Tottenham's player of 2024-25: Pedro Porro – nobody gave them more

New York Times

28-05-2025

Through the turmoil and the triumphs, there was one constant on the pitch for Tottenham Hotspur this season: Pedro Porro.
Sure, some players have had higher highs.
Dejan Kulusevski was the outstanding player of their campaign's first half, and had he remained fit throughout and continued on a similar trajectory, he may have fashioned an argument for the Premier League's player of the year award, not just Tottenham's. Brennan Johnson's near-post finish in Bilbao inscribed his name in the club's history books forever, and that image will be immortalised on the walls of the stadium and training ground to inspire generations to come. Lucas Bergvall, who was probably Tottenham's outstanding player of 2025 before an ankle injury in training ahead of the Europa League semi-final, is deservedly in the conversation, too.
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But there are few substitutes for availability, and no player has given more to Spurs this season than Porro.
Seasonal awards often come down to endurance, and numbers tell that part of our story.
Porro totalled more Premier League minutes than any Tottenham player this season (2,608), 217 more than second-busiest Kulusevski. He is one of just six players to have played more than 2,000 minutes for Tottenham in the league. Only Pape Matar Sarr played in more of their 38 top-flight matches (36 to 33), though the Senegal international came off the bench for 14 of those. Had Spurs not gone so far in Europe, Porro would likely have featured in every game.
As the defensive unit — from where the team's success tends to live or die — was broken apart by injuries over the winter period, the Spaniard was the last of coach Ange Postecoglou's preferred starters standing.
Adjusting to a single change in a settled back line is not straightforward at the best of times, but Porro made do as Postecoglou experimented with makeshift alternatives. He didn't always find it easy — he was run ragged in the FA Cup by non-League Tamworth's winger Beck-Ray Enoru, a sales assistant at high-street clothing store Zara to supplement his semi-professional wage — but nobody could question his effort and dedication. Combining that dedication with his technical brilliance makes him as crucial to Spurs' success as anyone.
Inverted full-backs are not the tactical marvels today they were considered to be five years ago, but at his best, Porro delivers from that position in a manner that makes it seem entirely fresh.
His delivery is world-class, and he finished with nine Premier League and Europa League assists to show for it. When he takes the quarterback role from central defender Cristian Romero, he can land balls on a sixpence for runners, as evidenced by the excellent pass played to James Maddison for his goal in January's 3-2 win against Hoffenheim. Should he push forward and cross from the right half-space, his execution is equally precise. Dominic Solanke's header against Newcastle United a few weeks earlier is evidence of that.
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'It's something we're continually working on, to get him on the ball in more key areas,' Postecoglou said of Porro in a press conference in May. 'He has such quality with his ability to hit the longer pass. But also, the quality of his crosses every time he puts the ball in the box — whether that's a set piece or a cross in general — causes opposition problems.
'He's played more than anyone else this year. He's been unbelievable for us. Not just in his durability — which has been important because we've had so many players going down; we've needed a few to be durable like he has — but also the quality he's shown.'
Still, maybe the most thrilling part of Porro's game is his ability to ghost into dangerous positions. No full-back in England's top flight has a greater instinct for goals, something that proved crucial to Tottenham's Europa League success.
Porro telegraphed his ability to sniff out a goalscoring chance in the season's opening-weekend draw away to Leicester City, making a late run to meet Maddison's whipped cross with a glancing header into the bottom corner. Maddison played provider again for the most important of Porro's four goals during the campaign, cutting a cross back for him to delightfully flick Spurs back onto level terms against Eintracht Frankfurt in the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final.
Having been partly to blame for Hugo Ekitike's goal earlier in that match, it was not just an excellent piece of skill but a crucial atonement during their run to glory in Bilbao.
In the following round, his looping effort from outside the box away to Bodo/Glimt was when Spurs fans knew they were heading to a European final. Porro has not just been there for all the season's best moments, he has been responsible for delivering them.
But for all his apparent talent going forward, it's defensively where he's progressed the most.
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At odds with everything we're supposed to believe about football under Postecoglou, Tottenham's Europa League triumph was built on the defenders. And not brilliant line-breaking passes from Romero or Micky van de Ven's recovery pace, either. It was pragmatism, structure, and dedication to executing assignments that kept Frankfurt and Glimt at bay in the second legs away from home, when much of the discussion beforehand suggested Spurs' only possible route to success was to be the last team standing in a goals-filled standoff.
Porro was reliable in those moments. Had he not been, the outcome against Manchester United in the final — or against Frankfurt or Glimt — may have been different.
In the wake of last week's triumph back home on Spanish soil, he captioned a picture of himself holding the trophy with 'I don't defend,' poking fun at the suggestion he's solely an attacking full-back.
He deserves to be considered Tottenham's player of the season because he has been much more than that: a constant, a scorer of important goals, and, crucially, a dependable defender in the biggest moments.