Fearless Rodrigo Bentancur keeps Tottenham ticking under pressure | Jonathan Liew

, shares an international dressing room with proper stars such as Luis Suárez and Edinson Cavani and Federico Valverde, contributes few goals and assists, and does not have the sort of game that can easily be chopped up and set to a horrific Eurodance soundtrack on YouTube.

Even now the eye is more often drawn to his grizzled midfield partner Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, a player who tears around the pitch with the sweaty frenzy of a man being chased by wild dogs while wearing bacon shorts. And so for those not watching too closely it has been possible to overlook exactly what Bentancur has been doing out there, particularly in a Tottenham midfield that so often looks stressed and overstretched, hammered to molecular thinness by Antonio Conte’s rope-a-dope counterattacking game. But to see Bentancur as a thankless victim of Conte-ball is to misread the issue entirely. On the contrary: he is the guy making it work.

Even by his standards, the last week has been particularly good to the 25-year-old. There was a sensational performance in the Champions League at Marseille on Tuesday: a hostile crowd, a defensive siege, everything on the line.

His coolness under pressure – an ability to tackle mercilessly, play quick passes off both feet, run tirelessly in the most crowded part of the pitch – is what sets him apart. His chief weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the press. In the Champions League group stage he was in the top five players for distance covered, among those with a minimum of 500 minutes. His top speed was higher than that of Kulusevski or Richarlison.

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