Xavi Simons has ruptured his ACL. His season is over. His World Cup is gone. And Tottenham now have four games left to prove that the most devastating injury of a devastating season will not be the one that finally breaks them.
It happened in the 58th minute at Molineux on Saturday. Simons went down after a challenge from Wolves defender Hugo Bueno, tried to run it off (the way you do when you’re not ready to accept what your body is telling you), then collapsed in front of the Tottenham medical staff.
He left Molineux on a stretcher. On Sunday evening, he confirmed on Instagram what the initial scans had already suggested. Ruptured ACL. Surgery in the coming weeks. The World Cup, gone. The season, gone. “None of it makes sense,” he wrote. “I’m heartbroken.”
In a season of almost unrelenting misery at N17, this was the cruellest blow yet. The timing made it unbearable. This was a player who’d spent months being underused, misused, and in the case of Igor Tudor, apparently invisible.
It took De Zerbi exactly one game to unlock what Simons was actually capable of. The goal against Brighton was extraordinary. The assist was immaculate. The performance was the first genuine glimpse of what this Tottenham team could become. And now he’s watching the rest of the fight from a treatment table.
Spurs are two points from safety with four games to play. They need fuel. The Simons injury can be it, if they choose to make it that.
This Tottenham squad has responded to adversity before
When Mohammed Kudus suffered his quad injury in January against Sunderland (the one that sparked the chain of events leading to Brobbey’s unpunished push on Romero, which ended Romero’s season), Tottenham fell apart. The winless run in 2026 stretches directly back to that moment. Eleven players out simultaneously at one point. A squad that had no answer when its best attacking players disappeared.
That’s one way to respond to serious injury. It’s not the only way.
De Zerbi arrived at a club in freefall. No wins in 2026. Players who’d stopped believing they could win games. A fanbase preparing for the worst. He changed things immediately, not through tactics or formations, but through connection.
The Italian has spoken about his players needing a “father-like figure,” someone who makes them feel important even when everything around them is chaotic. He arranged a squad dinner to build that connection before the Sunderland game.
He got a performance out of a group that hadn’t won a league match since December. He did all of this while Simons, Romero, Kudus, Maddison, Odobert, Davies, and Solanke were either absent or broken.
The losses keep coming. His response to them keeps mattering.
Four games, two points, no Xavi Simons, no excuses
Aston Villa away. Leeds at home. Chelsea away. Everton at home. That’s what the next four weeks look like for Tottenham Hotspur. Villa are in form and fighting for European places. Leeds are scrapping for survival. Chelsea are erratic enough to be beatable. Everton? That’s the game that could define everything.
Simons cannot play in any of them. The temptation (the very human temptation) is for the players who can to carry that grief onto the pitch and let it become an anchor. Let it drag them down. Use it as an excuse when things go wrong.
The alternative is to make it something else. Every great escape in football history has had a moment where the odds became absurd enough that they stopped mattering. Where the situation was so far gone that the only thing left to do was play without fear. Spurs are two points from safety. They won a game against a relegated side 1-0 with a substitute’s tap-in. Their best player for the run-in isn’t playing anymore.
That’s not a reason to give up. For a team with nothing left to lose, it might just be a reason to go and win something.
Xavi Simons said he has no doubt that together they will win this fight. The least the squad can do is prove him right.