Tottenham’s visit to Sporting CP (Tuesday 5:45 pm) marks a very special reunion for Eric Dier. The 28-year-old English centre-back, one of the mainstays of the defense built by Antonio Conte, returns to Lisbon to face the club where he first trained.
Eric Dier’s path was unusual for an England international and he began his career in Lisbon and at Sporting CP, where he arrived in 2003 after his parents, Louise and Jeremy, found work on Portuguese soil. And the year seems to have been enough for the defender to become attached to the lion’s team, since even the family’s move to Valencia after Euro 2004 did not convince him to leave the green-and-white team, with Dier in training. himself with a local team in Spain and on the weekends he goes to play for the lions.
A return to England, where he was born – he represented Everton’s youth squad in 2010 and 2012 – to experience a different competitive environment did not change the focus, and Eric Dier ended up making his debut the following season with Sporting. First for the B team (against Atlético, fourth round of Ligue 2), and then for the first team, when Jesualdo Ferreira started him against Braga (ninth round of the 2012/13 season), and the Englishman responded with an assist. Wolfswinkel will score the winning goal (1-0). The following day, he was once again decisive when he scored the only Green-White goal that guaranteed a lion’s draw in Moreira de Conegosh.
This was followed by another 30 matches (in seasons 2012/13 and 2013/14) as part of a lion’s team that did not go through the best stages, adding 16 wins, nine draws and six losses.
The departure came in a year of controversy shrouded in 2014. In July of that year, Tottenham Hotspur paid €5m for a centre-back and the Lions claimed a controversial clause: they could not refuse an offer for a British emblem worth less than €5m. or equal to salary. The management, led by Bruno de Carvalho, claimed that he tried to extend this prerogative, but the player always refused.
This situation, however, did not remove the high appreciation of the player and the athlete himself by the fans in relation to the club. Dyer has never made a secret of his support for Sporting and is still fluent in Portuguese, communicating with former colleagues on social media.
He returns to Alvalada in 2022, having made 243 Premier League appearances for Tottenham and 45 England appearances in the 2016 European Championship and 2018 World Cup.
