Jan Vertonghen: ‘Getting to the Champions League final with Tottenham has made this season the craziest of them all’

Jan Vertonghen admits that when he gets to the point when he is looking back on his playing days, it will be this season – his “craziest” – that provides the most vivid memories and what he hopes will be the high-point of his career.

The centre-back, 32, doesn’t know if destiny has been the driving force behind Tottenham Hotspur’s unexpected white knuckle journey to this Saturday’s Champions League final.

What he does know is that the exhausting narrative of a campaign has reinforced the sense that Mauricio Pochettino’s side are more than capable of finishing the job in Atletico Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano.

‘Beautiful and crazy’

“It’s been the craziest one ever and being at the end of that crazy campaign now is something unbelievable,” he said. “How many games have we played to get here eventually? Twelve games? In every single one of them, something crazy happened. At the end of my career, I’ll hopefully look at this and think this was the most beautiful and craziest year of them all.”

After collecting just one point from their opening three group games, Spurs turned brinkmanship into an art form, producing a succession of late goals, including Lucas Moura’s equaliser at Barcelona, to reach the knockout stage.

The more straightforward last 16 defeat of Borussia Dortmund provided a degree of respite from the drama before anxiety levels were cranked up again during the thrilling ties with Manchester City and Ajax – when Vertonghen was forced out of the first leg with a head injury before returning for the second leg in Amsterdam – that paved the way to tomorrow’s meeting with Liverpool.

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So did Vertonghen get the sense something was special as the competition progressed? “Like 16 times, maybe,” he said. “In the group stages, we should not have lost that Inter away game, we got one point after three games, the Barca away game… there are so many I can’t tell them all but it’s been crazy. To be playing in a Champions League final is something to cherish.”

‘The ideal script’

There will only be a real sense of fufillment, however, if they return to North London with the trophy. “I will always be able to say I was part of a Champions League final but you want to tell a different story to your kids and this is the ideal script,” said the Belgium international. “I don’t know about destiny. We have to win it, if it is to be destiny.”

Vertonghen arrived at Spurs from Ajax seven years ago, two years before the arrival of Pochettino. For the defender, getting to the final sums up just how far the club has progressed.

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“The first two years I was here were Europa League nights but it’s what we’ve been working on,” he said. “Maybe outside, they did not expect a Champions League final, and I can understand that. Five years ago, the manager picked this club up and brought us to the level we are at now.”