Didi Hamann suggests ‘this’ Tottenham star would do well at Liverpool.
Didi Hamann made a claim that deserves considerably more attention than its surface-level transfer speculation might suggest. The former Liverpool midfielder, weighing in on Randal Kolo Muani with a summer move to Anfield, potentially as Mo Salah’s successor, offered a defence of the Frenchman so brutal in its implications for Tottenham that it almost qualifies as the most damaging assessment of the club’s environment made by a reputable analyst this season.
Here is what he told B*t King via Football London.
“I don’t think we should take Spurs as a benchmark because in recent years, every player who went there got worse, their form deteriorated. So, we shouldn’t take this at face value…
“I think he’s certainly a player who’s capable of doing it. I think he showed glimpses at Spurs of what he’s capable of, and I think he’s a player who could do well at Anfield.”
Read that again. A former Champions League winner has just argued, in the context of defending Kolo Muani as a credible acquisition, that Tottenham are such a fundamentally dysfunctional institution that assessing any player’s output during their time in North London is essentially meaningless. That is brutal, to say the least.
The evidence is, regrettably, difficult to dispute. Kolo Muani arrived at Tottenham in the summer with a profile that warranted genuine optimism. His 2022-23 Bundesliga campaign with Eintracht Frankfurt produced performances sufficient to earn him a move to PSG. His 2024-25 loan spell at Juventus provided further evidence of a player capable of functioning productively within structured systems. He arrived in North London with genuine pedigree.
The Premier League numbers from this season tell a different story. One goal and one assist in 27 league appearances. Those figures represent such a divergence from his previous output that the most logical explanation is not decline on a personal level. It is environmental dysfunction on a scale significant enough to neutralise a player of genuine quality.
What nobody has yet addressed directly is the specific quality of Hamann’s swipe. He is not criticising a coaching appointment or a tactical decision. He is making an institutional argument about Tottenham’s capacity to actively reduce the performance of talented footballers. That argument, made in the context of advocating for a player’s potential, says more about the culture at Hotspur Way than any number of tactical analyses. If the club’s environment is genuinely damaging enough to neutralise a France international, the first task of De Zerbi’s reconstruction is not tactical but psychological. He must dismantle whatever mechanism has been systematically degrading the squad’s confidence, identity, and collective belief since the summer.
Kolo Muani will almost certainly leave in the summer. Whether Liverpool is his destination or Juventus succeeds in their pursuit remains unclear. His Tottenham chapter will be filed under “could not be assessed fairly due to circumstances.” That is both an excuse and an accurate description. It is also, for Tottenham, an indictment.