South Sea Bubble

The Pre-season Friendly. What’s that all about then?

These days they are primarily an exercise for Premier League Clubs to market their ‘brand’ around the world. Hopefully the club does some good work in local communities while they are there, but as well as getting players back to fitness and form, and in some cases the development of commercial relationships between clubs, the primary exercise is to market their brand, while earning as much money as possible through sponsorship and TV rights, and often flogging shirts back at an extorted price to people that made them in the first place for peanuts.

Football merchandise has mastered the art of capitalism as mentioned in the 1991 Billy Bragg song, ‘North Sea Bubble’ – “You keep buying these things but you don’t need them/But as long as you are comfortable it feels like freedom”. (Still, I have got a wardrobe full of some lovely Spurs gear).

We can often turn a blind eye to whoring of our clubs abroad in the hope this will fund a new world class striker. Two weeks to go until the start of the season, and we are still hoping.

Not that I mind Spurs playing pre-season friendlies abroad per se; if I had both the money and the time I’d try and go to the some of these games overseas, because football is the vehicle of my choosing to visit a few different countries. A few years ago I saw Spurs play a meaningless post-season friendly in the USA, a match I wouldn’t have gone to were it in Barnsley, for example (a town I found to be less than hospitable on my last visit there after David Ginola ran through their team in 1999). Spurs were a great excuse to go to Washington DC, Atlantic City and New York. The 1-0 defeat at the hands of an MLS side was inconsequential.

Likewise, yesterday, it was the idea of Spurs playing on a Saturday afternoon in Brighton in July that appealed. It promised to be a good day out, and it was.

About an hour after the final whistle I finally got back into Brighton from the ground at Falmer (nine minutes on the train, over half an hour in the queue) and felt that the £11 breakfast I had in The Lakes that morning hadn’t filled me up for the day as I planned. Both my friend and I now wanted a snack. Stopping of somewhere, we went up to pay for our sandwiches. The bloke behind the counter asked my friend what the score was. She was wearing Spurs colours. (Wearing a bit of football identification often invites a football chat. I was, incidentally, wearing an ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ t-shirt). Just an hour after the game though, my friend was hesitating when asked what the score was, before she remembered we’d won 3-2. The bloke was disappointed, he had heard Brighton were winning 1-0. When asked the scorers, my friend had to ask me, as already she couldn’t recall. It took me a minute as well. Pre-season games are very forgettable.

In fact, looking back now, I have been to a lot of Spurs pre-season games over the years, but for many struggle to recall too much detail about either the match or the final score.  

There have been things that stand out in some of the games though. In one of a number of Spurs friendlies I have been to at Watford over the years, Jurgen Klinsmann’s debut in 1994 was the one that stands out. The attraction of Klinsmann meant I had to queue two hours for a match I was already planning to go to. Seemingly every Watford fan, as if made up exclusively by readers of tabloid newspapers, started enthusiastically belting out the Dambusters theme as Klinsmann came out, while we out-sang them with “One Jurgen Klinsmann”. Teddy Sheringham scored our goal in a 1-1 draw, the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

Seeing Edgar Davids in the ground at Reading in 2005, shortly before we’d officially signed him was also another nice moment, on a day when another of our new signings, Wayne Routledge, sparkled on the right-wing;  Edgar stood up and gave us a wave a couple of times, and went on to be influential for us in a good season, but Routledge unfortunately got injured on the opening day of the season and was never properly given a chance.

Over the years I have been in the wrong end at Wycombe, seen fighting on the pitch at Oxford United, on a day when Bobby Zamora was hitting the back of the net rather than the car park of their three-sided ground, and have also been to lots of forgettable Tottenham pre-seasons games at Loftus Road, Craven Cottage and of course White Hart Lane. (The Bill Nick Testimonial against Fiorentina in 2001, and Robbie Keane’s cracking volley against Torino in 2007 being a couple of rare gems in home games).

And there have been a few other exceptions when football has been the centrepiece rather than the sideshow. When I was young I went to the second day of the Makita tournament at Wembley in 1988, and saw Marco Van Basten, Ruud Guillit, Frank Rikkard, Franco Barasi and a host of greats play for Milan against us. We had the new record signings Paul Gascoigne and Paul Stewart, who both looked slightly above fighting weight, in our team, as well as Terry Fenwick in our defence. It was perhaps no great surprise we lost.

Also at Wembley, I bought an expensive two-day ticket for the manufactured ‘Wembley Cup’ a couple of years ago.  Seeing Spurs play Barcelona on the Friday night, having a great view of Lionel Messi warming up beforehand, and then seeing Messi play a half of football two days later was money well spent in my book.

And there are sometimes occasions which you can notice things at friendlies; in the summer of 2007 in away wins at Stevenage Borough and Leyton Orient, I felt Michael Dawson, who I am a fan of, wasn’t himself. And that coming season did turn out to be one season when he was below his best form. We were pretty good that summer in pre-season actually, Adel Tarrabet had looked exciting against Stevenage, our new signings Younes Kaboul and Darren Bent had both looked good in an attacking performance at Orient, and Keane and Berbatov had both scored against Torino. It was another time in consecutive years when we had looked impressive in pre-season. We won the Peace Cup in 2005 playing some attractive football, and were also in good form in all of the following three pre-seasons. But in all of those following three seasons we went onto to lose the first league game we played, as part of poor starts.

If club rankings were judged in the six week period beginning in the second Saturday in July, we would have been World Champions between 2005 to 2008. But it’s not. And though we looked awful on the second day of the Wembley Cup, embarrassingly beaten by Celtic in 2009, we went on to have our best season in the League for 20 years.

Back in the sandwich shop yesterday, I eventually remembered that our goals yesterday were scored by Kaboul, Corluka and Jake Livermore.  And thinking back now, I can remember a few other things that happened yesterday, that weren’t washed away with all the beer I drank throughout the day, so I can record them here now, so they can be stored for prosperity somewhere in the Cloud.

After watching forty minutes of very average football from Spurs, I received a text from a mate to see where I was sitting. Turns out he was in the same block, and he came over and had a chat. And in that minute I missed Kaboul’s equalizer. Brighton had deservedly been 1-0 up, having a real go at us, in what will probably be one of their bigger gates of the season for the official opening of their new ground.

And it is a nice ground, Olympic Stadium style looking architecture from the outside, and posters of their former past legends, who happened to include Guy Butters and Bobby Zamora, on the approach to the stadium. The location is good, and crucially back in Brighton, after 14 years of hard campaigning by their fans. Wouldn’t want to be in that situation, when your club is dislocated to another area. Perish the thought.

Facilities were decent for the away end as well, and being the first club there, it was safe to assume that no Palace fans had yet pissed in the sinks. The away end is one of three one sided tiers, with the main stand a smart looking three-tiered stand that will no doubt provide them some sizeable income from corporate hospitality now they are back in the old second division again.

Their new signing, Craig Mackail-Smith, prolific at Peterboro, had set up the opener, and he looked particularly lively, and is an astute signing by Gus Poyet. Our new signing, Brad Friedal, meanwhile looked like he had my friend’s sun tan lotion on his gloves, spilling everything like a drunk waiter serving a full-tray of cocktails while walking on ice. If Gomes had looked that shaky, he would have been slaughtered.

Despite Brighton being the better team though, we actually went into the break in the lead. Corluka, who had a decent first half, constantly belying his lack of pace by getting into advanced positions, coolly finished to put us 2-1 up. I would like to see Kyle Walker start the season at right-back, and am in the minority that actually prefers Alan Hutton to Corluka, not least, because I am not a fan of full-backs who consistently pull-out of challenges, but Corluka had a good game yesterday.   

A couple of our other players who actually looked interested were Aaron Lennon, who came close to scoring for us in the first half, and the eventual match winner Jake Livermore. Livermore played well in central midfield, getting involved throughout, shooting when he had the space and he took his goal well, a gift from their keeper. I understand that Livermore has enjoyed the lifestyle of being a footballer for a while, good to now see him back it up on the pitch when he is given the chance.

With all the players who played at Leyton Orient the previous evening not involved, the only notable absentee (apart from the injured Sandro and Huddlestone) was Luka Modric. Reportedly sick, it would not beyond the realms of possibility he was fearful of a hostile reception, so stayed away, perhaps sensibly waiting for his next Spurs appearance to be a competitive game, when the focus is on the result. In the urinals of a bar on the seafront later in the evening I was stood in the middle of two Spurs fans, literally and metaphorically; one who said they came to Brighton cheer Modric, and one who said they wanted to boo him. I wouldn’t boo him, and as I said clearly to the bloke who didn’t want him to play for Spurs again, the last thing we should do is sell him to Chelsea. But we know what Modric did this summer, and it has hardly been heart-warming stuff.

The fact that someone who wasn’t playing was the Spurs topic of conversation hours later, bore out that it was a largely forgettable game though, and it was a day on the seafront that was a much as an attraction as the match.

On Saturday we have another pre-season friendly, a home game against Athletico Bilbao with tickets priced higher than admittance for the decisive last day of the 2,000th test at Lords earlier this week, which had the attraction of the greatest batsman in the history of the game, as the two best teams in the world competed in the first test of the series. I sadly didn’t get to the cricket, and I won’t be going to White Hart Lane on Saturday.

It is understandable people will, because during the summer we miss football, and we miss White Hart Lane, just like we feel proud to wear nice retro tops with our club crest on.

Yesterday was a reminder though that I am not the only one who is not that interested in pre-season friendlies anymore. Most of the players aren’t, either.

MG

My e-book on Tottenham Hotspur's return to the European Cup for the first time in 49 seasons is now available on Amazon and Smashwords.

 

Get the Message

When ‘Soccer AM’ first started it was a breath of fresh air to previously tired football programming; good graphics, Frank Butcher impressions, classic punchlines and pretty good incidental music. It’s hey day has long gone now, and the once four hour programme had gradually been halved in size.

It is a very occasional watch now on a Saturday morning before setting of to White Hart Lane, but I happened to catch the ‘Team Mates’ feature last season when Jermaine Jenas was on; the only answer of his that sticks in my mind was the one on the subject of ‘The Least Intelligent Player’. A quick trawl on the internet shows that when most current Spurs players have been on this feature and asked about who the least intelligent player in the squad is, the stock answer is David Bentley.

No real surprises there, although as Aaron Lennon said when he was interviewed, we don’t have the brightest set, before going on to name Gomes as the most intelligent player on the basis he wore glasses. (It’s a good thing Lennon makes up for it on the pitch week-in, week-out).

But the reason Jenas’ ‘Least Intelligent Player’ answer was memorable was because he named Luka Modric. He gave a very good example as to why he named him as well (as per the link), which can only perhaps partly be explained through mistaking a literal translation in a second language. And while Jenas may not be the most popular player in the annals of Tottenham Hotspur History, he is clearly one of the more articulate players off the pitch of the current crop, so it was a rare insight into the Spurs dressing room.  

For those of us who have watched Modric and seen him to be a player of remarkable intelligence on the pitch, this revelation was a bit of a disappointment. But, being an intelligent player on the pitch doesn’t always mean they will be a bright spark off it. There are a few that are clearly both, with Johan Cruyff, Ossie Ardiles, Socrates, Jorge Valdano and Michel Platini being prime examples of brilliant brains on both sides of the line.

Yet we are now of an age where players think cutting up each clothes seems to be the height of comedy. Even the aforementioned Jenas has tweeted about the non-stop amusement he finds with these practical jokes; the type of high jinx and team spirit Joe Kinnear would have been proud off and that gave football journalists in the early nineties something to talk about when covering The Crazy Gang as opposed to their hospitalizing tackles.

So unless Modric is fooling us all, and playing a very Machiavellian game of turning all Spurs fans against him, which could admittedly be a strategy from his advisers, and one that is bearing fruit according to my twitter timeline today, I would suggest that perhaps it’s Modric’s lack of common sense that leaves him to believe we would sell him at a knock-down price to one of our major rivals when he has five years of his contract left to run.

It is not clear yet whether he knew his telephone interview with the Croatian paper that came to light this morning would be published, a technique that has undone far greater players and more experienced men than him, notably Glenn Hoddle. But regardless, the comments from it show a real naivety in how business and life work.

It is possible there was a genuine misunderstanding about would happen if another club made an offer; misunderstandings happen more often than they should in business, and needlessly so when contracts are involved. If Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have both had different impressions of a conversation that is still talked about over fifteen years later, it’s not unthinkable that Modric may not have got the right end of the stick when having a chat to with Levy in a language that his not his mother tongue.

But someone needs to put him right about big clubs and about Chelsea as well. It’s a shame we haven’t got a Stevie P in the dressing room now to have a word with him. The current Manager may not be the best to talk about loyalty, and he has his own mood swings about ambitions and big club status; just earlier today I happened to be watching back our 3-2 win in at The Emirates, for something else I am writing, and in the post-match interview Redknapp says “it’s no good talking about coming fourth or fifth... you’ve got to aim for first”. If he could get back to being the personality he was that day, I wouldn’t mind him speaking to Modric. But failing that, it is being left to Daniel Levy to play bad cop, and he is doing it willingly, so Modric’s team-mates and the Manager can play the nice guys, and Spurs as a club can reap the reward.

Had Levy thought there might be a possibility Modric may go this summer, it is likely he would have signed Charlie Adam as a potential replacement in advance, just as he signed Darren Bent when he thought Berbatov may and try and force his way out one year before he actually left. Adam fits the bill on a number of other levels, including being young enough so he wouldn’t become dead stock if a new manager didn’t fancy him; affordable in both transfer fee and wages; and importantly a player who has shown he can dictate the pace of any game in English football from central midfield while also scoring and creating goals from both open play and set-pieces. But that ship has sailed, and it his highly unlikely there would be any attraction to sell Modric to anyone now, unless as well as it commanding a big fee, it also involved a player exchange of someone who could fill his boots.

Chelsea don’t have anyone like that, which is why they want to buy him. There had been a laughable suggestion Michael Essien would be a makeweight before his injury this week put paid to that. In reporting Essien’s injury Sky Sports News ran a ticker tape saying they had a “source” at Chelsea telling them that he was injured in training before it was officially announced; not exactly a shock SSN have a source at Chelsea, which is why they have led with the Modric story, as their leaks dictated. And they will continue to run interviews with people like Kerry Dixon, who while he might be a nice bloke (I met him once), is on the Chelsea payroll; so any clip of him saying he Modric be a Chelsea player can also be part of the evidence of tapping up.

The SSN stories seemed to have died down after Levy’s statements, and considering the editorial policy of Sky News, and other “sources” the part-owned News Corp organisation has, we should be grateful Sky Sports News is generally fair and will turn the focus away if Tottenham’s media relations say the right things to them (I am assuming here we have got a media relations team that are capable of saying the right thing).

Those right things would include the subject of tapping up, which Modric’s comments over the last few weeks have also provided ample evidence of, and which Levy may well pursue. But that doesn’t mean he’ll be sold.

Modric has obviously been led to believe by his advisers that a move was fait accompli and he has probably been thinking about what he’ll be spending his new salary on, as well as his signing on fee, which he’d get, because he has been loyal enough not to ask for a transfer...

Like any disappointment in life, he will get over it, even if it takes a few weeks.

I would like to see Daniel Levy sticks to his guns, and hopefully Modric gets the message.

MG

My e-book on Tottenham Hotspur's return to the European Cup after 49 seasons is available on Amazon and Smashwords.