Tottenham Hotspur’s 2025-26 player of the season: Joao Palhinha

By almost every metric, last season was the worst in almost five decades for Tottenham Hotspur, leaving historically slim pickings for player-of-the-season candidates.

While their struggles were club-wide, it is not difficult to find issues with almost every individual who played a meaningful role. Their struggles to build through the lines started with goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, who often looked panicked and incompetent in possession. If the ball reached midfield, they lacked the creativity and tactical direction to advance into the final third, where Spurs were disjointed, lacking technical quality, and too often reliant on set pieces to score.

In the end, it was their set-piece proficiency that saved them. Tottenham ended the season with 18 goals from corners, the second-highest total in Premier League history. The most important were scored by Joao Palhinha, Tottenham’s player of the season and the playing embodiment of the human qualities Roberto De Zerbi instilled from the dugout.

Like De Zerbi, who was drafted in with Tottenham’s season on the brink with seven games remaining, Palhinha was an unlikely hero — not least because his battling, full-blooded game seemed incongruous with De Zerbi’s highly technical, tactical approach.

The inquest into Palhinha started before he had even kicked a ball in anger in north London. For some, signing Europe’s most proficient midfield tackler was the obvious antidote to Tottenham’s weak underbelly, adding steel to a side that had conceded 65 goals the season before.

His outstanding performance in the 2-0 away win against Manchester City, where he scored his first of seven goals in all competitions, was a strong sign that he would be precisely that. Tottenham ended the season with the sixth-best away record and conceded just 26 goals — only Arsenal, Everton and Manchester City were more impenetrable on the road — and Palhinha’s front-foot defending was a major reason why.

But his doubters were not exactly wrong, either. Palhinha failed in his step up from Fulham to Bayern Munich because of his limitations in possession, and, to nobody’s surprise, the 30-year-old did not suddenly evolve into Luka Modric once he pulled on the lilywhite. Palhinha completed just 81.6 per cent of his passes for Tottenham last term, which, if he were an ambitious deep-lying line-breaker like Adam Wharton, you could perhaps excuse, but he spent seven months playing under Thomas Frank, where he did little more than pass safely sideways.

Due to their atrocious home form, inability to control matches, and lack of midfield progression, most Spurs fans had justifiably given up on the “Bentinha” pivot by mid-season, which had shown very few signs of successfully functioning together in the Premier League.

Yet, with Tottenham’s future on the line, De Zerbi called on Palhinha to be a catalyst for an uplift, and his goals proved the difference between relegation and survival. He was on the bench for De Zerbi’s first game in charge, the away 1-0 defeat to Sunderland, then came off the bench to score the crucial winning goal against Wolverhampton Wanderers in April. He was part of an outstanding midfield performance the following week as Tottenham beat Aston Villa 2-1 at Villa Park, before his final-day goal against Everton, arguably the club’s most important of the Premier League era.

For his role in changing Tottenham’s fortunes, De Zerbi wants to make Palhinha’s loan stay permanent.

“We have to start with these types of people,” De Zerbi said ahead of the 1-1 draw with Leeds earlier this month. “More than players, we need reliable people, reliable players, and Palhinha is one of the best as a player, for sure, but as a guy. I want to see players with the same passion, attitude, spirit and personality. We are very lucky to have Palhinha with us.”

As characters, it’s clear De Zerbi and Palhinha are cut from the same cloth, and Tottenham will need personalities like his if they are to move forward successfully with the Italian.

“Since the first day I arrived, I feel at home,” Palhinha told journalists after beating Everton 1-0. “From the supporters, the crowd. Top club. Who doesn’t want to play for Tottenham and stay here? I have everything here.

“But this is like a marriage. What I can say to you is I would really like to be here, and I enjoy it a lot this season with this club, even being a tough season.”

Few will argue that it has been a perfect marriage. De Zerbi has said Tottenham must approach the transfer market with urgency to build a more competitive team and squad, and questions will rightly be asked on whether Palhinha, who is in his 30s and lacks the technical qualities to execute De Zerbi-ball at its free-flowing best, is the type of profile they should be targeting.

Tottenham have a relatively cost-effective €30million (£25.9m) buy-option, but he has a high salary and will not be in Europe next season. Without the demands of European football, it is up to De Zerbi and Tottenham’s hierarchy to assess whether that money might be better spent elsewhere, attempt to renegotiate with Bayern or Palhinha to find a deal that better reflects his role as an important dressing-room presence who may not play every week, or to make his loan stay permanent on his current terms.

But as De Zerbi says, Tottenham need reliable people in the dressing room, and Palhinha is a character the club can barely afford to lose. And there’s no suggestion that he has lost a step as a destructive force in midfield. Last season, he ranked third in ‘true’ tackles across all defensive and central midfielders across Europe’s top five leagues, and third in win rate among the same sample. He is a truly world-class ball-winner, and it may be impossible to replace that.

While the discussion around Palhinha may not have moved on a great deal over the season, there is little to suggest his fiercest critics and strongest supporters were wide of the mark in their initial assessment of his talents. His human and footballing qualities were crucial in Spurs turning their season around under De Zerbi. The hierarchy would be wise not to forget that.