Jan Vertonghen has opened up and spoken for the first time since he was hooked off for Tottenham in their FA Cup fourth-round victory over Southampton last month – and looked visibly distraught as a result of the substitution.
The 32-year-old, who looked in a far better mood on Wednesday after opening the scoring with his first ever goal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the penalty shoot-out defeat to Norwich City, was taken off by Jose Mourinho at the beginning of the second-half against the Saints.
As Vertonghen took his place on the bench he looked close to tears and with his Spurs contract expiring in the summer, some thought that the defender could have played his last game for the club.
However, Vertonghen was back in the starting XI against Chelsea last Saturday before returning as captain against the Canaries last night, where he looked back to his best.
Vertonghen spoke to Football.London about the Southampton incident and also spoke about the FA Cup exit against Norwich.
“It was more of a disappointment with my performance that day. But I feel a lot of confidence from the manager and I’m very thankful for that.
“Obviously I was very happy with my goal, it was a big relief and I really wanted to win this game and the competition so it was a big disappointment, but I am very happy where I am.”
“We wanted to do better and we are just disappointed. It is a big disappointment. We started well and I think we had chances to kill the game but we didn’t.
“It’s definitely a fact that we don’t keep enough clean sheets, that we concede too many goals.
“Not just now, in the last week, it’s since the start of the season, even more than a year ago we started to concede too many goals. It’s a problem we need to solve.”
