The detail has retained a staggering quality. When Érik Lamela joined Tottenham Hotspur from Roma on 30 August last year, he cost a club record £30m but he did not start a Premier League fixture until 24 November. “It was weird and crazy for you to see?” Lamela says. “Well, it was a bit like that for me.”

The one-time River Plate prodigy had come off a wonderful season at Roma, when he scored 15 goals in Serie A and helped the club to reach the Coppa Italia final. The only downer was that they lost 1-0 to their crosstown rivals, Lazio.

The idea for Lamela was to shine in a rejigged Tottenham team, making light of the sale of Gareth Bale and to finish the season by lifting the World Cup with Argentina, ideally after beating Brazil in the final at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro.

Instead, Lamela experienced bitter frustration. The best-laid plans were reduced to rubble. It has gone down as the 22-year-old’s lost season, one in which he was waylaid by jarring assimilation difficulties, particularly with the language, and an injury that wiped him out from the turn of the year. The back problem also accounted for the World Cup dream. Lamela watched the final, which Argentina lost narrowly to Germany, at his house in London.

The winger made his Tottenham debut as a substitute in the 1-0 derby defeat at Arsenal on 1 September but it quickly became apparent that he did not enjoy the trust of the manager at the time, André Villas-Boas. Lamela had followed Franco Baldini, the sporting director, from Roma to Tottenham and the theory went that he was not a Villas-Boas signing. When Villas-Boas finally started Lamela in the league, it was in the 6-0 loss at Manchester City and, in what felt like a political statement, he left him on for the 90 minutes.

“I was not struggling with any injuries in my early weeks at the club,” Lamela says. “It was not until the first week in December that I felt the injury [initially in the thigh]. I didn’t want to miss out on any playing time so I carried on and then I had the problem with my back as a result.”

The bewilderment is still plain, although there is a pragmatic streak that runs through Lamela, which feels at odds with the flair of his on-field persona. “The manager has to call it as he sees it,” Lamela says. “There might have been people at that time who were showing better form. It’s down to me to be fit and in form. You’re not guaranteed a place just because you cost a certain amount of money.

“The thing about the manager is that he was very, very open and his style was to speak to every player individually all the time. It was kind of an open door, so on a couple of occasions I would speak to him. I told him that I hadn’t had the chance to play three, four, five games on the spin, to convince myself and other people that I can play in this league. But it’s all in the past now. I’ve managed to have more regular performances this season and continuity in the side. I’m proving to people that I can play in this league.”

The summer was a pivotal period. It was strange to watch the World Cup from afar. Lamela had been an ever-present in Alejandro Sabella’s Argentina squads last season – until the injury – and, as an aside, he has been called up every time thus far by the new manager, Tata Martino. If fit, he would surely have gone to Brazil. But Lamela saw the bigger picture.

“Of course, there was a part of me that thought I could have been there myself but it was the injury that was responsible for taking all that away from me,” Lamela says. “I’ve discussed it with my family and what I have now is like a fresh hope for my career. There is something to aim for, to strive for. I am still young. Hopefully, I can have another chance at the final.

“I had goose bumps before every match when I listened to the national anthem but when they got to the final, it was nothing but pride for the rest of the lads. I think we shaded the final. I think we almost deserved to have won.”

Weaker characters than Lamela might have wanted to walk away from a club after enduring such a season, to push for a move elsewhere. There was interest in him back in Italy. Tottenham were in a position where they could not sell – Lamela’s value had dropped after only three Premier League starts – but it was all academic. His determination to succeed at White Hart Lane had merely intensified.

“There was talk, not only in the summer, but in December – people had spoken about me in Italy and stuff,” Lamela says. “But I’d spoken with my family and my girlfriend and we were all convinced that my time would come, that once I got over this injury, I would be able to show what I could do. We were never going to leave this challenge.”

The ambition and the competitive fires burn inside Lamela. They always have done, since the days when he joined River Plate as a seven-year-old and tore it up in their junior ranks. As a 12-year-old, he scored more than 120 goals in a season and Barcelona tried to take him to Spain, just as they had done with Lionel Messi at a similar age. It was reported that Barcelona had offered Lamela an annual payment of €100,000, a house for the family, employment for his parents and education for him and his two brothers.

“I went over there,” Lamela says. “I trained with them. I even played a kids’ tournament with them but when I went back, I spoke to River and I decided to stay there.”

His mother, Miriam, is on record as saying that she did not want her son to have such responsibility when he was so young; the pressure of knowing that the family had emigrated to Barcelona because of him. But Lamela never had any doubts that he would become a professional footballer and there is an old video clip to prove it. At the age of 12, he told a Trans World Sport film crew that his dream was “to win the World Cup with Argentina, just like Maradona”. He adds: “I was born to play football. I may have been taught to play but everybody is born for something and I was born to play football.”

Lamela’s mentality was forged at River Plate. He made his debut for them at 17 and, by 18, he was a first-team regular, playing in the Superclásico against Boca Juniors. The Buenos Aires derby is one of the most heated in world football; in 2004, the Observer described it as making “the Old Firm game look like a primary school kick-about”.

Lamela was in the side that won 1-0 at River Plate’s El Monumental in November 2010 and he travelled to La Bombonera for the return in May 2011. By then, with Ariel Ortega having left the club, Lamela had the fabled No10 shirt. The River Plate team bus was pelted with rocks on the way in. “We got there but without any glass in the bus,” Lamela says, with a smile. Boca won 2-0.

“Those games were among the best things that have ever happened to me in my football career,” Lamela says. “I’d been at River since I was a seven-year-old kid and it’s something you dream of. Derby day in Buenos Aires is completely crazy and those sort of experiences have shaped me. When you’ve played at a club like River, who are a massive, massive club in Argentina – and Roma, the same, in Italy – you learn how to deal with the pressure. After that, you can live with anything.”

Lamela is talking at the Bruce Grove youth centre, where the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation’s skills project is helping to get youngsters off the streets and on to more positive pathways. It is his first UK interview and he speaks in Spanish, even though his English is improving. He can understand things better these days and he feels more a part of it in the dressing room.

“The language barrier was a bit of a factor last season but my first year at Roma [in 2011-12] wasn’t fantastic either, for similar reasons,” Lamela says. “It’s always tough when you go somewhere for the first year and maybe in the second year, you start to hit the ground running more. I didn’t speak Italian in my first year in Rome but I did in the second.”

Lamela wears wicked trainers and he has a slightly husky voice. He is a cool guy. He has a kickabout with a group of boys at the youth centre and a table tennis match, too. It turns out that he is a bit of a whizz. “He’s from Buenos Aires,” explains a friend of his. “In Buenos Aires, they learn how to win at everything.”

What shines through is Lamela’s love of football. “It’s the thing I enjoy most in life,” he says. “I live for football. I’m at my absolute happiest when I’m out on the field playing, or in training. If I go home, I’ll just have a kickabout there because I love the game so much.”

Lamela returned to London two weeks before the start of pre-season but his preparatory work had begun immediately after the final day of last season. “I started training [in Argentina] once the season had finished,” he says. “I had started to be almost pain-free so it was the time to start. Gradually, the pain went and I’m fine now.”

The season has begun promisingly for him. He has benefited from a proper pre-season and he has a new manager, Mauricio Pochettino, who is picking him. Lamela’s belief in his ability has always been total and he is certainly not afraid to try his moves. They have not always come off at Tottenham; Lamela feels raw and mercurial, and there have been misjudgments.

But it is clear that the talent is there, as his outrageous goal in the 5-1 home win over Asteras Tripoli proved. Previously, most people in England thought that the rabona was something off Strictly Come Dancing. Not any more.

“It’s not such a big deal,” Lamela says. “It was a split-second decision where the ball just fell right for me. I didn’t think before the game: ‘Right, I am going out to do one of those today.’ I was just trying to score. My philosophy is to win.”

Erik Lamela and Ledley King help teach the rabona at the Bruce Grove Youth Centre. Photograph: Alan Walter/Action Images

The Tottenham Hotspur Foundation’s skills project steers vulnerable young people away from crime and anti-social behaviour and engages them on to sport, education and employment pathways. Skills recently secured funding from the Premier League and People’s Postcode Lottery which has enabled the Foundation to roll the programme out across a number of key community hubs in Haringey