Premier League Soccer
Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal. Sunday 3 March 2013.
The north London derby at White Hart Lane is an important one this year: both teams are vying for a spot in next term's Champions League, for which the top four teams in the Premier League will qualify.
Currently Tottenham lie in fourth place and Arsenal in fifth. Spurs will be confident here at home as they currently have one of Europe's best players in the form of Welshman Gareth Bale; he is competing with Barcelona's Lionel Messi in terms of the number of Euro goals he has scored this season. They have finished below Arsenal in the league for the past 17 seasons.
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger is under pressure because of his stated aim at the beginning of the season of finishing in the top four by the end of it. His critics say that a big club like Arsenal should be aiming to win the Premier League. However, his club have a new stadium to pay for, and Champions League qualification is paramount.
It looks like Tottenham are planning to go with a 4-4-2 formation, with Arsenal having just the one forward in a 4-5-1.
Spurs kick off and work the ball to the right to make use of the speedy Lennon.
6' An exciting length-of-the-field run by Kyle Walker with the ball has the crowd on its feet, but it comes to naught and he has to run all the way back to his defensive position. 10' Spurs French goalkeeper Lloris, who has recently replaced U.S. fan-favorite Brad Friedel, makes a fine stop by rushing off his goal line.
16' Superstar Bale is finding little space between the Arsenal defensive back line and midfield. Just as AC Milan recently snuffed out the threat posed by Barcelona's Lionel Messi, by 'collapsing' 2 or 3 defenders on him as soon as he received the ball, Arsenal are doing to Bale.
20' Sigurdsson, on the left, plays an inswinging curling ball over the top of the Arsenal defense and Bale, untracked, just fails to make contact with it: a dangerous moment for the Arsenal defense.
26' A moment of rarity when we see Kyle Walker, Spurs' right-back appear in attack on the left wing! This is reminiscent of the 'total football' style of the Dutch national team of the 1970s.
36' The midfield stalemate is suddenly broken as, again from the left, Sigurdsson again feeds Bale, whose run has beaten the offside trap. He clips the ball expertly with the outside of his left foot past Arsenal keeper Szczesny. Good pass, great finish. 1 - 0. This is the fifth consecutive game in which he has scored, and a good example why teams like Real Madrid are interested in buying him.
38' Spurs' Parker, yet again from the left side of midfield, plays a similar ball in for the speedy Lennon. He takes a couple of touches to round Szczesny and finishes with aplomb. 2 - 0.
Two-nil at half-time looks a bit flattering to Tottenham, but the Arsenal defenders have neglected to track the Tottenham runners.
50' After good work by Arsenal's Welshman Ramsey, Arsenal win a free kick on the left. It is swung in and Arsenal's German giant Per Mertesacker leaps to head the ball, which comes off Bale's head and ends up in the Tottenham net. 2 – 1.
59' Bale's mixed game continues as he misses a cross from the left and he balloons the ball over the Arsenal goal from close in.
62' Arsenal bring on Czech player Rosicky, and his quick feet and first-time passing leads to one the prettiest passing sequences seen in the Premiership this season. 69' Despite having the lead, Spurs keep pressing and Sigurdsson surely must score, but he squares the ball instead of shooting.
88' Arsenal's Walcott - desperate to become the England national team's center-forward - takes a free kick that just misses the Tottenham goal.
93' Arsenal go close in a frenetic finish, but this exciting match ends.
Tottenham Hotspur 2 – 1 Arsenal.
© Peter Rodd & Soccerphile 2013
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Minggu, 03 Maret 2013
Selasa, 08 Februari 2011
The Cockerel has landed
Tottenham Hotspur have released an artist's impression of their desired new 60,000-seat home on the site of London's Olympic Stadium.
After it was initially thought Spurs were merely seeking leverage to persuade Haringey Council to approve their White Hart Lane redevelopment, the picture leaves no doubt that Stratford is their intended destination in 2012.
Chairman Daniel Levy is talking of East London as their one and only option right now as the postponed decision on the preferred bidder is due within a week.
West Ham have the support of most of the athletics community, including the IOC and 2012 chief Sebastian Coe, as well as the majority of Londoners polled, but Spurs' greater financial clout seems to be edging ahead as the Legacy Committee pore over the economic promises. The call for more time to decide must be ominous for the Hammers - on paper they should have been crowned winners already because unlike Tottenham they had pledged to retain the running track.
While West Ham's Vice Chairman Karren Brady invokes the Queen's name and speaks of a "corporate crime" should Spurs triumph, she is equally aware that Spurs have stolen a march on the issue of athletics legacy: They are promising to develop Crystal Palace athletics stadium into a 25,000-seater open all year when West Ham will only leave the larger Olympic Stadium open for track and field for 20 days.
It is impossible to miss the Canary Wharf skyline lurking strategically above the stadium in the artist's impression, a symbol of the big money Tottenham are hoping will carry them across the finish line.
(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile
Tags
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After it was initially thought Spurs were merely seeking leverage to persuade Haringey Council to approve their White Hart Lane redevelopment, the picture leaves no doubt that Stratford is their intended destination in 2012.
Chairman Daniel Levy is talking of East London as their one and only option right now as the postponed decision on the preferred bidder is due within a week.
West Ham have the support of most of the athletics community, including the IOC and 2012 chief Sebastian Coe, as well as the majority of Londoners polled, but Spurs' greater financial clout seems to be edging ahead as the Legacy Committee pore over the economic promises. The call for more time to decide must be ominous for the Hammers - on paper they should have been crowned winners already because unlike Tottenham they had pledged to retain the running track.
While West Ham's Vice Chairman Karren Brady invokes the Queen's name and speaks of a "corporate crime" should Spurs triumph, she is equally aware that Spurs have stolen a march on the issue of athletics legacy: They are promising to develop Crystal Palace athletics stadium into a 25,000-seater open all year when West Ham will only leave the larger Olympic Stadium open for track and field for 20 days.
It is impossible to miss the Canary Wharf skyline lurking strategically above the stadium in the artist's impression, a symbol of the big money Tottenham are hoping will carry them across the finish line.
(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile
Tags
World Cup Pens
World Cup Posters
Euro 2012 football
Minggu, 23 Januari 2011
Olympic stadium a fight for soccer's soul...?
Football and the Olympics does matter after all.
By the end of this week either Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United will be in pole position to take over London's Olympic Stadium once the flame goes out on the 12th of August 2012. The battle for Stratford has turned into a fire-fight between two capital clubs with all manner of voices wading in, from politicians to Pelé.
But whichever club wins the right to move house next year, the decision will also record for posterity just what is driving the soul of British sport at this moment. It is price versus value and by the end we will see just how much money can buy.
Olympic stadia are beautiful, but what is to be done with them once the party is over? Athletics just does not pay, however popular it will appear for a month at the games. Next year, the track events will as ever be the blue riband of the games, sports amateur in tradition if not in practice anymore. Although Baron de Coubertin's Corinthian ideals may now be a quaint memory, the fact Britain does not possess a single venue able to host a major track championship is painful proof of just how far athletics lags behind the professional team sports in money-making.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the UK team finished fourth in the medals table, beaten only by superpowers China, Russia and the United States, yet a closer inspection reveals only four of Britain's 47 medals were won inside the main arena. The velodrome by contrast yielded sixteen. The 2012 stadium cost the British taxpayer half a billion pounds and the odd athletics meet alone will not pay for its future upkeep. Enter football, riding to the rescue.
Tottenham are thriving on this financial uncertainty, and are wielding the buying power of their fans - 36,000 season-ticket holders and 40,000 on a waiting list, as their battering ram on the doors of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the body who will pick the winne
r. Sold out Spurs matches and the rest of the site under the aegis of AEG, who transformed the Millennium Dome from a ridiculed white elephant into the hugely successful O2 Arena, can surely reduce the tax bill faster than West Ham can and reassure the anxious politicians in this age of austerity.
And if there were any doubt about which tenant would be the more lucrative, Spurs' Champions League adventure this season stands in sharp contrast to the Hammers' relegation fight. Both clubs are ogling a new stadium for free and the proceeds from auctioning off their own real estate, although the Hammers need the money more.
West Ham are playing what they know are less tangible but more respectable cards - those of trust, altruism and tribalism: They are hoping the promise of an athletics legacy for the nation at the time of bidding is an oath of honour, that the OPLC will feel that track and field, however unprofitable, deserves at least one big arena when football already has so many, and the fact that the locality is far more claret and blue than white and navy territory.
A club crossing town after a century in Haringey does go against the natural order of the sport, whose roots lie in brawls between medieval parishes, but the game has come a long way since those Shrovetide tussles. In only the last ten years the Premier League has metamorphosed into an international division based in England while London, an economic hot-spot conveniently located halfway between the financial hotspots of Asia and East Coast America, has also been transformed by a globalised influx which has left its old face a folktale.
Franchise moves are common in American sports where many areas of population lack professional sports teams but less so in England, where a wealthy investor need only pluck a struggling club and whisk it through the divisions towards the big time.
The Olympic environs are virgin territory anyway, as is much of East London's growth corridor and the monied business district of Canary Wharf, whose cityscape resembles North America, not England. Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy sees relocation as part of a bigger picture for this part of the capital and doubtless salivates over the shining new transport links to Stratford while his club's fans struggle to reach White Hart Lane, a nice ground in an otherwise grotty urban neighbourhood.
And Spurs fans mostly do not come from Tottenham these days, any more than West Ham's hail from the Bangladeshi area around Upton Park, so talk of tribal land rights can sound odd in the mobile London of 2011.
West Ham have the moral case if there is one, based on the promises London's bidding team used to convince the International Olympic Committee to pick them ahead of Paris in the first place. The IOC and world athletics' governing body have rushed to their aid in the final days of the campaign.
The IAAF chief Lamine Diack did not mince his words, speaking of London's "big lie" were it to choose Spurs, adding for good measure,
"And after that it is a betrayal...You can consider yourself dead. You are finished."
Sebastian Coe, the public face of London 2012 was unambiguous: "We have a moral obligation."
Tottenham have brushed aside claims they are arrogantly ignoring Olympic promises by pledging instead to redevelop Crystal Palace athletics stadium to 25,000, the initial planned capacity of the Olympic stadium after the games. With the hours counting down until D-Day, Spurs wheeled out Pelé, Jimmy Greaves and their coach Harry Redknapp to stress how football and athletics do not mix happily in the same arena, a fact which is hard to deny. But West Ham landed a counter-punch from an unlikely angle.
Out of the blue last week, Crystal Palace F.C. announced they intend to develop the nearby athletics venue into a new football stadium, returning to their ancestral home where they started in 1905. The Eagles' territorial claim on that site is pre-eminent, their financial backing as yet invisible. Palace could yet even strike a deal with Spurs and end up with views across an eight-lane running track.
Sliding stands as in the Stade de France would have solved the sight lines problem, but the Olympics were won in the heady days of New Labour's noughties boom before the spectre of financial crash appeared around construction time. The discount re-design which emerged after recalculations neatly encapsulated the new age of western austerity after Beijing's tour-de-force 'Birds Nest' of 2008.
What once seemed like a shoe-in for Leyton Orient, the closest club to the Olympics site, has now become a spat between two Premier League sides that is starting to turn ugly. A gazumping
by Spurs would deal a near-fatal blow to Britain's hopes of ever hosting a major athletics tournament again, whilst confirming the great god of football rules unchallenged, making up the rules as he goes along.
But while the rising anger from the athletics world at Tottenham's interloping could swing it for West Ham, the race for gold and silver still looks too tight to call.
The Hammers have a more wholesome claim, which chimes with the Olympic spirit in which the stadium was created in the first place, but let us not be fooled. It is purely money, or the lack of it in their instance, which motivates any football club to subject its supporters to a dreaded running track.
(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile
Tags
World Cup Pens
World Cup Posters
Euro 2012 football
By the end of this week either Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United will be in pole position to take over London's Olympic Stadium once the flame goes out on the 12th of August 2012. The battle for Stratford has turned into a fire-fight between two capital clubs with all manner of voices wading in, from politicians to Pelé.
But whichever club wins the right to move house next year, the decision will also record for posterity just what is driving the soul of British sport at this moment. It is price versus value and by the end we will see just how much money can buy.
Olympic stadia are beautiful, but what is to be done with them once the party is over? Athletics just does not pay, however popular it will appear for a month at the games. Next year, the track events will as ever be the blue riband of the games, sports amateur in tradition if not in practice anymore. Although Baron de Coubertin's Corinthian ideals may now be a quaint memory, the fact Britain does not possess a single venue able to host a major track championship is painful proof of just how far athletics lags behind the professional team sports in money-making.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the UK team finished fourth in the medals table, beaten only by superpowers China, Russia and the United States, yet a closer inspection reveals only four of Britain's 47 medals were won inside the main arena. The velodrome by contrast yielded sixteen. The 2012 stadium cost the British taxpayer half a billion pounds and the odd athletics meet alone will not pay for its future upkeep. Enter football, riding to the rescue.
Tottenham are thriving on this financial uncertainty, and are wielding the buying power of their fans - 36,000 season-ticket holders and 40,000 on a waiting list, as their battering ram on the doors of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the body who will pick the winne
r. Sold out Spurs matches and the rest of the site under the aegis of AEG, who transformed the Millennium Dome from a ridiculed white elephant into the hugely successful O2 Arena, can surely reduce the tax bill faster than West Ham can and reassure the anxious politicians in this age of austerity.And if there were any doubt about which tenant would be the more lucrative, Spurs' Champions League adventure this season stands in sharp contrast to the Hammers' relegation fight. Both clubs are ogling a new stadium for free and the proceeds from auctioning off their own real estate, although the Hammers need the money more.
West Ham are playing what they know are less tangible but more respectable cards - those of trust, altruism and tribalism: They are hoping the promise of an athletics legacy for the nation at the time of bidding is an oath of honour, that the OPLC will feel that track and field, however unprofitable, deserves at least one big arena when football already has so many, and the fact that the locality is far more claret and blue than white and navy territory.
A club crossing town after a century in Haringey does go against the natural order of the sport, whose roots lie in brawls between medieval parishes, but the game has come a long way since those Shrovetide tussles. In only the last ten years the Premier League has metamorphosed into an international division based in England while London, an economic hot-spot conveniently located halfway between the financial hotspots of Asia and East Coast America, has also been transformed by a globalised influx which has left its old face a folktale.
Franchise moves are common in American sports where many areas of population lack professional sports teams but less so in England, where a wealthy investor need only pluck a struggling club and whisk it through the divisions towards the big time.
The Olympic environs are virgin territory anyway, as is much of East London's growth corridor and the monied business district of Canary Wharf, whose cityscape resembles North America, not England. Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy sees relocation as part of a bigger picture for this part of the capital and doubtless salivates over the shining new transport links to Stratford while his club's fans struggle to reach White Hart Lane, a nice ground in an otherwise grotty urban neighbourhood.
And Spurs fans mostly do not come from Tottenham these days, any more than West Ham's hail from the Bangladeshi area around Upton Park, so talk of tribal land rights can sound odd in the mobile London of 2011.
West Ham have the moral case if there is one, based on the promises London's bidding team used to convince the International Olympic Committee to pick them ahead of Paris in the first place. The IOC and world athletics' governing body have rushed to their aid in the final days of the campaign.
The IAAF chief Lamine Diack did not mince his words, speaking of London's "big lie" were it to choose Spurs, adding for good measure,
"And after that it is a betrayal...You can consider yourself dead. You are finished."
Sebastian Coe, the public face of London 2012 was unambiguous: "We have a moral obligation."
Tottenham have brushed aside claims they are arrogantly ignoring Olympic promises by pledging instead to redevelop Crystal Palace athletics stadium to 25,000, the initial planned capacity of the Olympic stadium after the games. With the hours counting down until D-Day, Spurs wheeled out Pelé, Jimmy Greaves and their coach Harry Redknapp to stress how football and athletics do not mix happily in the same arena, a fact which is hard to deny. But West Ham landed a counter-punch from an unlikely angle.
Out of the blue last week, Crystal Palace F.C. announced they intend to develop the nearby athletics venue into a new football stadium, returning to their ancestral home where they started in 1905. The Eagles' territorial claim on that site is pre-eminent, their financial backing as yet invisible. Palace could yet even strike a deal with Spurs and end up with views across an eight-lane running track.
Sliding stands as in the Stade de France would have solved the sight lines problem, but the Olympics were won in the heady days of New Labour's noughties boom before the spectre of financial crash appeared around construction time. The discount re-design which emerged after recalculations neatly encapsulated the new age of western austerity after Beijing's tour-de-force 'Birds Nest' of 2008.
What once seemed like a shoe-in for Leyton Orient, the closest club to the Olympics site, has now become a spat between two Premier League sides that is starting to turn ugly. A gazumping
by Spurs would deal a near-fatal blow to Britain's hopes of ever hosting a major athletics tournament again, whilst confirming the great god of football rules unchallenged, making up the rules as he goes along.But while the rising anger from the athletics world at Tottenham's interloping could swing it for West Ham, the race for gold and silver still looks too tight to call.
The Hammers have a more wholesome claim, which chimes with the Olympic spirit in which the stadium was created in the first place, but let us not be fooled. It is purely money, or the lack of it in their instance, which motivates any football club to subject its supporters to a dreaded running track.
(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile
Tags
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World Cup Posters
Euro 2012 football
Jumat, 26 November 2010
The Tottenham tempest hits town
Tottenham Hotspur are riding some wave. A point off the top four in England, the Londoners have set the UEFA Champions League on fire in their inaugural season on the biggest stage, playing some dazzling attacking football. And after years of its fans craving glory the club is swiftly having to adjust to its new-found success.
A novice in the conti
nent's top class, North London's other giant has qualified for the knock-out stages of the Champions League in 2011, and currently sits atop of a group containing reigning champions Internazionale, whom they swatted aside 3-1 at White Hart Lane.
Spurs also downed Werder Bremen 3-0 and Twente Enschede 4-1 at home, drew 2-2 away in Germany and netted three at San Siro, despite going down 4-3 to Inter in the end. While their domestic form is struggling to keep up, Tottenham are poised to break into the Champions League places again and their supporters are still wallowing from their most prized scalp - a 3-2 win at neighbours Arsenal. The immediate plaudits for this unexpectedly sterling season must go to mercurial manager Harry Redknapp.
The son of an East End docker, Redknapp might have a questionable record in the transfer market and speak like a cockney gaffer plucked via a time warp from the 1970s, but he has proved more than capable of drawing the best out of cultured continentals such as Luka Modric, Roman Pavlyuchenko and Rafael Van der Vaart. In addition he has proved to Fabio Capello how Peter Crouch, Jermain Defoe and Aaron Lennon, bit-part players in the national team, can be employed to devastating effect.
A club renowned for favouring style over substance, Spurs' expansive football has been a joy to behold his season, and more than a few beady eyes have been cast in the direction of their Welsh wing wizard Gareth Bale, whose left-sided marauding cut Javier Zanetti and the rest of Inter's seasoned backline to shreds. Starting at left-back, Bale bagged a hat-trick in
Italy with near-identical charges up the flank followed by finishes driven into the far corner, a firework display that had the whole Italian press cooing with admiration and relieved at Inter having scored enough to win.
A rich blend of diverse talents and an attack-minded manager has brewed up a Tottenham tipple that has forced the UEFA powers-that-be to take notice. Bale's power surges on the left are complemented by Lennon's waggle-dancing on the right flank; Defoe's sprints and clinical finishes up the middle are mixed with Crouch's air superiority and Pavlyuchenko's clever runs and deadly ground strokes. With a strong back four marshalled by French veteran William Gallas in order to shield an at-times erratic goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes, the strings are pulled in the centre by the underrated Cameroon international Benoit Assou-Ekotto, the assured Jermaine Jenas, a classy distributor whom England will surely turn to again, while the ensemble is completed by the maestro in the middle, the Croatian conductor Modric.
The addition of a Dutch master at the end of the transfer window might have upset the balance, but Van der Vaart has landed with aplomb, scoring and creating in a free role, with only the high-octane pace of an attritional North London derby a game too far for him.
We should not begudge Tottenham their place in the sun as their trophy cabine
t has a cobweb or two. Considered along with Everton one of the 'Big Five' in the 1980s, their last big trophy was 1984's UEFA Cup, while you have to go as far back as 1961 for the last time Spurs were champions of England. After years of suffering as the nearly men, Redknapp's remedy is working a treat.
In his apparently simple tactical plan and motivational instincts there is even something of the Brian Clough about him, although do not be fooled by the bravado: Redknapp drives from Dorset to North London every day with assistant coach Kevin Bond beside him, discussing in depth their tactical options.
Redknapp is one of the last of the truly English managers, breezily bypassing foreign additives in his recipe book: Tottenham pioneered the use of a Director of Football in England in 1998 with David Pleat but Redknapp eschews such continental sophistication, taking the word 'manager' he grew up with literally - he is the man who runs the club at the end of the day. And with the exception of the former Scotland striker Joe Jordan, the entire coaching staff is English, at a time when 15 of the 20 Premier League coaches come from outside England and seven from beyond the British Isles.
If Spurs have an Achilles heel it is surely in their inexperience. Their open and attacking style could well be found out by the stronger, wiser teams to be found in the knock-out stages, clubs battle-hardened by the yearly Champions League competition Spurs have yet to know intimately.
The warning signs are there: After only 20 minutes of play in their top-level European exodus, Spurs found themselves trailing Young Boys 3-0 in Berne, before pulling two back in Switzerland and thrashing them 4-0 in the return leg. Ditto in Italy, where Inter sailed into a 4-0 advantage over Spurs with only 35 minutes gone, slicing the Londoners' defence open from all angles in a footballing bloodbath, leaving Tottenham looking desperately out of their depth befo
re Bale pulled the trigger and fired in three goals.
A quick glance at the company they will be keeping in the last sixteen should make them draw breath - Bayern, Inter, Milan, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea have all made it through along with tricky customers like Lyon, Schalke and Valencia. In other words, we will surely find out what Spurs are made of before long.
The metamorphosis from a bridesmaid club has been so rapid and heady the fans will be wondering if it can last. And two possible obstacles are already visible on the horizon - the loss of Redknapp to the England job in 2012 and a move to a new stadium.
Redknapp has been explicit about his desire for the top job in English football, and with Capello's Three Lions mumbling rather than roaring, the Londoner is surely next up for the impossible job, if, as expected, the Italian's megabucks contract is not renewed after the European Championship in Poland & Ukraine. The Football Association have already said they will hire English next time, which presumably means a choice between Redknapp and Roy Hodgson. When Redknapp left Portsmouth and West Ham in recent seasons, both clubs ended up relegated within a couple of years, an omen for Tottenham with only a year and a half to go until the England job is up for grabs again.
The other upheaval on the cards concerns a move away from White Hart Lane - home to the club since 1899. The Lane has a double problem - its famous inaccessibility and relatively low capacity.
In a city blessed with the world's largest underground railway and a vast network of train and bus services, Spurs' stadium for some reason remains frustratingly hard to reach. The closest London Underground station is a good half hour's walk while the Toy
town trains arriving intermittently at Tottenham Hale are a wholly inadequate service for a large arena.
36,000 seats also puts Spurs at a financial disadvantage compared to Manchester City (48,000), Arsenal (60,000) and Man Utd (76,000), a stunted revenue stream year after year.
Expansion to 56,000 seats on the existing site entails demolishing a slew of nearby buildings and planning permission for a multi-use shopping, hotel and sporting complex. Planning permission has been granted by the local council and the Mayor of London, leaving a refusal by the Secretary of State the last possible hurdle.
Yet Spurs have also applied to take over the Olympic Stadium across town in Stratford after the games finish in 2012, placing them in direct competition with the more local West Ham United and with British Athletics, whose demand for a running track would also conflict with Spurs' plans. What at first seemed to be an obvious leverage tactic to force Haringey Council's hand now appears a frightening possibility for die-hards, who are aghast at the prospect of Tottenham leaving their home patch. Spurs have AEG's millions on board, as well as the potential backing of billionaire Joe Lewis. In addition, London 2012's vice-chairman is a club director. In March 2011 we will know for sure, but within a month more will be clear.
Although the Haringey option appears the better of the two, Chairman Daniel Levy is believed to be genuinely excited about his club moving for free into an iconic stadium, which unlike White Hart Lane will have excellent transport links and proximity to the financial hub of Canary Wharf and London's expanding eastern corridor. The spruce surroundings of the Olympic Park are a world away from Tottenham High Road, one of the most impoverished and unappealing parts of London.
Whatever happens on and off the field, the next two years will surely be some of the most historic in the history of this 138 year-old team, and certainly the most exciting for decades.
(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile
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A novice in the conti
nent's top class, North London's other giant has qualified for the knock-out stages of the Champions League in 2011, and currently sits atop of a group containing reigning champions Internazionale, whom they swatted aside 3-1 at White Hart Lane.Spurs also downed Werder Bremen 3-0 and Twente Enschede 4-1 at home, drew 2-2 away in Germany and netted three at San Siro, despite going down 4-3 to Inter in the end. While their domestic form is struggling to keep up, Tottenham are poised to break into the Champions League places again and their supporters are still wallowing from their most prized scalp - a 3-2 win at neighbours Arsenal. The immediate plaudits for this unexpectedly sterling season must go to mercurial manager Harry Redknapp.
The son of an East End docker, Redknapp might have a questionable record in the transfer market and speak like a cockney gaffer plucked via a time warp from the 1970s, but he has proved more than capable of drawing the best out of cultured continentals such as Luka Modric, Roman Pavlyuchenko and Rafael Van der Vaart. In addition he has proved to Fabio Capello how Peter Crouch, Jermain Defoe and Aaron Lennon, bit-part players in the national team, can be employed to devastating effect.
A club renowned for favouring style over substance, Spurs' expansive football has been a joy to behold his season, and more than a few beady eyes have been cast in the direction of their Welsh wing wizard Gareth Bale, whose left-sided marauding cut Javier Zanetti and the rest of Inter's seasoned backline to shreds. Starting at left-back, Bale bagged a hat-trick in
Italy with near-identical charges up the flank followed by finishes driven into the far corner, a firework display that had the whole Italian press cooing with admiration and relieved at Inter having scored enough to win.A rich blend of diverse talents and an attack-minded manager has brewed up a Tottenham tipple that has forced the UEFA powers-that-be to take notice. Bale's power surges on the left are complemented by Lennon's waggle-dancing on the right flank; Defoe's sprints and clinical finishes up the middle are mixed with Crouch's air superiority and Pavlyuchenko's clever runs and deadly ground strokes. With a strong back four marshalled by French veteran William Gallas in order to shield an at-times erratic goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes, the strings are pulled in the centre by the underrated Cameroon international Benoit Assou-Ekotto, the assured Jermaine Jenas, a classy distributor whom England will surely turn to again, while the ensemble is completed by the maestro in the middle, the Croatian conductor Modric.
The addition of a Dutch master at the end of the transfer window might have upset the balance, but Van der Vaart has landed with aplomb, scoring and creating in a free role, with only the high-octane pace of an attritional North London derby a game too far for him.
We should not begudge Tottenham their place in the sun as their trophy cabine
t has a cobweb or two. Considered along with Everton one of the 'Big Five' in the 1980s, their last big trophy was 1984's UEFA Cup, while you have to go as far back as 1961 for the last time Spurs were champions of England. After years of suffering as the nearly men, Redknapp's remedy is working a treat.In his apparently simple tactical plan and motivational instincts there is even something of the Brian Clough about him, although do not be fooled by the bravado: Redknapp drives from Dorset to North London every day with assistant coach Kevin Bond beside him, discussing in depth their tactical options.
Redknapp is one of the last of the truly English managers, breezily bypassing foreign additives in his recipe book: Tottenham pioneered the use of a Director of Football in England in 1998 with David Pleat but Redknapp eschews such continental sophistication, taking the word 'manager' he grew up with literally - he is the man who runs the club at the end of the day. And with the exception of the former Scotland striker Joe Jordan, the entire coaching staff is English, at a time when 15 of the 20 Premier League coaches come from outside England and seven from beyond the British Isles.
If Spurs have an Achilles heel it is surely in their inexperience. Their open and attacking style could well be found out by the stronger, wiser teams to be found in the knock-out stages, clubs battle-hardened by the yearly Champions League competition Spurs have yet to know intimately.
The warning signs are there: After only 20 minutes of play in their top-level European exodus, Spurs found themselves trailing Young Boys 3-0 in Berne, before pulling two back in Switzerland and thrashing them 4-0 in the return leg. Ditto in Italy, where Inter sailed into a 4-0 advantage over Spurs with only 35 minutes gone, slicing the Londoners' defence open from all angles in a footballing bloodbath, leaving Tottenham looking desperately out of their depth befo
re Bale pulled the trigger and fired in three goals.A quick glance at the company they will be keeping in the last sixteen should make them draw breath - Bayern, Inter, Milan, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea have all made it through along with tricky customers like Lyon, Schalke and Valencia. In other words, we will surely find out what Spurs are made of before long.
The metamorphosis from a bridesmaid club has been so rapid and heady the fans will be wondering if it can last. And two possible obstacles are already visible on the horizon - the loss of Redknapp to the England job in 2012 and a move to a new stadium.
Redknapp has been explicit about his desire for the top job in English football, and with Capello's Three Lions mumbling rather than roaring, the Londoner is surely next up for the impossible job, if, as expected, the Italian's megabucks contract is not renewed after the European Championship in Poland & Ukraine. The Football Association have already said they will hire English next time, which presumably means a choice between Redknapp and Roy Hodgson. When Redknapp left Portsmouth and West Ham in recent seasons, both clubs ended up relegated within a couple of years, an omen for Tottenham with only a year and a half to go until the England job is up for grabs again.
The other upheaval on the cards concerns a move away from White Hart Lane - home to the club since 1899. The Lane has a double problem - its famous inaccessibility and relatively low capacity.
In a city blessed with the world's largest underground railway and a vast network of train and bus services, Spurs' stadium for some reason remains frustratingly hard to reach. The closest London Underground station is a good half hour's walk while the Toy
town trains arriving intermittently at Tottenham Hale are a wholly inadequate service for a large arena.36,000 seats also puts Spurs at a financial disadvantage compared to Manchester City (48,000), Arsenal (60,000) and Man Utd (76,000), a stunted revenue stream year after year.
Expansion to 56,000 seats on the existing site entails demolishing a slew of nearby buildings and planning permission for a multi-use shopping, hotel and sporting complex. Planning permission has been granted by the local council and the Mayor of London, leaving a refusal by the Secretary of State the last possible hurdle.
Yet Spurs have also applied to take over the Olympic Stadium across town in Stratford after the games finish in 2012, placing them in direct competition with the more local West Ham United and with British Athletics, whose demand for a running track would also conflict with Spurs' plans. What at first seemed to be an obvious leverage tactic to force Haringey Council's hand now appears a frightening possibility for die-hards, who are aghast at the prospect of Tottenham leaving their home patch. Spurs have AEG's millions on board, as well as the potential backing of billionaire Joe Lewis. In addition, London 2012's vice-chairman is a club director. In March 2011 we will know for sure, but within a month more will be clear.
Although the Haringey option appears the better of the two, Chairman Daniel Levy is believed to be genuinely excited about his club moving for free into an iconic stadium, which unlike White Hart Lane will have excellent transport links and proximity to the financial hub of Canary Wharf and London's expanding eastern corridor. The spruce surroundings of the Olympic Park are a world away from Tottenham High Road, one of the most impoverished and unappealing parts of London.
Whatever happens on and off the field, the next two years will surely be some of the most historic in the history of this 138 year-old team, and certainly the most exciting for decades.
(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile
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