The Mailbox wonders why Tottenham have become as revered as they are. Also: England’s right-backs, Mikel Arteta’s effect on Antonio Conte; and plenty on Thierry Henry…
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Spurs: a middling club with a nice ground
Because I’m 1) a human being, and 2) a football supporter (and therefore sometimes fallible and petty as said human being / football supporter) I often think about people I know or have encountered in any context of my footballing supportership. I try not to subscribe too much to tribalism and schadenfreude but sometimes it does get the better of me.
A few things occurred that had me paying attention to Tottenham hotspur the past half decade or so. A few yrs ago we matched in the european cup final which will instantly put an opposition club on your radar, all the art of war stuff comes out and you try on enemy boots and what not… you get in your head a bit and wonder if Poch was running a masterclass in psychology having players run over hot coals in the buildup to that final, and why wasn’t klopp doing similar ?
Randomly, a silly thing happened a few yrs before that final; I went to a Spurs-Barca exo at the Rose bowl and on the post-match coach ride back to the city centre, one of the spurs fans saw my wife and I in Liverpool shirts and inquired drunkenly, loudly, incessantly in front of a busload of match goers whether scousers still stole wheels off cars round Merseyside. The petty, fallible, human me duly filed that memory away in the recesses of my football brain archives which I had forgotten about until that CL final.
Then also around that time my step daughter started dating an otherwise nice young lad who happened to be a Spurs supporter; she quickly nailed her colors to the cockerel mast and hasnt looked back. So when that new stadium went up i had to go have a look myself, we did the tour, got the lanyard, cheekily asked the tourguide about a cheese room, privately made a mental note there were no trophy cabinets to speak, no mention of silverware or medals, just that they had the world’s longest bar serving every conceivable draught on tap and that you could bungee cord off the top of a viewing deck.
I was becoming a fully engaged observer of this football club while it also occurred to me then and there that perhaps bulldozing of the old White Hart lane was seen as viable since it wasn’t a structure housing any true footballing heritage.
In any event one doesn’t…
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