You know, I'd just read a very decent fan article about Sunderland and the sense that there is something "missing" about them, the sense that they haven't cobbled together any kind of identity. For all their history and support, the team itself is uninspiring - bereft of characters, as well as character.
When you think about it, you could say that for perhaps the majority of clubs outside the top 6 - every year, they watch the inevitable exit of their best players for bigger clubs and bigger paychecks, the same journeymen produce just enough to stay in the league for yet another contract, the same revolving stable of managers (besides the occasional inspired import like Laudrup or Pochettino) merry-go-round their way to a remarkable collection of severance packages. Pretty much the only thrill, team-wise, comes from glimpsing the occasional who? plucked from obscurity turn out to be good enough to squat himself in the shop window.
Most clubs don't really have talismans these days, much less legends. When they're that good, they want to leave for the money and the glory. When they're not that good, you'd rather they leave, thanks very much. :lol: But it's very, very hard to form an attachment to a group of players whose faces change every year. No matter how talented a footballer is, it's very hard to bond to someone who's only been here for a few months, or who you know will be fudging off in the summer. (Indeed, I think that's why we haven't embraced Bale as wholly and utterly as we have our past heroes . . . it almost doesn't feel like we're witnessing a real Spurs player, but rather a young Luke Skywalker in training, destined for brighter worlds and greater things than our fondness).
I think that's why we, of all the clubs in this league, identify the most with our Chairman. Arse have Wenger, United SAF, Chelsea the Russian and City the Sheikhs. We have Daniel Levy - because he's the one who's stayed. Managers have come and gone, players have pulled on the famous shirt and left; but Levy's the one constant, the only one around whom the fountain of debate is deep and wide enough to hold both the memories of our past and our hopes for the future. It may be the rather more dashing AVB on the front cover of this team now, it may even be that AVB is a revolutionary break to the procession of finite regimes that came before - but it's our chairman who has ultimately steered, crafted, invested, demanded, finagled, possibly threatened, and hired and fired to build the Tottenham Hotspur we have today. The team that AVB now imprints his own vision on is the one that Levy made.
I bring this up not because I worship Daniel Levy and want him to take all the credit for all these years, but because I think you have rightfully brought up continuity here, and I think that continuity is important - no, critical - to the identity of a club. Yes, results are priority numero uno. Yes, we have outgrown players the same way a few believed they outgrew us, and I am not asking that we serve as a cushy retirement home for the most likeable servants; in fact, we need fresh blood every year to keep from going stale. But we are not Chelsea or City; we are not a club that can succeed through the sheer mass of our buying and buying and hoarding and discarding. We are a club that can only succeed by all pulling in the same direction, fans and players and staff alike. And for that we need a sense of connection to those who wear our shirt, and for those same players to feel a connection to each other. That is a connection that takes the one element that is perhaps hardest for a football club to afford: time.
(And no, I don't care how fruitcake that sounds. :lol: For me it's not just about the fluidity on the pitch that comes more easily to teams that have played many minutes together; it's about the pride and resilience of people who have fought through many trials together. The unquantifiable stuff. Even though I do consider most players cold-blooded careerists who think with their heads and wallets rather than hearts, it's impossible to drain all the human emotion from sport. If you do, don't call it sport.)
This is where I think United has succeeded where Arsenal have failed. Both are thoroughly commercial enterprises, but United players have a sense of dynasty; they believe they are a part of United history. They watch Ryan Giggs come on for his 1000th game, while Arsenal's production line of starlets watch the board monitor their seniors' aging with the ruthlessness of racehorse butchers, or investment bankers: ROI, ROI. Even Ronaldo, for all the shortness of his stay and his determined childhood dreams of glory in the white of Madrid, seems to find it strangely uneasy to extricate himself completely from the emotional narrative of Old Trafford. "I felt shy" is how he describes his return, an unreadable look on his face.
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It is this connection that for me, as a young fan, is finally starting to tentatively form after the turmoil of the early years of Levy's reign, when we had so many players we needed to outgrow - and fast - and had only our beloved Ledley and his one knee to cling on. Yes, Modric and VdV went the same way as Berba and Carrick. But we have a core of players who've stayed: Defoe for eight years, Benny for seven. Lennon and Dawson have shared eight continuous years in the same dressing room; even the preposterously young Gareth Bale is a senior now, coming of age in his sixth season with us.
But what's impressive isn't the sheer longevity or stability: it's the commitment these players are displaying here and today, under a regime that might well have had few uses for the past, so fiercely shaped is it for the future. Lennon and Dawson are throwing themselves at this season with renewed vigor; Parker and Gallas continue to lead significant acts with steely professionalism. Even the old, not-particularly-bright dogs like JD have started learning new tricks. We are crafting our identity in the image of a young, progressive club - filled with bright-eyed starlets and a carefully-nurtured youth academy, managed by a young manager on a quest for redemption - but our old hands have refused to fade away. They are playing in a way that, if I were a braver and less anxious supporter, I'd say argues that they want to be a part of this: a part of the Spurs fabric, a part of Spurs history.
And that gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Don't get me wrong, I do want us to be that progressive club, a club that nurtures a continuous line of 'potential' and oversees that promise come of age with us. That is our identity: the up-and-coming. But every club needs, I think, a kind of 'soul' on the pitch, a soul that cannot be easily bought, or scouted-and-implanted, or even manufactured in the glow of trophy days (would Sunderland find their identity if they suddenly won the FA Cup?). For me a team's 'soul' needs the process of time, the experience of shared struggle. A team is not eleven shirts who can rotate and replace the bodies inside them and still be the same club by way of having the same name and colors. We tell ourselves not to get too attached because it is only the fans who are forever, but in truth I am not sure I can just love a shirt and not the people who wear it.
Maybe that's just me though. Older fans have survived rather more ups and downs and godawful Spurs teams than me, and in any case it's Spurs till I die, whether we have Gareth Bale or not next season. But I hope it's a conversation that fans of the game continue to have, as sugardaddy money continues to flush in while other clubs drown in debt and people wonder what's the point and hate their own fudging players and the likes of Cardiff change to red to appease Chinese backers. Not only where we want to go, but who we want to be.
