The last time Mohammed Kudus was shown in Tottenham, he disappeared in shame through the tunnel after a red card that led to a ban on five games and a strict one from his boss.
It was an eventful derby game for Kudus. He opened with great zeal, which made problems for Pedro Porro and West Ham before Spurs before Spurs answered within half an hour before Spurs answered with four goals and he lost his head.
First with a nasty error from behind on Micky van de Ven, then with an angry reaction in the subsequent skirmish, both the Dutch defender and Pape Matar Sarr pushes into their faces.
Yawl Lopetegui frowning disapprovingly. “Not good for him or the team,” the head coach of West Ham gathered with pressure that quickly gathered around his sputtering start of the season.
He promised that they would talk, but the hammers raised more points in the five games with Kudus forbidden than in the previous five with him and when he returned there was no perceptible increase, certainly not enough to save Lopetegui.
All of which plays to the mystery in the heart of Tottenham's £ 55 million swoop for the Ghana International Forward.
Kudus is beautifully gifted. Able to shameful individual sparkle Certainly and exciting supporters, but is it a talent that is easily used in the demands of a successful modern team?
Does he have the emotional adulthood to consistently deliver one game to the following? One season to the next? Can he dominate a whole game instead of in unspeakable purple patches?
Will that all come? After all, he is only 24 and Mo Salah was in his mid -20s before he reached this level. Or will he always be whimsical such as creative attackers and wing players? And is that enough in an era in which few attacking players are on the field for 90 minutes.
Lopetegui could not unlock the secret on time, and Graham Potter finally punished his sale because West Ham needs money to invest and rebuild and Jarrod Bowen is more reliable in the position in which they both like to play, to the right of a front three.
In a short career so far, Kudus has produced one good season for each of his three clubs.
In Nordsjaelland he came to the fore in Denmark as a teenager in an eruption of 11 goals in 27 Superliga matches and earned a £ 7.8 million switch to Ajax as they rebuilt the team, decimated more than two years after reaching the last four of the Champions League.
His first two seasons in Amsterdam were disturbed by injuries, but brought him three major trophies before his third was illuminated with 18 goals over 42 games, although no silverware.
West Ham was convinced enough to pay £ 38 million and, after being carefully introduced by David Moyes in the beginning, Kudus scored eight Premier League goals in his debut season, the last of them a overhead shovel in Manchester City.
His performance in that 3-1 defeat in the city convinced Josko Gvardiol to greet him as his toughest opponent.
There were five more in the Europa League, including a spectacular solo goal on a Mazy Dribbel in the middle of the field of deep in his own half, against Freiburg in March 2024.
Things were unraveled within six months. With Moyes Gone, first changed Lopetegui and then Potter the styles and forms of the team, and Captain Bowen strengthened his grip on the position coveted by Kudus.
In the stands on the day of the red card in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Chris Hughton, who served Spurs as a player and coach and recently spent two years as a technical adviser and head coach of Ghana.
“He wasn't very popular that day, but I think Tottenham supporters will like him, and the players will know that he is talented enough to make them a better team,” Hughton told Mail Sport.
'He has a very good technical ability and great strength on the ball, hard to go wrong. He reminds me a bit of Dejan Kulusevski, on the left with beautiful maneuvering skills.
'What Kudus has is an explosive change of pace to get away from opponents. He is undoubtedly a game exchanger. He can have those moments that things make things happen for the team. '
The instinct of Hughton is that Kudus is most suitable for playing as a number 10 instead of wide. “You want him to happen in and around the box and things,” he said, reminding of two kudus goals for Ghana in a 2-2 draw to Egypt in the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon).
Nevertheless, he has seen that both Ajax and West Ham use him in broad areas and agree that he is more comfortable and effective, playing the right, cutting in to threaten the goal with his stronger foot.
“With that type of player it will always be about whether they have the consistency competition, game -out, away from home and at home, to have the effect you want,” said Hughton, whose term of office as Ghana boss ended after not beyond the group phases of the Ivory Coast in the Ivory Coast.
However, the results deteriorated after his departure, when Ghana did not qualify for the next tournament, which started in Morocco in December and ended the bottom of the qualifying group, Winloos in six games.
It means that Spurs will not lose him in the middle season, but the humiliation for the four times Champions of Africa exposed Kudus in the fire line, accused by some Black Stars fans of Underforming and ridiculous when his 96th minute penalty was saved in a 2-1 defeat in Niger in Niger in Niger in Niger.
Sections of the crowd sang for him to miss while he was preparing for the spot kick then ironically welcomed when he did, three days after the elimination was confirmed with a draw in Angola.
Perhaps this pressure had consequences for his form in West Ham, where he clashed with Lopetegui after he was immersed in the club during his second season against Brentford, early in his second season.
Then the red card at Spurs with the ban from three games to five came through the FA, and the failure of Ghana to reach Afcon for the first time in more than 20 years.
Events seemed to work together against Kudus and he seemed a bit lost in East London, especially after Joseph Anang had left the Hammers for St Patrick's in Dublin.
Anang was a backup keeper who had been to the club since 2017. He was also Ghanaese, two months older than Kudus and soon played an unofficial role as a less for his countryman when he first arrived from Ajax.
He would walk around Kudus driver in his VW polo, and they spent a lot of their social time together before Anang's exit in the summer of 2024.
So there were mitigating factors for his lost rhythm and always the strange memory of his talent and joyful approach to football.
After scoring against Brighton at the London Stadium in December, Kudus unveiled an extensively cut wooden elephant stool and was used up as part of his characteristic celebration.
It was specially sent by the staff of West Ham after 18 months and saw him start looking for stools through the stewards of Ballboys when his goals invaded.
This beautiful Artefact was the type used by the tribal leaders of Ghana and symbolized authority, Kudus explained afterwards, but he could not use it again.
He scored twice for the Hammers, but both times away from the London Stadium, and he finished the season with only five goals.
Tottenham is not deterred. After the new boss Thomas Frank and technical director Johan Lange has settled as an alternative, as an alternative is to lure Bryan Mbeumo from Brentford and have ruled on Ebereechi Eze of Crystal Palace.
The Danes who now influence Spurs have carried out his data on his data and had easy access to references for a player who graduated from the right to Dream Academy founded in the neighborhood of Accra and by Nordsjaelland, the Danish club owned by the Academy.
Kasper Hjulmand, who worked closely with Frank and Lange near Lyngby, was the head coach of Nordsjaelland when Kudus arrived for the first time and gave him his debut in 2018 before he left to take the lead over Denmark.
Hjulmand was succeeded by Flemming Pedersen who later worked briefly in Brentford with the B-team.
Just like with West Ham, the Danish Kudus reminds silent and polite with supreme confidence in his own capacity.
There is no doubt that Spurs will have done a thorough due diligence and support Frank to refine him, as he proved that he can do it with Mbeumo, an explosive player with similar qualities that play similar roles to the front line.