the way of things, shrug of the shoulders.

What gets me angry is the coverage of the incident. If people were really looking out for Kinsky, they would minimise this as a bad day at the office, but no one watching on TV saw the snub until TNT made sure it was seen and dissected to death. Repeatedly it was asked whether this will be the end of Kinsky and if Tudor had killed him, with everyone instantly concluding there could be no other interpretation of his future, oblivious or uncaring that their very words could be the very nails in his coffin. It’s like the morbid sympathy of a town gossip who’s secretly thrilled by the scandal.

Tudor has killed his own prospects. How the media chose and choose to frame the rest may well decide if Kinsky goes down with him.
Nick

…First time I’ve felt the need to write in after reading the site for 25 years or so but there is an alternative view point to the atrocious Atletico Madrid vs Spurs match and a partial defence of Tudor.

Before that I’ll start by saying I don’t think Tudor is the right manager to have brought in and should Spurs lose to Forest next week then they’re as good as relegated.

However, I’m not really sure what Tudor was meant to do against Athletico. A lot of fans have been calling for Vicario to be dropped for a while. Given Spurs’ priority has to be the league then surely it made sense to give Kinksy a chance in the Champions League and if he did well then he’d keep his place and if not then it shows Vicario is the better keeper and he comes back into the team for the league match against Liverpool.

There’s nothing Tudor could do about the mistakes kinsky and van der ven made. And if he hadn’t have then substituted kinsky and he went on to make more mistakes and Spurs lost even more heavily then he’d have taken a battering for not having taken him off sooner, so it’s harsh but understandable.

Injuries have blighted us but tactics and selections of both Frank and Tudor have hammered a nail in the coffin. There’s clearly no easy solution, but being without Maddison, Kulusevski and Kudus has killed any creativity and Simons just hasn’t stepped up at all. at least we have 2 fit fullbacks again.
Dom, Spurs, London
(Not looking forward to cold nights in stoke)

Tudor has to go after that

Well, where to start, but keeping it brief! The commentators, Darren Fletcher and Ally McCoist, alerted watchers to the somewhat questionable decision to start Kinsky ahead of Vicario before the Atleti – Spurs match kicked off. My immediate thought was, “Tudor must really be out of ideas already!” It smacked of grandstanding, someone making a change so they’re seen to be doing something.

The debacle that quickly followed, to me, is therefore all on the manager. Kinsky clearly wasn’t ready, and in fact he and Van De Ven weren’t even in the correct footwear!

It’s almost irrelevant whether it was the correct decision to sub Kinsky off, so bad was the decision to play him. What was also disgraceful was how Tudor ignored him as he walked off the pitch. And if the manager is that far off it, surely he has to go immediately.
Michael, LFC (cheered that Spurs have taken the attention off Liverpool’s awful performance)

Remembering Robert Enke

The latest episode of the Tottenham soap opera bears chilling parallels to the experiences of Robert Enke, the German goalkeeper whose life was chronicled in Ronald Reng’s A Life Too Short. A fantastic albeit tragic book that I highly recommend to fellow Mailboxers and pretty much everyone else.

Enke, despite his talent and success at clubs like Benfica, Barcelona, and Hannover 96, was repeatedly haunted by public mistakes and humiliations that deepened his severe, hidden depression. A particularly damaging incident came during his time at Barcelona, where a humiliating cup defeat marked by similar high profile errors to Kinskys shattered his confidence and fueled self-doubt in the unforgiving spotlight of professional football.

Enke internalised these moments intensely, fearing that admitting vulnerability or seeking help would end his career in a culture that prized stoicism. The cumulative weight of such public shaming, compounded by personal tragedy contributed to his tragic suicide in 2009 at age 32.
This was the man touted to be Germans No1 for years.

Tudor’s abrupt, unsupportive substitution of Kinský mirrors the kind of ruthless, empathy-lacking decisions that Enke endured, where short-term team “protection” came at the expense of a young man’s mental wellbeing. Enke’s story serves as a stark warning: without genuine leadership, empathy, and mental health support, these moments of humiliation can spiral into isolation, eroded self-worth, and devastating long-term consequences for young athletes navigating immense pressure.

Football must learn from Enke’s tragedy to prioritise people over immediate results. Igor Tudor is clearly in need of some education on the matter and if the Tottenham board had any moral courage they would insist he at least publicly apologise for his actions last night.
At the risk of sounding contradictory and hypocritical, I’d sack Tudor immediately and state the reasons above as the justification.
Eoin (They’re going to sack him anyway, may aswell do it for this reason) Ireland

Julian Alvarez dive overlooked?

I know everyone’s losing their minds about Spurs’ and Kinsky’s performance last night. But no one’s said anything about Julian Alvarez’s blatant and disgusting dive that won the free kick for Atletico’s 4th goal.

It might be the worst dive I’ve seen in my life. Alvarez fell like he ran into a half-meter-thick invisible force field around Pape Matar Sarr. I’ve watched the replay half a dozen times and I don’t see any contact whatsoever.

There was almost no protest from Sarr or the other Spurs players either. I wonder if that’s yet another sign of how the fight has gone out of the squad. Very sad if that’s the case.
Jay, MUFC

READ: Antoine Griezmann’s ‘absurd’ Champions League assist was beyond magnificent

Lack of research from supposed professionals

Watching the Atlético Madrid vs Spurs match yesterday, I was shocked by how little research the supposed professional commentators and pundits had done on Atlético.

Sure, I get it, all the focus was on how bad Spurs were, but what got me was the seeming surprise and the numerous references to the idea that Atlético and their manager, Simeone, wanted a bigger lead than three goals for this two‑leg tie, with the second leg still to come.

If the commentary team had bothered to take even a cursory glance at Atlético’s results from just a week earlier, they would have noticed that they had lost the second leg of the Copa del Rey final 3–0 away at Barcelona, having won the first leg 4–0 at home.

Sure, Spurs are not Barcelona, but me thinks this may have contributed to Simeone’s anxiety.
Paul K, London

What sort of a club would sack a man at half-time?

Azeez, thank you for the question and allow me to answer that. A manager has indeed been dismissed at halftime of a football match. Unknowingly so, actually. Guess which mighty and not remotely ridiculous club did that?
Jon (Tudor looked like a Temu Tony Pulis last night), Lincoln