We're done
Dear Mr Levy,
I’m going to entertain the European Super League. I’m going to look at it from the perspective of the club. In this thought experiment, the club is the investment you and Joe Lewis have made; the business. The expansion of all land and various assets around the old White Hart Lane ground and now the new stadium. All the acquisitions on the High Road. Hotspur Way. The brand. Everything. Everything except the fanbase, local and across the nation.
For now, from a purely business perspective - if I entertain the ESL - I understand that as chairman you had no choice to accept the offer, because in terms of securing the capacity to grow further, you could not reject the move. If the whole point is to keep up with the teams that are already ahead of us, then if we made a romanticised notion to stick and not twist, then we’d never be in a position to catch up. We’d lag for eternity.
You made the correct choice, for the business, in terms of the investment made and the potential to expand further. You have taken this club to an extra dimension, to be one that has struggled on the pitch but now has a value of over a billion and is (debt withstanding), super rich. So kudos for the business, for the extraordinary rise to prominence. In the modern world, it isn’t so much about history and heritage. In this world it’s about wealth and the centricity to accumulate more.
So, I get it. We have gatecrashed a party even though we have an invitation. And perhaps our invitation is a touch special because we’re not consider elite. But you’ve done the work and we’ve got the connections with the US and everything seems to connect back to them, in terms of the format at play. We’ve thrown ourselves through the window like a brick. Tottenham Hotspur have everything in place to print money, regardless of just how passive the football team itself is, going forward (in terms of application off the pitch to support the action and progress on it). You only need to look towards our neighbours to see how comfortably numb they’ve become to a consistent revenue.
Let’s say, we along with the other founding clubs, retain their place in the Premier League and we play the Super League games during the week. Ignoring all the possible variables and impacts on the entire hierarchy of the game in the UK (let alone abroad), how do you perceive things will evolve? Will this club become as passive as Arsenal? There will no longer be a necessity to chase down a Champions League place. We’d be guaranteed elite tier football every season. Will we prioritise the ESL over the domestic league? Will we, along with the other clubs, diminish the value and prestige of the Premier League because of our participation in ‘Europe’?
You only need to look at how the FA Cup and League Cup have lost their gloss over the years, often abused by rotation and calculated selection sacrifices. Will the league title lose its intensity? Clubs outside of the ESL, they will aim for hometown glory whilst qualifying for a new version of the Champions League. Or perhaps aiming to also be invited into the brave new world. If there’s to be relegation and promotion, well, how will that work out if we’re having to drop down and work to get back in again?
There’s fragmentation here no matter how you look at it. Perhaps domestically, fairy tales can happen once more. But there’s a bottleneck, surely for those outside the Super League. Will participation in it mean that our strength and the strength of others involved create an even bigger gulf when we pit ourselves against the domestic teams? Fairytales will be crushed.
This is the Premier League on PEDs. But it’s also the end game. The final form. There is no breakaway from this breakaway. If you missed the fact the Champions League has bolstered and deformed the gulf in quality in all of Europe’s top divisions, then you’ve not been paying attention.
It’s quite funny right now considering how we lag against the top clubs because of their stranglehold with finances and wage structures. But this will surely leave us levels above anyone outside of the ESL, sat on riches like a sleeping dragon. No need to wake up.
So I guess, in terms of stability and clout and stature - we’d be set. You’d be set. The club will forever get richer off the TV rights and world wide promotions and branding. Naming Rights will finally equate to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Happy days.
Or not.
See, all of this, is fundamentally bollocks. Here’s the thing about football; it’s relatable. In its truest form, it’s reflective of real life. Hardships, lows and highs. There’s adversity and blood and sweat and moments of depression and screams of sheer ecstasy. There are cycles and dips and often there are adventures that you do not expect. There is uncertainty and there is accidental glory. It’s all part of the magic, the journey and the unpredictable nature of football. Even in the Premier League era, even this maligned money grab creation which has allowed for the evolution of football to its next ugly persona…even here, we have had those fairy tales and moments of unbridled surprise and elation. Football can still produce it regardless of everything that is wrong with it right now.
See, it’s the unknown that drags you into the very pits of emotional hell. And we love it, as much as we might say we hate it. It’s knowing the bad times make the good times feel even better. It’s that electricity you feel when fighting against the odds. How exactly do we experience the thrills and the genuine excitement of a Champions League run again when we’re contained within a structure that facilitates nights under the floodlights but without that true encapsulation of a Glory Glory night?
Competition is the fire in the belly of the beast. We’ve trophy hunted that beast and nailed it to the wall.
Now I know, there are hypocritical caveats to all of this. The discomfort and betrayal I feel, we feel. Well, many of us do. Other’s, not so much. I’ve always said that qualifying for the Champions League is more important - at times - than anything else. I’ve said this not because I don’t want to experience cup winning moments. Silverware and validating form and the players ambitions, is important, of course it is. But if you compete in the CL consistently, you are building on a platform to perform better and to ultimately compete for the domestic title. Which should be the priority, the bread and butter of our existence.
Get CL football, get better players, and just graft. Top sides can often dip in form thanks to cycles and there are opportunistic moments to strike. When we’ve had those moments, we haven’t endeavoured to strike with conviction.
But it’s all fair game in the moment. It’s hard fought and challenging and in those moments we have believed we can achieve. And that is the essence of football itself; hope. Even if it kills you. Hope, even if it murders you. You get up, we get up and we go again. How does removing that element of fear of failure help to rise the level of competition across the entire league structure in England? We are choosing to create an ultra passive dominant group of clubs that will stand lightyears ahead of the rest. How exactly does this equate to fulfilment? I mean, I guess it does if you are the best of the best regardless of where the best play their football.
I guess it does?
Does it?
In terms of fulfilment, I’m not talking about the business side of things now. I’m talking about us. The legacy fans. The actual football club birthed under a lamppost by Bobby Buckle. Yes, football has changed since its origins and in my lifetime, since the 80s. Yes, ITV and then Sky instigated the first big shift in finances. The Champs League added to it further and the general football narrative around ‘the top teams’ has already forced a mini-super league within the Premier League itself. And most of the pundits screaming about how terrible (it is) have been complicit in the hyperbole and falsehoods around what constitutes success. See how they attempt to broker a deal for Kane away from Spurs whilst belittling the club for never being able to achieve, as the perfect example of the bubble they’ve crafted, worshipped by Twitter avatars the world over.
But so have the fans. Those hypocritical caveats. My own desire to see Spurs own Champions League qualification. The fact we often want you, Mr Levy, to spend more money and take more risks in backing a manager. The reality that even if you did that it might still not be enough to close the gap to the teams currently above us (beyond this seasons calamity). There’s a fine line here between what’s evil and what’s good and they overlap in places.
Regardless of the fans in support of the ESL, I see through you. They might say this is good for Spurs, that we’ll be able to truly competitive now. But compete for what exactly? Everything that is meant to be special in football is about to be normalised, for YOUR greater good. More money.
See, some Spurs fans that want this to push ahead and want to be successful so much so they forget about all the things that came before it. The stuff that actually matters more. If all you care about is ‘just winning something’ then you may as well close your eyes and open them when we do.
I want us to be successful. I do. Perhaps I’m a fool and should accept it’s impossible to do so outside of a Poch type of season where we luck out a bit. But sticking ourselves in a Super League is hardly going to be any easier. And the repercussions on the rest of the domestic league can not be dismissed just for our sheer desire to wrap ribbons around a cup. Is that the spirit of football we wish to embrace? One that craps on the rest of the pyramid?
The integrity of football in its entirety is a bit of a joke to be fair. From UEFA and their inability to truly punish racism in the game to the corruption of FIFA. They are all hypocrites. Everyone is chasing coin. When you strip it all away and you fall back to the basics, we all want to just enjoy Spurs play good swaggering football and have that hope tinged with the possibility of a kill, be it us or the opposing team. You want to bind yourself to your football teams identity and belong to something that means something. in the moment. But if you’re having to experience this whilst the club itself seeks to appease new supporters whilst they enjoy the guaranteed billions, what encouragement does the club actually have to achieve anything beyond that?
An investment after-all is just that. Something to get money back from at a later point.
But then this has always been the case. From the attempted move to Stratford to the new stadium build. This has always been the masterplan. I think deep down, you think you’re doing right for Tottenham Hotspur. In your heart. I actually believe you believe you’re doing right. But so much of it is misguided. There are so many examples too. See, your belief isn’t inclusive of the common man and woman that are loyalty to this football ‘club’.
You have probably secured our existence for as long as football exists. That’s grand. But meanwhile, all the ethics and traditions are becoming extinct.
And yes, I get it. We miss White Hart Lane but we had to ‘move’ stadium because of that desire to win things and to compete. But there’s steps forward. Difficult ones to make because of emotional attachments, but ones we make because time does change.
But this? What’s happening right now? This is a cheat mode. This is akin to paying DLC for a game just so you can skip to the final part and have it completed without worrying about all the challenging bits before the finale. And yes, we are starved of cups and ‘the moments’. Yes, we want to taste that success. But at what cost? When does it become about just winning and when is it about doing things in style? Surely these details matter?
But here is the sickening twist. See, even though I feel disenfranchised. Even though we feel detached and we don’t recognise what is currently happening to our game and club, there’s a part of us that is unrelenting. We’re Tottenham. We love it. Football, in those moments, will still produce scenes and limbs that have us punching holes in the very fabric of space and time, such is our tribalism and almost religious obsession for it. That it’s not so much everything else around us, it’s everything WE uphold and experience. The true essence of the club isn’t the bricks or the stands or anything physical. It’s flesh and blood, it’s me you her him all of us that belong to everything that has happened before, that simply exists in memory in the present. You can’t touch that, you can’t own that. It’s ours.
It’s a frequency we all tune into.
The twist is, we could take it away, our flesh and blood. We could turn our backs and walk away and then you’re left with an empty shell, that you will no doubt populate with a new breed of supporter that will have an affiliation with the sport in a tourist capacity rather than the history of the club and what made Spurs the club it is for the generation of supporters that came before.
But that isn’t the twist. The twist is, most of us won’t be able to turn away. We won’t be able to turn our backs. Because somewhere in amongst the bullshit still remains the soul we all share when we go to games and follow the team up and down the country. It’s still Tottenham, lilywhite shirt and all. It’s still the only thing that is representative of the supporters. It’s the only conduit that is present for us to channel this great THFC escapism. We crave to be around others that think the way we do, losing our shit at a last gasp goal. Because in that moment there is nothing that exists other than being Tottenham. Every fan of any given club can relate, it’s when you lose your mind because of that band of brothers fellowship in the stands synced with the players on the pitch, playing for you and the shirt - that’s the buy in. That’s the riches we’re interested in. As long as the moments don’t lose their sense of fulfilment, satisfaction and their meaning.
You got us.
We are trapped.
Still, our love for it all might still empower us to make a stand regardless. We could after all, walk away. Maybe even start afresh. Or we suck it up and fight from within, which let’s face it, will not impact you in the slightest. I doubt you even know how we feel or even care how we feel.
It’s fairly incredible that you sacked Jose Mourinho and it hasn’t even registered as significant.
I’m sat here thinking, is the club in terms of it being a representative of the fanbase, dead? And the answer is yes. It has been that for a while, along with most of football in the upper echelons. It’s been dying slowly. Others will see it as a metamorphosis. Perhaps a reanimation. So the question is, do we accept it and adjust and move with the times? Do we accept the new phase and just sacrifice our morals and not give a shit about the lower leagues and just focus on ourselves?
Or do we cut ourselves loose and find another conduit for escape?
I suppose, the moment we see Harry Kane rushing across the pen box to notch another goal, we’ll be once more under the spell of the magic that is THFC, the very thing that made us fall in love with her.
Maybe this is all an over reaction. Football isn't what it was 20-30 years ago and it's not like it's in absolute ruins. Things change. For the better. For the worst. But this, right now, feels like a step too far. But a step that was always going to happen. And even if it doesn't happen straight away, it will later on down the line. And one day, a decade later, they'll step forward again and leave domestic leagues behind altogether.
I mean, technically speaking, it’s what we all (the privileged clubs) do every season…chase entry into Europe’s elite platform for financial performance. They follow the money train. They can’t be having any old club get into it because one of the privileged lot had an off season. Unless you’re a club with connections, hey Daniel?
So here we are.
How do I end this?
You’re a massive hypocrite Daniel and you’ve turned us all into one too. Our love is unconditional. But you can still love someone or something and leave it behind. This is an act of love in itself. Sometimes parting ways is the very best for all concerned.
We just ain't parting ways.
We are all f*cked. Massively f*cked.
So thanks for that.
Yours barely sincerely,
Spooky