Eric Dier has named Mousa Dembele as the best footballer he's ever played with.
Dier played alongside the Belgian midfielder at Spurs, where Dembele spent six-and a-half years after joining from Fulham.
He had originally been a striker or attacking midfield player but ended up dropping deeper and dictating the game for Spurs, with his incredible power and dribbling.
Dembele played 249 games for the North London club, finding the net on 10 occasions.
And while his stats might not tell the story, Dier is in no doubt about Dembele's supreme qualities.
Speaking on The High Performance Podcast, Dier said: "Mousa Dembele and Jan Vertonghen, who were at Tottenham and older than me, I recognised those were the guys that I want to be with and I like the way they lead their lives outside of football.
"They really had that where nothing affected them. They were extremely humble.
“Mousa Dembele was the best footballer I’ve ever played with.
“They were like two older brothers to me, they really looked after me and I took a lot of advice from them. They were two people that I looked up to and became very close to.”
Dembele's 2017/18 campaign was his best campaign at the Spurs and incidentally proved to be his last full season at the club.
Halfway through the term, Dembele moved to Chinese Super League side Guangzhou R&F in a £11 million move but has featured sporadically.
It was under Mauricio Pochettino where Dembele produced his finest form and the Argentine once compared him to Diego Maradona and Ronaldinho - calling him a "genius".
"I have told you - and some people use my word to describe him - he is a genius of football.
"He is this type of player I put next to Ronaldinho, Maradona, [Jay-Jay] Okocha - players that I was lucky to play with. For me, he is one of the unbelievable talents in the history of football."
Topics: Eric Dier, Tottenham Hotspur
Josh Lawless