I have never worn Daniel Levy Tottenham gift from before Liverpool final

I have never worn Daniel Levy Tottenham gift from before Liverpool final - who does such a thing?

Hugo Lloris has opened up on Tottenham's Champions League final against Liverpool in 2019

A dejected Hugo Llorisafter the Champions League final between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool at Estadio Wanda Metropolitano on June 1, 2019 in Madrid, Spain (Image: Matthew Ashton - AMA/Getty Images )

Former Tottenham Hotspur captain Hugo Lloris has admitted he was stunned by a gift given to each of the Spurs players by Deny Levy before the 2019 Champions League final with Liverpool. The two teams met in Madrid in the European Cup climax.

Goals from Mohamed Salah and Divock Origi gave the Reds a memorable victory. The 2-0 success crowned Liverpool as kings of the continent for a sixth time.

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For Tottenham it was their first-ever Champions League final and in his new autobiography Earning my Spurs, Lloris has revealed that the occasion may have got to some figures at the club, most notably the divisive chairman Levy, per the Guardian.

"We do all have one engraved memory, though," he said. "Four days before the final, Daniel Levy called us all together to announce that, with the support of a sponsor, we would each receive a luxury aviator watch from the club. At first, we were excited to see the elegant boxes.

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"Then we opened them and discovered that he’d had the back of each timepiece engraved with the player’s name and ‘Champions League Finalist 2019’. ‘Finalist’. Who does such a thing at a moment like this? I still haven’t got over it, and I’m not alone. If we’d won, he wouldn’t have asked for the watches back to have ‘Winner’ engraved instead.

"I have considerable respect and esteem for the man and all he has done for the club as chairman – I got to know him – but there are things he is simply not sensitive to. As magnificent as the watch is, I have never worn it. I would have preferred there to be nothing on it. With an engraving like that, Levy couldn’t have been surprised if we had been 1–0 down after a couple of minutes: so it was written."

Lloris has also shared his frustration at the officiating in the final. Liverpool were awarded a penalty early on after Sadio Mane's attempted cross clattered into Moussa Sissoko's body from close range and then onto his arm.

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The French goalkeeper has suggested the final was "snatched" from Tottenham as a result and noted the change in guidelines over the award of penalties that followed soon after.

"From 2 June 2019, a change in the rules meant that a penalty would no longer follow if the ball struck a player’s hand after touching another part of their body," said Lloris. "The final took place on 1 June 2019, and something which wouldn’t have been an offence the following day sealed the fate of the final before it had really begun.

"Liverpool contented themselves with putting on a robust defence. As for us, we could only try our luck and dare a little in our play during the last 20 minutes. It was not a great final.

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"I’m not sure we understood that this was perhaps the only chance in our career to win the Champions League; that the club we played for was not one that was programmed to win it; that we could have avoided ever hearing again the complaint that Tottenham never won anything; that our names might have been engraved in the club’s history forevermore. This is what that penalty took from us."

Lloris spent 12 years at Spurs between 2012 and 2024, where he cemented his reputation as one of the best goalkeepers in world football.

While silverware escaped him at Tottenham, he won the 2018 World Cup with France and earned 145 caps for his country - more than any player for the men's team - before his international retirement in 2023.

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Lloris, now 37, plays for Los Angeles FC in Major League Soccer.

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