Postecoglou plays down Neymar comparisons with Spurs starlet ‘ready for Premier League debut’
Ange Postecoglou is confident Tottenham teenager Mikey Moore will keep his feet on the ground and not buy a Ferrari after comparisons to Neymar.
Moore made only his second Spurs start in Thursday’s 1-0 win over AZ Alkmaar and, after he again caught the eye, team-mate James Maddison made a tongue-in-cheek reference that it was like Brazil international Neymar played on the wing.
With Son Heung-min still not 100 per cent after he reported muscle soreness at the start of this week, Moore is in contention to make his full Premier League debut against Crystal Palace, but Postecoglou does not expect the hype to go to the 17-year-old’s head.
“Just to be clear, I didn’t call Mikey, Neymar,” Spurs boss Postecoglou said with a smile.
“I think you’ll find that my demeanour around Mikey will be the same today as it was yesterday and that’s what he’d expect.
“The best indicator is the person himself and I’ve got a feeling that won’t affect Mikey. I don’t think we’ll see him arriving with a different colour hair or a Ferrari. Well, he can’t drive can he! I think he’ll be fine.
“I think Mikey just wants to be Mikey and like I said after the game, what I see with him is that he’s very mature for a 17-year-old, he handles things really well.
“Sometimes young players are exciting but you can see pitfalls down the road, but I don’t see that with him. At 17, you think what is he going to be like at 21 and hopefully I am the manager then!”
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Postecoglou was coy over whether Moore would start a second successive match in reference to the Selhurst Park trip on Sunday, but has limited options.
Richarlison and Wilson Odobert have only just returned from injury, while Timo Werner, who deputised when Son was absent for three weeks with a hamstring issue, has failed to score in his last 16 appearances for Tottenham.
On Moore, Postecoglou added: “I think he’s ready to start a Premier League game, for sure.
“For us what we want to do is to continue to develop Mikey in the right way and give him a platform to keep improving. So far whatever we’ve asked of him, he’s made a real impact and the plan is to continue to do that.
“He’s one of the options (against Palace). Again, two games in a week, the biggest concern I have for him is physically more than anything else.
“He’s still a growing kid, his body is still adjusting to this level, so to ask to play two games in a short space of time, I’d be cautious about that, but we’ll have a look at how the team shapes up.”
The emergence of Moore has delighted Tottenham fans, who have given him the chant ‘he’s one of our own’, which had belonged to Harry Kane before his 2023 departure to Bayern Munich.
Postecoglou revealed there may be more to come from Spurs’ academy, with Luca Williams-Barnett an exciting prospect in the Under-18s.
“When we brought Mikey up last year and he played a couple of times in the Under-21s, he stood out,” Postecoglou explained.
“(Academy director) Simon Davies and the guys in the academy were really strong about his potential, how he trains, his behaviour. As soon as he came into the training environment, he showed no fear.
“In pre-season, he was always a standout for us. There are some others in there. Some young boys who are starting to make some inroads, some a bit younger around the 15-to-16 age group.
“If you go through a successful period, it’s more sustainable if you’ve got players at the club coming through.”
