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‘I was showing Jose some of his clips’: Ledley King says 24-year-old stood out to him while he was Spurs coach
Ledley King has picked out Japhet Tanganga when asked whether there were any Tottenham players who stood out to him or surprised him when he was working as a coach under Jose Mourinho.
King was speaking on after the spell he enjoyed working with the first-team in between spells as an ambassador of the club.
Japhet Tanganga technically remains on the books at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. After a frustrating couple of years, the 24-year-old left the club to join Augsburg on loan. However, the deal comes with an obligation to buy if certain conditions are met (via ).

Tanganga’s departure has arguably been on the cards for a little while. However, there was a spell when he appeared to be destined to be an important player for Tottenham.
It was Jose Mourinho who handed Tanganga his Premier League debut during his spell at Spurs. And King suggested that he was impressed by the youngster while he was working as a first-team coach under the Portuguese.

“There was a lot of good players at the club. Japhet Tanganga during that period of time started to come through. We started to do quite a bit of work with him, extra work,” he told .
“I was showing Jose some of his clips from the under-21s, under-23s. And I felt that he had some good habits as a defender we could work on. And he got his break during that period of time.”
Tanganga was just never quite able to take that next step from being a promising youngster into a real first-team option. He made 50 appearances across four years in all competitions.
It seems that perhaps he never secured a loan move at the right time for him. But the writing unfortunately appeared to be on the wall for him for a little while before he secured his loan move away in the summer.
It is a shame because he had some really bright moments. He was absolutely outstanding in the opening day win over Manchester City during Nuno Espirito Santo’s brief tenure.
But the Bundesliga has helped launch the careers of some superb players in the last few years. So it would not be a huge surprise if he does kick on and really impress – particularly if he has someone like Ledley King in his corner.