James Maddison reveals the classy gesture Pedro Porro made to him after transfer

James Maddison revealed that Pedro Porro offered him his shirt number when he first joined Tottenham before Harry Kane left the club.

When Maddison arrived at Spurs in the summer of 2023, his favoured No.10 was taken by the England captain and in a YouTube clip of him and Porro taking part in a club Q&A this week, Maddison revealed that the right-back had offered up his squad number. While trying to guess the date of Maddison's birthday, November 23, the Tottenham midfielder kept giving hints to the right-back but forgot the most obvious hint of all that it is Porro's shirt number.

"Ah, I should have said that. Remember when I first joined? Before Harry left, you were going to let me have 23, because it was my birthday. That's how I knew he was such a nice guy straight away. It didn't happen because Harry Kane left and then 10 became available," said Maddison with a glum face.

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Porro and Maddison quickly struck up a bond that summer with the midfielder calling the defender "Peter" around the training ground from then on. The bubbly Spaniard is a popular player in the squad and also one its more durable, having played far more minutes than anyone else last season on the way to Tottenham winning the Europa League.

The right-back's character comes from his grandfather. The young Pedro grew up with his grandparents, Antonio and Maria, in the small town of Don Benito in the west of Spain because his parents were always busy working to put food on the table.

Earlier this year Porro told football.london about Antonio, who still calls him after matches to dissect his performances.

"For me, he's the most important person in my life. At six-years-old, I went to my first club and my grandfather asked me, 'you want to play football, with everything, the people, the stadiums? You have the character?'," the Spaniard remembered. "I said 'yes'. I didn't care, I just wanted to play football, only football.

"So 10 years later, again he asked the same question 'you have character?', I said 'yes'. This is 10 years on! 'Yes grandfather'.

"I then had my first trial as a right-back at Rayo Vallecano. I came back to the hotel one night because the trial was only for one week. My grandfather told me: 'In one week you go to Madrid and play and after this, I'll talk to you'.

"So I go to the training ground, we train and then played this one game and we came back from the trip. After that he said to me: 'I'm going back to Don Benito and you stay here alone. You go, go, go and remember what I said, you have character, you have a winning mentality and everyday this will be easy for you'.

"'Ok grandfather' I said and in this moment, he is everything to me, the most important person in my life. This is my grandfather Antonio."

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