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
MG
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