Tottenham's new stadium plans have been mooted for several years now and, finally, work began on the £400 million development earlier this year.
The plans have been scrutinised and pored over by the club’s long-suffering fans – from NFL fixtures to Safe Standing – but how exactly were decisions on the new ground made? And what sort of challenges did the club come up against when pushing for the new stadium?
We sat down for an exclusive chat with a member from the Spurs Consultation Committee, who has witnessed the evolution of the project from day one.
Due to non disclosure agreements, he decided to remain anonymous…
So, you were on the Spurs Consultation Committee which pushed for and worked towards the construction of the new stadium is that correct?
In the early stages of the process the club reached out to supporters for feedback via a Consultation Committee which was made up of supporters of every demographic, in 2012 the club formally recognised the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust and the method in which the club sought supporter feedback changed to them. It’s more effective and clearer that way.
The stadium plans were to be adapted to allow the grass playing surface to be ‘floated’ on a bed of air and magnets (very clever technology I can’t hope to explain) and be moved under the South Stand into an artificial environment complete with lighting and water to keep the playing surface in top condition, underneath these there will be a state of the art 4G surface for playing NFL on.
This also opens up a whole new commercial avenue for the club in that we can host concerts without wrecking the pitch with those awful plastic pallets used to cover the playing surface at Wembley, the Emirates, the Olympic Stadium and the likes.
The stadium is also designed to lend itself to big concerts in terms of acoustics and will be second only to Wembley for concert in the ‘round’ capacity. For the privilege of this the NFL are contributing in excess of £120m to the project so it’s paying for itself several times over.
I was present at the ground breaking for the new ground and I have to admit I shed a tear, it’s been a long hard road.
So tell us a bit about the new stadium, what can we expect?
I’ve already touched on this, however you can expect one of the best stadiums in the World, the designers and architects have been responsible for creating some of the very best stadiums in the World including the Dallas Cowboys stunning new stadium in Arlington, the Emirates, Wembley and the likes.
We also have an advantage in that our near neighbours moved into the Emirates about a decade ago, now don’t get me wrong visually the Emirates is a fantastic ground, there’s very little wrong with it, however we’ve been able to learn from the few mistakes they made and correct them.
We’ll be closer to the pitch than supporters in any stadium of comparible size in Europe and the ground will almost immediately be credited with UEFA and FIFA Elite stadium status (a status held by a surprisingly small number of grounds in Europe) which will make us eligible to host major finals like the Champions League and Europa League, I have absolutely no doubt that’s going to happen.
The stadium is also going to be fully equipped to host NFL and concerts, the NFL will actually have their own dressing rooms so our kit man won’t even need to move the boys stuff when the NFL are in town. It’s going to be stunning. There’s always a risk that we turn into a ‘souless bowl’ however that’s down to the supporters and will the new South Stand being the biggest single tiered stand in the UK holding 17,000 home supporters, I am pretty confident we’ll make ourselves heard.
Do you think there will ever be Safe Standing in England, as has been introduced up at Celtic Park?
This has been the subject of a massive amount of discussion at Supporters Trust Meetings and the likes, from what I can gather the club are completely in favour of it and the new ground (South Stand in particular) has been designed to make such a transition very easy. It would mean fundamental changes in the rules from FIFA down, I know it’s being trialled seemingly very successfully at Celtic Park and several grounds in Germany also have safe standing areas, however it’s not allowed for Champions League games.
I think it’s going to happen, I hope it happens and I will campaign for it to happen, I just don’t know when. I remember standing in the terraces in my formative years and it was amazing, although it could also be scary at times. Things have changed since then and safe standing is exactly what it’s called SAFE! I wouldn’t be in favour of the whole stadium going that way, but certainly portions of it.
And what about the future for Spurs? Can you win the league in the next few years?
In a word, no, probably not. I think we’ve a great squad and a great manager however the Premier League is insanely strong and just about any team can beat any of the others. We have a habit of dropping points in games we really should be winning. But hey, who knows, if we learnt anything from last season it is that if you string the results together anyone can win the league. Blackburn have done it, Leicester have done it. I would need about a month off work if it happened just to get over it. We should be aiming for a regular top four position. People also need to remember that we’ve a season at Wembley to play and then there will be a settling in period in the new stadium, almost every single club that’s moved into a brand new ground has experienced this.
I have to be honest our last ever game at White Hart Lane is going to be against Manchester United (subject to change) and it’s going to be a very emotional day, I got tearful watching the North East corner get knocked down White Hart Lane has been our home for over 100 years and it’s been my spiritual home for more than 30 years, my son has also started attending games with me and it’s abundantly clear already that Spurs are in his blood even at the age of 6, it will be a sad sad day leaving that old ground for the last time, but you know what, then I look over my shoulder at the new ground rising almost by the day and I can’t wait.
Which, by extension, indicates that you shouldn't by all accounts be as committed to what is just an above-average service provider that charges out of proportion to what it offers, relative to the other, cheaper, often far more successful, frequently local service providers in the industry. Yet you are; that irrationality is what defines you as a fan of the same club I support, and not a customer, and it's what keeps you doing 'fan' stuff instead of acting like a pure customer would - demanding refunds for bad performances/club troubles, switching providers and calling in Consumer Protection people when you feel you aren't getting a fair deal. We're not going to get beyond this point, I guess, because the inherent irrationality of being a fan who only gets a thrill from one club, the needless inelasticity of that demand, to my mind brings with it a recognition of a club-supporter relationship that should transcend the basest market considerations and brings obligations upon both the club which is lucky enough to have people who care about it in all its aspects, and upon the fans who constitute the largest portion of the club itself. That isn't entitlement, that's the recognition of football being intrinsically different from the pure customer-supplier relationship that a stadium full of people who only get the SPVRS package would likely resemble, at least in part. That's the moral argument for retaining at least the token practice of consulting with *all* fans (as represented, however badly ,by the Trust) instead of just the SPVRS people. And I suspect we'll eternally disagree on that - however, I also afforded practical and financially-motivated arguments for keeping the practice as is which don't refer to 'entitlement' in any form. Overall, it's the least the club could do and well within the expectations of fans, even from those angles.
