Igor: “I don’t know. I do my job. Nothing special. I do the things that I believe are important. Nothing more, nothing less. Each coach has his own style to achieve the results. I have my style which I believe is the best. It’s never the same because there are always different characteristics, different clubs and different cultures, not even of the league but the club. Some clubs like this kind of football, some like this. You need to resolve the problems. Everywhere there are problems, if you go to the best clubs in the world, you believe there are not problems there but there are problems there like in the third division. It’s all about how you resolve the problems in a very quick time. It’s not easy but it’s okay.”
What have you told the players you expect from them on Sunday?
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Igor: “We speak from day one. We have these three, four sessions, from day one, I go immediately to very concrete things, because there's no time to lose. Even choosing the exercise, I need to choose the exercise for in a short period, they can do an improvement, not losing too much time on basic principles, maybe sometimes I do. So, what I said, it's not, of course, possible in short training sessions to do big changes, but something we need to see, and I'm sure that we will see something. I saw the players very available, very motivated doing all the things. So, that's a nice start.”
Has it been easy or difficult to work out how you want to set the team up?
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Igor: “I would say that it’s more difficult when you don’t have players, of course, but in one way, then it's easy to choose. The system, as I said on Tottenham television, is always after the style, after the mentality. As you know, during the game, the players move, change, so it's only the starting position, after it's all about fluidity, about movement, without the ball, of course. Then you need to choose from the characteristics of the players you have. That's the thing. With the players, if you have wingers, fantastic wingers, you can play with the wingers. If you have, I don't know, fantastic strikers, you can play with strikers or midfielders. So, that's the key. But it's not about the system. That's the last thing that's important. For this start, you know, what I said before, we need to become a team, we need to become a group of the people who are available, who will give something more, who will not watch themselves, but each other, to help them. So this is, for me, basic, and after, all the quality can come out, because this is a team that is full of quality, I believe, full of talented players, with good motor engines, I like to say, the legs who can run, you know. So, there is plenty of potential. So, to come out of this potential, some basic things need to be done.”
Is anyone coming back from injury for Sunday?
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Igor: “Probably no, probably no. Solanke had some problems with his throat, but he made today some training. All others, probably someone next week.”
How proud are you to continue the history of top Croatian figures at Spurs?
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Igor: “Yeah, my best friend was here, Stipe Pletikosa, the goalkeeper, and also the best player in the history of Croatian football, Luka Modric, so, of course, nice things happened. It was 10, 15 years ago, so it's passed a little bit of time, but it's nice.”