After promising heavy investment, Tottenham Hotspur’s majority shareholders, the Lewis family, appear to be following through on a comprehensive squad overhaul not seen since the not-so-magnificent seven replaced Gareth Bale in 2013.

The scale this summer could be even greater (and hopefully with a higher hit rate). With the announcement that Martin Dubravka will join the club upon the expiry of his contract with Burnley on July 1, Tottenham have completed four signings.

There are strong links to Sandro Tonali, who is valued at around £100million ($133m) by Newcastle United, and Mateus Fernandes, who is understood to be available for £80m ($106.7m) from recently-relegated West Ham United. That is before the inevitable reinforcements in attacking areas.

As such, there are few spots in Roberto De Zerbi’s starting XI that are set in stone. After signing a new contract, Tottenham have shown commitment to Pedro Porro as a starting right-back. Discussions to extend Micky van de Ven’s could follow. These are highly coveted international players with pedigree, and it’s no surprise that De Zerbi wants to build around those profiles.

Antonin Kinsky looks set to sign a new deal too, which reflects a remarkable ascendance.

Kinsky was substituted after just 17 minutes away to Atletico by then manager Igor Tudor (Thomas Cox/Getty Images)

It was March 10 when Kinsky, 23, had a humiliating night in the Champions League against Atletico Madrid. At the time, many speculated that the game, in which he twice made mistakes leading to Atletico goals before being substituted in the 17th minute of a 5-2 defeat, could be the end of the 23-year-old’s career at the top level.

Loris Karius was served up as the inescapable comparison after his performance for Liverpool against Real Madrid in the 2018 Champions League final.

Karius, who is understood to have suffered a concussion during the match before committing two errors that led to goals, has forged a respectable career as a back-up across Europe and is now the starting goalkeeper for Schalke, who won the German second tier last season. Still, his name is forever associated with that night in Kyiv. For Kinsky, his sliding-doors moment proved to be his making.

The signing of Dubravka, a capable top-flight goalkeeper and competent back-up, indicates that De Zerbi is placing faith in Kinsky, the goalkeeper who served him well as Tottenham staved off relegation on the final day of the season.

He was outstanding after replacing Guglielmo Vicario for the final seven games of the league season, with the Italian recovering from a hernia operation. With interest from around Italy, Vicario could return to Serie A after three years in north London.

Kinsky, along with significant improvements in the back line and as a team-wide pressing unit, was crucial as Tottenham established themselves as De Zerbi transformed their defensive record. Kinsky kept two clean sheets and Spurs limited opponents to one goal or fewer in five of those seven games. His performance against Leeds United, in which he made two world-class saves to earn his side an important point, should be remembered among the most influential goalkeeping displays in recent club history.

He is among the Premier League’s best distributors, making him a tailor-made fit for De Zerbi, who views his goalkeepers as an integral part of his attacking build-up. His ability to execute passes over the press and through lines is an elite quality, and there are few goalkeepers available with the capacity to find team-mates across short, medium, and long distances.

Roberto De Zerbi gave Antonin Kinsky a key role in the run in (Mark Leech/Getty Images)

He clearly has the technical quality and mental fortitude to succeed at the top. Still, it would be disingenuous to overlook that placing such faith in someone with his inexperience is a brave, and risky, decision.

Tottenham could easily point to Manchester United’s Senne Lammens, who is four months younger than Kinsky and was a relatively unknown quantity from Antwerp, in Belgium, before thriving at Old Trafford last season.

The often-blocked pathway for goalkeepers can mean they emerge in unlikely ways, finding their way to the top level after proving themselves in lower leagues or benefiting from an injury, and Kinsky thrived in those circumstances. But it’s one thing deputising for six weeks, and another entirely to be entrusted with No 1 status at a club with ambitions to return to the Champions League.

His run as stand-in No 1 was encouraging, but data analysts advise against concluding from such a small sample size. Reliability with his hands and feet is now expected and counted on. Mistakes are inevitable for goalkeepers, but if Tottenham are to realise their potential next season, they must be few and far between. There are question marks over his positioning, with a trend of failing to get close to conceded goals and of standing too close to his near post.

Tottenham are clearly committed to spending heavily, and an early hiccup or two could prompt De Zerbi to take similar action to Pep Guardiola last year, who replaced James Trafford with Gianluigi Donnarumma at Manchester City after a shaky start.

But De Zerbi and goalkeepier coach Fabian Otte, who worked with Alisson in Liverpool’s title-winning season in 2024-25, appear to have put their faith in Kinsky.

If his stellar end to last season is an indication of the future, few will put it past him holding the No 1 shirt for years to come.

This article is part of our Style of Play series, an exploration of World Cup kit culture.

If you’re watching an England game in public during this World Cup, you’re going to see a lot of people wearing a wide range of the national team’s shirts.

Plenty will have the current version, home or away, but the recent explosion of the market for retro kits will mean you’ll see a huge amount of tops from years gone by, too.

Many of them will be tied to iconic England teams and tournaments: the white Italia 90 shirt, the grey Euro 96 one — possibly with ‘Shearer’ on the back — and the 2002 World Cup edition.

Among them will be one that isn’t associated with any of those tournaments. It wasn’t worn at any tournament. In fact, it was only ever worn in one game, but you will still see it more than you’d expect, considering those facts. After you spot it once, you’ll keep seeing it everywhere.

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The jersey in question is a blue third shirt released for that 1990 World Cup. It’s the same design as the home top England wore throughout the tournament in Italy, and the red away one which they didn’t wear then but did sport eight times over the following few years on a variety of inauspicious occasions, including the infamously calamitous summer tour to the United States in 1993.

The blue shirt was worn in just one game: a European Championship qualifier in May 1991, away against Turkey in Izmir. On his debut, Dennis Wise of Chelsea scored the only goal of both the game and his international career as England won 1-0.

And that was it. One game, 90 minutes, a brief outing never repeated. But still, you’ll see many more of them in England crowds than some of the jersey designs that the team wore dozens of times.

It was in the stands for England’s opening two group games of this tournament in Arlington and Foxboro. It was on an England fan in a Houston bar this week, which is particularly unusual considering England are not and will not be playing in that city during this World Cup. It’s even in Budweiser’s Jurgen Klopp-fronted advert for this World Cup, worn by a man struggling to carry four pints of beer through a busy crowd, and later seen celebrating a goal and drinking his plastic cup of Bud.

So what gives? Why is this incredibly obscure shirt, worn in only one match by the England senior team, so popular?

John Barnes wears a future collectors’ item that 1991 day in Turkey (Shaun Botterill/Allsport/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The first point is that its obscurity contributes to its popularity. There is a certain kind of football fan who want to express their support but also avoid being obvious about it, those who wear it in a ‘Please ask me about my shirt’ way. It’s not only retro, but it’s obscure, a double dip for the discerning football pseud/hipster. Gary Bierton from the website Classic Football Shirts calls it a “counter-cultural appeal”, which ironically enough is diluted the more people try to adopt it.

But there have been plenty of rarely-worn shirts, so why is this one so popular? It comes down to its association with Italia ’90, and how deeply that World Cup is still embedded in the English consciousness.

“It holds a place in popular culture,” says Bierton. “We as football fans have taken some time to understand just how powerful football was in that moment.”

The shirt and its associations were linked to that World Cup, and how the perception of the game in England began to shift. “It was the summer football became cool,” says Rob Warner, a former creative director at Umbro and founder of design agency Spark. “It started to step away from this horrible, ‘You can’t go to football because there are riots and trouble’ idea. That 1990 World Cup was like a big coming-out party for football.”

This specific top’s place in popular culture was partly cemented by one of the few times it was actually seen in the public eye: the video for England’s 1990 World Cup anthem, World In Motion. New Order singer Bernard Sumner wore it in the promo, and thus it was tied to yet another cultural moment: along with Three Lions, it is England’s most famous and beloved football-adjacent pop song. Some time later, Umbro even released a special New Order version of it, with a World In Motion logo replacing the three lions national crest.

“From a cultural perspective, historically, pop songs related to football were rubbish,” says Warner. “Then, all of a sudden, you’ve got New Order, and Bernard Sumner’s wearing that particular shirt in the video.”

The time it came out, in the evolution of football shirt design, also adds something: only a decade or so before 1990, football shirt designs — especially international ones — were relatively uniform, but that developed throughout the 1980s and helped transform football kit from sporting wear into fashion items. To have a well-thought-out England shirt was still a relative novelty.

“We all know the rise of the more distinctive designs, from Denmark in 1986 and the Netherlands in 1988,” says Bierton. “This is the first time you’ve really got an England kit representing that switch forwards. That’s the first England kit, and maybe the only England kit, that has such a striking design and tone.”

On a more basic level, the shirt just works aesthetically: as well as the design being so iconic, the colour gives it something extra too. “It’s not white. It’s not red. It’s more of a ‘lifestyle’ colour,” says Warner. “It goes well with a pair of jeans. It just ticks so many boxes.”

Needless to say, barely any of the examples of the shirt you’ll see in stadiums, pubs and box parks during this tournament are originals from the early 1990s. It became a mass-market item after Umbro reissued it, but also when Score Draw, a company which specialises in reproductions of retro kits, released its own interpretation. It’s one of their most popular designs, to the point that it has since produced a version of its successor, a similarly niche and also blue third shirt, this one with three lions arranged diagonally across its chest and shoulders.

“It’s been adopted by England supporters as something of an alternative uniform,” says Mickey Phillips from Score Draw. “It’s got all the distinguishing ingredients to elevate that consumer, perhaps to differentiate them from a guy who might just buy any old replica shirt.”

An England fan wearing THAT shirt poses for a photo in the build-up to this week’s 0-0 draw with Ghana (Mattia Ozbot/Getty Images)

So that’s the replicas, but where are those super-rare, match-worn shirts now? In theory, only 11 legitimate ones exist from that game against Turkey: the 10 outfield starters and the one substitute who got on, Steve Hodge.

The Athletic asked some of England’s players on that day if they still had their blue shirt.

Gary Pallister’s is in storage somewhere, with the rest of his old shirts. Alan Smith looked for his recently but it seems to have gone missing somewhere along the line. Stuart Pearce’s is with his other shirts — in a box under the stairs. It was Geoff Thomas’ first senior cap, so his is signed, framed and on display at home. Similarly, Wise has his up on the wall, pride of place, to commemorate his only international goal. Lee Dixon’s daughter has his — apparently she wears it out and about.

Geoff Thomas’ match-worn shirt from England’s May 1991 game against Turkey (Geoff Thomas)

Based on photos from after the final whistle, at least three were swapped with the Turkish players, and their right-back Recep Cetin bagged the biggest prize, Gary Lineker’s No 10 shirt. Cetin still has it, hanging in a wardrobe at home.

So that’s most of them accounted for.

Gary Lineker’s No 10 shirt from England’s win away to Turkey during Euro 92 qualifying (Recep Cetin)

Thinking of trying to buy one? Beware: it’s not particularly easy to identify which are the kosher, match-worn shirts, and which are replicas sold at the time or made since. In those days, the modern practice of stitching the details of each game onto the front of players’ shirts wasn’t common for non-tournament fixtures, so there’s no definitive, obvious proof on the kit itself.

“There’s an endless process of elimination,” Bierton says, when asked how to identify genuine, match-worn items. “The big thing is photo matching, and trying to get any evidence that exists from any of these games. I imagine there isn’t a ton of HD footage from the Turkey game. So you then ask who it’s come from, what’s the chain of possession? A shirt is match-issue because it possesses the features: the embroidered badges, the capitalised Umbro, the stitched number on the back, but you’ve almost got to hear the story from someone.”

This shirt is rare, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to big money. Really valuable, match-worn shirts have to hit the sweet spot between rarity value and prestige: worn by a particularly iconic player, or on a particularly iconic occasion, for example. This one has the rarity value, but not the prestige. Put it this way: if you approached Sotheby’s and said you’ve got a shirt worn in a forgotten European Championship qualifier from 1991… well, it’s not exactly Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand Of God’ shirt, is it?

Still, if you do somehow have a genuine one in your possession, the price you’d get will be better than a kick in the pants. “I don’t know what the audience would be for it, but I’d still expect it to fetch high hundreds, or low four-figures,” estimates Warner.

Bierton is a bit more optimistic. Replicas from the time on Classic Football Shirts go for £300 to £400 ($395-$530), but for a match-worn version? “I think you’ve got to be talking more than £5,000, minimum, just because it’s a one-off. But the sky’s the limit for an item like this.”

The ones you’ll see at England games this summer and beyond probably aren’t valuable collector’s items. But they do represent a particular place in football culture, one that has endured for over three decades.

It isn’t just the shirt England wore in a forgotten 1-0 win 35 years ago. It represents something more.

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This piece was first published during Euro 2024, but it has been updated to reflect further conversations with Guy Stephan during a second interview with The Athletic in Washington D.C. in March 2026.

On a usual France match-day, Didier Deschamps will go into Guy Stephan’s bedroom, pick up an electric razor and shave his assistant’s head with light, gentle strokes.

Nobody else will be present but the ritual is an essential part of a matchday routine that dates back to 2014. There are other superstitions: at every meal — breakfast, lunch and dinner — Stephan sits to Deschamps’ left. On every bus ride and plane flight, he sits to his right.

“It’s all about balance, there’s nothing political about it!” Stephan laughs.

The proud Breton has been Deschamps’ number two for the last 17 years: the first three at Marseille and the last 14 with France. They endured tough times together at Marseille, a “volcanic” club, in Stephan’s words. But their relationship goes back even further than that, to 2000, when Deschamps, then the French captain, and Stephan, assistant to then-manager Roger Lemerre, won the European Championship.

It has been a phenomenally successful alliance, yielding league titles at Marseille and three finals at major tournaments with France, including winning the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Major disappointments, such as a shock last-16 defeat to Switzerland at Euro 2020, have been rare.

Guy Stephan talking to the media ahead of the Norway game (FRANCK FIFE / AFP via Getty Images)

“It hasn’t always been linear,” Stephan tells The Athletic. “But despite those few defeats, we’ve managed to hold on.”

The bond between Stephan and Deschamps — who will step down after the World Cup — is now so strong that they often do not even require words to communicate.

“We understand each other,” Stephan says. “We don’t even need to speak anymore. A glance is enough when we’re out on the pitch or at a training session; if something needs changing or tweaking, we just look at each other and —boom— it’s as if we’d actually spoken. That’s the strength of the time we’ve spent together — 17 years. We don’t always agree — not always… We talk things through, but once a decision is made, it’s made.”

On Friday afternoon at Gillette Stadium near Boston, Stephan will emerge from a career in the shadows to take centre stage in the France dugout. That telepathy, between head coach and assistant, should put Deschamps’ sporting mind at rest even from afar.

Due to the passing of Deschamps’ mother this week, he has returned to his native country to mourn with his family. Stephan will assume temporary reins for the third group game against Norway. He has done so once before, coaching the team in a defeat against Denmark following the passing of Deschamps’ father in June 2022, but aged 69, this will be his first time doing so for France at a major tournament.

Stephan is, almost certainly, the coach at this World Cup with the most international tournaments to his name. Stephan is now at his fourth World Cup alongside Deschamps. Yet he had prior history, too, having served as the assistant to Lemerre when France won Euro 2000, before leaving the job after the World Cup in 2002. Stephan also had a couple of years coaching Senegal, bringing his total major tournament haul up to 10.

Stephan and Deschamps had what the assistant describes as a “normal” coach-player relationship at Euro 2000, but they crossed paths again when both men worked as analysts in a television studio in 2007. Deschamps asked Stephan to work with him. “I said ‘OK!’ There was a brief flirtation — something with Liverpool — back in 2008. A little something, but it didn’t work out. Then came Marseille in June 2009.”

As for France, this, he insists, will definitely be their final tournament, with Zinedine Zidane expected to take over. “People will miss Didier later on,” Stephan says. “That’s not a criticism of the new manager at all. They’ll just realize everything that was achieved over fourteen years. But people want change; they like a change of pace. Journalists like having new stories to write, too—it’s normal. That’s life!”

Stephan did not tread the traditional route into football management. His father, a mechanic, thought being a footballer was not a profession and, while Stephan’s secondary school PE teacher, Claude Perrard, was an encouraging presence, he enrolled in a teacher training course at the behest of his parents.

He does not regret it. “My career path would probably have been different, not better or worse, had I turned professional before studying,” he says. Stephan was, in his own words, “a good player, not a very good player” but he still represented France’s youth team.

Between the ages of 19 and 23, Stephan spent his weekdays training to be a teacher in Dinard, Brittany, and then on Saturdays driving 90 minutes to play for second division side Guingamp. He had a close relationship with the club president, Noel Le Graet, who went onto become FFF president for 12 years, from 2011 to 2023.

Stephan qualified as a sports teacher but did not return to the classroom. Instead, in 1980, aged 23, he became a professional footballer, joining Rennes — his eldest son Julien, who was born there, is their current manager. It was the start of a professional playing career that also took in spells at Le Havre, Orleans and Caen.

Then, on July 24, 1986, everything changed. Stephan was travelling home after training at Caen when he was involved in a serious car accident. He fractured his jaw, leg and elbow and sustained such a serious head injury that he was put into a coma.

“I learnt you have to get up again,” he says. “It’s obviously difficult at the time, for you and even more difficult for those around you. You tell yourself that you’ll get back up again.”

After several months of rehabilitation and physiotherapy, Stephan returned to training but soon realised “it wouldn’t be like before”. He struggled to return to the same level and, at the age of 29, decided to retire.

But Stephan’s football story was not over. His calling was always to teach in some form — his knowledge of psychology, physiology and pedagogy acquired from his teacher training helped him gain his coaching qualifications — and so he became Caen’s first-team assistant alongside Pierre Mankowski.

The coaching profession has evolved over the years. When Stephan started out in the 1980s, coaches tended to be, in his words, “authoritarian” and “ruled with an iron fist”. But times have changed and coaches have had to adapt too.

Deschamps has faced criticism for being too functional but Stephan disagrees he is “old school”. Despite winning the World Cup and Euros, plus three Champions League titles, Deschamps hardly ever harks back to his playing days and instead stays reactive to the present moment.

Stephan and Deschamps prepare for a Marseille game in 2009 (GERARD JULIEN/AFP via Getty Images)

“He’s got something extra,” Stephan says. “The main thing is to always be aware of what’s going on out there. You’ve got all the generations, you have to talk a lot with the players. It’s important for them to express themselves.

“In that respect, Didier is very, very strong. He’s very good at talking one-on-one with a player — he spends a lot of time and energy on that. Today’s coaching job is all about human relationships and getting the best out of the player. He has evolved. He’s closer to the players than he used to be.”

But if Deschamps is close to the players, he is even closer to Stephan. During an interview with The Athletic in Washington D.C., Deschamps briefly gatecrashed — received by Stephan with a traditional French kiss on both cheeks — and he called Stephan, who turns 70 in October, “un gamin” (the youngster).

“We spend much more time together than we do with our wives when we’re in camp,” Stephan laughs. “We think about football in the same way, even if there are some differences. We mustn’t leave room for the slightest leak. Sometimes they cause problems and conflict in a group. We have to try to resolve it as quickly as possible. But there are always some. The media, you’re too strong,” he chuckles.

Stephan is energised by the turnover of players in the France squad for this tournament. He describes this as “oxygenation.” The generation of Hugo Lloris, Raphael Varane, Paul Pogba and Olivier Giroud has passed on, and the team is now from a largely younger generation, powered by Kylian Mbappe, Michael Olise, Ousmane Dembele, Desire Doue, Bradley Barcola and Rayan Cherki.

“But you need both things: individual quality and collective quality,” Stephan warns. “For a coach, it’s collective quality that ensures longevity. But it’s the individual talent that wins you games.

“One of our main tasks is observing players and being able to recognise — at a certain point — that a player is at the elite level because of their technique, their intelligence, and their power. Sometimes— and I don’t mean this in a derogatory way —we hear people in the media say, ‘Hey, that player ought to be playing.’ I don’t want to name names, but they have no idea. People, generally speaking, have no idea of ​​the power, technique, and intelligence required to play at the elite level.”

The players are just one team but there is a whole backroom staff to align as well. When Stephan started out coaching, he, like many in that era, did almost everything, including training the goalkeepers and preparing players physically. Now, he is responsible for devising the daily training programme and writing it on the flipchart, but an army of around 20 other staff members also have an input, from the team chef to data and performance analysts.

Didier Deschmaps flanked by Guy Stephan and goalkeeper coach Franck Raviot (Franck FIFE / AFP via Getty Images)

Even so, Deschamps has a tight inner circle of technical coaches — Stephan, goalkeeping coach Franck Raviot and physical trainer Cyril Moine — which is far smaller compared to other national teams. He can rely on them to be, in Deschamps’ words, “fuel to his thinking”. His style is quality over quantity, with loyal, competent staff covering every base from medical to media.

One of the difficulties managers face is keeping players who do not feature in matches on board. That has become even trickier with the increase in squad sizes from 23 to 26, a rule initially introduced at Euro 2020 because of the global pandemic. A little like England with Jordan Henderson, there are players selected for what they bring to France off-the-field, in the example they set. N’Golo Kante, now 35, remains in the France squad.

“It’s difficult for a player — someone who played in 2018, for example — to stay with the squad and become a substitute,” says Stephan. “There are always exceptions, though. Kante: Fantastic man. Fantastic mentality. When he plays, he performs at the right level, and when he’s on the bench, everything is fine. There are very few players like that.”

Beyond training and match preparation, Stephan’s role is to “oil the cogs”, as he puts it, including from a psychological aspect.

“I know the manager’s plans for the next match. I can anticipate. Who is going to be affected? When I’m walking down a corridor or going for lunch and cross paths with a player, I ask how he is, how his family are. I try to find a topic of conversation that will lead to an exchange.

“I can see whether that player seems down or not, whether he’s smiling. I don’t have to report all the information because there’s a certain trust with the player which is also very important. Then, in training sessions, I can engage him as much as possible.”

Stephan and Deschamps running a France training session (FRANCK FIFE / AFP via Getty Images)

In turn, that creates a more sustainable environment throughout the tournament, which is needed if a team is to go far.

Ask Stephan what makes a World Cup-winning manager, and he could not be clearer. “You need to detect everyone’s qualities, bring people together, be a good psychologist, strategist and someone who obviously takes responsibility for results, whether good or bad,” he says.

What strikes him, however, is Deschamps’ calm persona in big pressure moments.

“He transmits serenity to the group,” says Stephan. “He’s focused but he’s not uptight in his language. Matches are often won in the second half and substitutions. We talk a lot during and after games. Sometimes there are questions on the bench. He asks my opinion and there’s a certain pressure to get results. That’s true for everyone. But he’s not a stressed person. That’s one of the reasons for his success, too.”

“I’ve watched Didier grow. I’m older than him (by 12 years) so he owes me respect, I say that with a smile. He was already very good and I’ve seen him get better.”