Jermain Defoe admits £9.4m Tottenham man sold by Pochettino was seriously talented

Jermain Defoe and Troy Deeney have been speaking about how talented midfielder Etienne Capoue was during his time at Tottenham Hotspur and Watford.

The pair were speaking on the Football Firsts Podcast and recalled their time playing with the Frenchman.

Etienne Capoue was one of the ‘Gareth Bale Seven’, made up of the players signed with the money Tottenham raised by selling the Welshman to Real Madrid.

The expectation was that selling Bale would help refresh the rest of Andre Villas-Boas’s Spurs squad.

Their recruitment that summer was more miss than hit, with Christian Eriksen the most successful brought in during that transfer window.

Tottenham fans never saw the best of Roberto Soldado, Paulinho and Vlad Chiriches in North London.

Erik Lamela and Nacer Chadli’s longevity at the club means they can be seen in a positive light by Spurs supporters.

However, Etienne Capoue was a talented enigma, with Jermain Defoe admitting that he was a great player despite how much they argued after his £9.4m move.

That might have been why the Frenchman went on to make just 35 appearances for the club over the course of two seasons.

He ended up at Watford where Deeney shared his thoughts on the 35-year-old.

Defoe shares memories of talented Capoue

Talking about players they had had bust-ups with in the past, Deeney mentioned Capoue and said: “No one’s backing down, but no one’s going in with the intention of hurting the other person. I’m on you, you’re on me, and it ended up fueling us.

“Like I say, it’s [Etienne Capoue] Caps, if you put both of us morally, we’re the same kind of person.

“He wants to win, loves his family similar to me, but our personalities are so different. Did you play with Etienne at Tottenham?”

Jermain Defoe replied: “Yep. He’s good isn’t he?”

Deeney responded: “How talented is he? He’s a joke,” before Defoe added: “Oh my god. I used to argue with him all the time at Tottenham, but he gives it back though.

Deeney concluded: “Unbelievable player, probably the best I’ve played with because he just had so much about him.

Tottenham fans never got to see enough of the talented Capoue that Deeney and Defoe described.

He went on to play nearly 200 times for Watford before joining Villarreal in 2021.

The seven-capped Frenchman was a victim of circumstance at Spurs with Mauricio Pochettino eventually preferring the emerging Ryan Mason.

There was potential for Capoue to be a very solid player for Spurs in the long run, but at that stage in his career, he couldn’t afford to sit on the bench.