Exclusive Alderweireld: THIS is why Spurs declined. Vertonghen & I or Romero & Van de Ven? I tell you who was superior

Exclusive by Alessandro Schiavone

Toby Alderweireld has played more games with Jan Vertonghen than with any other player in his career. And the same goes for Super Jan.

The duo shared the pitch on a staggering 366 occasions for Belgium, Ajax and Tottenham Hotspur. That amounts to 30,681 minutes, with the pair only 34 shy of the legendary Italy and AC Milan duo Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi on 400. Doesn’t that sound flabbergasting?

Far and away Tottenham Hotspur’s golden era of years gone by, between 2015 and 2019, was underpinned by the rock-solid and complementary Belgians whose knack for defending and solidity is in Premier League folklore. And hard to replicate in London and beyond.

Their attack might have been awash with attacking talent including Harry Kane, Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli, but the north Londoners would arguably not have been anywhere near a Premier League title tilt and Champions League final without Jan and Toby impressively protecting goalkeeper Hugo Lloris and providing constant defensive security.

And right or wrong, football fans and reporters love to compare players from different eras and generations.

While JV5 and TA4 failed to win silverware in N17, Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven have since cemented their legacy by going thr distance in the Europa League in 2025.

However, the north Londoners were never involved in a relegation scrap in the Belgians’ indelible days, finishing 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th in their five campaigns in the English capital. Yet performances dramatically tailed off after their exits in 2020 and 2021 respectively, with the Dutchman and Argentine coming nowhere close to reproducing the same level of sustained world-class displays.

So how do these two partnerships compare?

Alderweireld told Capital Football: “No, no, I will never talk about myself.

“But I think you can say that Jan and myself had a very special connection on the pitch.

“So I will always back myself with Jan in the team.”

Alderweireld claimed that Tottenham’s inexorable decline has its roots in the way the club began losing key players on top of Mauricio Pochettino’s shock sacking in the years following their participation in the Madrid showpiece in 2019. Inadequately replacing them was the final nail in the coffin as Tottenham went from challengers to challenged.

He said: “I think it’s not only Pochettino, it’s even the squad…

“I think we had an unbelievable squad at that time.

“Everybody was working very hard for the club, for the team… and then the big players left and the team changed a little bit.

“It was difficult to find back the rhythm and the quality in the team.

“Because we were so good not only technically but physically as a team.

“We were unbelievable and unfortunately we never got that level again.”