Well Tottenham fans, are you ready and buckled in for Ange Postecoglou’s ’s second season in charge? Will it mark a second coming and bring glory to the lane?
By Derek Ross
The electrified foretaste of anticipation abounds among the hinterlands of the mind. Last season the faithful bore witness to a collection of promising signs. The defensive high line, the clever interplay, the speed of movement, and the fact that losing Harry Kane had less effect on the team than a Neil Ruddock diet. The team couldn’t stop scoring. Indeed, half-way through last season only the goalkeeper had failed to get on the scoresheet.
Everyone loved them. They loved Ange. They loved Son and even smiled benignly on Romero. Everyone raved over the footballing buckle being swashed. And the pundits loved the style. A football team conducting a celestial choreography as luminous orbs pirouette amidst the ebony expanse. Those grey dull days of Antonio Conte, and Jose Mourinho were but a painful, forgettable chapter of yore. Ange Postecoglou was the new man occupying the aching hearts of Tottenham fans across the globe. Fans for whom winning something, anything had become a scar of desperation of the soul.
For more years than any of them care to be reminded, they had been locked in a tempest of anguish and yearning that had ensnared their very spirit in its unforgiving grasp.
Goals and points dried up quicker than a free bar at a wedding.
And yet, for the first nine games of the last campaign, Spurs were the most beautiful girl in the room. Son scored for fun. Bissouma looked like that commanding midfield presence that had been stolen away from Brighton. Romero took chances but not prisoners, and Maddison was surely the buy of the season. Then there’s Mickey Van Der Vin, a serious contender for any one hundred metre gold medal, but who could also play a bit and usually stopped anything that crossed his or anybody else’s path.
Contenders for the Premier League, surely a cup, and definitely shoe-in for a Champions League slot. Even Roy Keane was convinced, and Gary Neville regularly conducted a public love-in with the club on almost every occasion he was co-commentator on any of their fixtures.
The fans lapped up the carnival of front foot-football, the tantalizing glimpses above the knee of the raised skirt of what might have been if only the club hadn’t ben suddenly struck by so many injuries to crucial players at crucial times, and if only Romero could have remained a consummate defender instead of an unexploded bomb! Things fell apart. They always do.
Another Empty Season
Alas, as is so often the case in this particular corner of North London, the season ended in yet more fractured remnants of aspirations, scattered like stardust across the desolate expanse of disillusionment. Spurs have, arguably, the finest football stadium in world football, the finest training facilities in the Premier League.
They used to employ Harry Kane who can barely piss without scoring a goal. They had Son. Not too long ago they had Luka Modric, the finest midfield player of his generation. They had Cristian Erikson. They had Michael Carrick. They once had Kyle Walker who now hasn’t enough space in his home for all his accumulated silverware. They had Jose Mourinho. They had Antonio Conte. Serial winners who couldn’t administer enough medicine to cure the Tottenham virus of non-achievement.
Ange Ball To The Rescue!
And then suddenly the fans had ‘Angeball.’ And boy wasn’t ‘Angeball’ great to watch? And let’s be honest. Isn’t football played at its best supposed to be beautiful? A woven tapestry of collective artistry that enraptures the senses and stirs the soul with its visceral splendour. Audere est Facere is the club’s Latin motto. ‘To Dare is to Do.’ Alas, while there was plenty of daring, there wasn’t very much doing unless of course, you include Cristian Romero who would ‘do’ anyone who came within six feet of him!
And let it not be forgotten that the beautiful Tottenham Hotspur stadium screams it from the stadium banner, ‘The Game is About Glory.’ Yes, indeed it is. But for Spurs, glory is a but a starless sky and a continuing haunting melody of unfulfilled promise, a void that longs to be filled.
Glory currently resides at Manchester City who have been drowning in it season after season. Liverpool still feels its warm embrace. Chelsea and Manchester United have taken long sips from Glory’s cup and Arsenal almost reacquainted themselves with its delicious flavour.
For Tottenham Hotspur however, glory remains the missing child who not only refuses to come home but adamantly refuses to divulge their whereabouts. Through the empty years, team after team, and manager after manager has sought the child out. Millions upon millions have been shelled out on the search. Missing persons were called. The police have been forever on the lookout. Managerial bounty hunters were brought in to track him down. Nothing worked. Even a brand-new home was built to welcome him home and now Ange stands with arms outstretched, a father hopefully to welcome home the missing child.
Will Glory Come Home To Tottenham?
Tottenham will play second tier European football this season. Postecoglu, like every predecessor, will be given more millions by Daniel Levy to strengthen the squad in order to finally find glory and bring him home to the crucible of suffering. That’s where the souls of everyone connected to this great club are forged in the haunting melody of failure upon failure. Those who long only for the object of their devotion to rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of anguish. Including me!! Roll on kick-off!
Derek Ross is an occasional contributor for First Touch. He also writes for Soccer 360 and The Top Flight
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