One step from Glory. Reflecting on the 5th anniversary of heady days for Tottenham.

pt 1 One Step from Glory & pt 2 Dispatches from Madrid.

AI software drawing interpretation of images of Lucas Moura’s 96th minute goal celebration. The goal that meant Tottenham had reached the final.

Tomorrow marks the fifth anniversary of my football club’s greatest achievement in years. The Champions League Final 1^st of June 2019. I’m revisiting the few heady days from the 8^th of May to the 1^st of June in Madrid, when Tottenham Hotspur had the chance to become champions of Europe after Lucas Moura’s 96th minute winner in Amsterdam. This article is based on two specific diarised articles written at that time period, in the moment, before and after the final.

The author on location in Madrid June 1st 2019.

PART ONE. One Step from Glory.

May 17, 2019

Living The Dream.

It started with Luca Moura’s 96th minute goal against Ajax in the Johan Cruff Stadium in Amsterdam. My dream of seeing my beloved Tottenham in a Champions League Final was now a reality. With Tottenham’s last appearance in the Final of a European premium competition being in the 1962/63 season, we’d waiting 56 years, and two UEFA cup titles since then. This was too long for a club as big as Tottenham. Years of near misses. When Danny Blanchflower lifted the trophy after a 5-1 thrashing of Atlético Madrid in Rotterdam in 1963, The Beatles were in their third of seven weeks at number one with From Me To You. The day before the Rolling Stones had just signed their first record contract with Decca Records. Literally a different age, in the mid 20th century. So here we are again, with Tottenham back in for the chance of glory at the very highest level. This time it’s the biggest prize of all.

This appearance of Tottenham in the Champions League Final is potentially a once in a lifetime opportunity. I hope fate may change that with the owner’s commitment. I had followed the journey all the way this season from Wembley to N17 and our return home to our hugely impressive new stadium. A quite shockingly unbelievable reality, as the dramatic scenes began to sink in on that night in Amsterdam. This campaign has been a rollercoaster from the group stage onward. Always coming back from the brink, the draw at the Neu Camp that saved Spurs. Moura, Son, Vertonghen, Alderweireld, Kane, Ericksen, Lloris, Rose, Winks, Alli to name a few of this squad of “superheroes” according to Mauricio Pochettino, now our greatest manager since Bill Nicholson on the cusp of the biggest price in European, if not global, club football. To dare is to do.

Being a season ticket holder, I instantly booked the freshly expensive flights to Madrid minutes after the whistle. The euphoria drove it, as did hope, alongside tactics of getting ahead of rising prices. The airlines were already jacking up £100 flights to £700 pounds and above. Liverpool fans had had a 24-hour head start after their similarly dramatic glory against Barcelona at Anfield. Airline company exploitation of people’s hopes and dreams in full effect as I had imagined, hotels too, I had secured an AirBnb a few weeks previously with a respectable cancellation policy. My flights and accommodation were sorted. I just needed the match ticket.

Two days later I learnt by email from Tottenham Hotspur FC that my qualification via the club for a ticket for the final would be virtually impossible. With a 16,600 allocation for 40,000 plus Season Ticket holders, and tens of thousands of additional club members, the club had defaulted to a loyalty based point system to choose final attendees. This conflicted with the more democratic ballot system adopted by Liverpool for Season Ticket holders and Members, just as long as you had attended the greater majority Champions League games this season. As a newer Season Ticket holder than others, after years of being on the waiting list as a paying Tottenham Hotspur member it was clear that I didn’t stand a chance. The points threshold would only benefit, in all due respect, the old guard. Those most probably with season tickets since the sixties or eighties or nineties. Those who had tasted glory up close already. I was heartbroken for days and days.

Corporate Take Over.

The club allocations from UEFA were a key cause for thousands of people’s grief. UEFA’s own allocation and that of sponsoring corporations and corporate hospitality drove a thicker wedge than that of club allocation. The sick fact is that football club allocations for fans account for less than half the stadium capacity of 68,000. Yes, you read that right. The majority of tickets are for UEFA and Corporate jollies. Just to add salt to the wound, the black market is rife with £60-£400 tickets marketed at £3800 to £45,000. UEFA’s own 20,000 recorded allocation comes someway to explain this, alongside the additional criminal scams for fake or voided tickets. I certainly thought about this route, but decided it best not to spend £4000 of my savings on a secondary ticketing website to risk a high probability of spending the evening of the Final outside the stadium in tears cursing my stupidity. Many of these websites offer ‘money back guarantee’s, but just try getting your money back! Viagogo scammed me once in a desperate fan moment to see Nine Inch Nails play live. Never again. With my options on a ticket evaporating before me, I thought about cancelling the whole trip and just accepting the local pub or a meet up in London. Easyet like many airlines in their market give paying customers little respect at the best of times and now in their super immoral phase they refused cancellation, even though they could re-sell my tickets with an un-regulated 2000% margin. They called exploitation “demand and supply”, this was the beginning of exploitative online ‘dynamic pricing’ ticketing hitting the UK across multiple industries. They would not refund the difference on a change of flight. They could for a £50 charge per person per flight (out and return) change the name of the passenger. This simply was not good enough. In fact, it was and remains appalling. I looked at the change of name option, I tried punting the flights to anyone with a better chance of a ticket to the Final than me, people without means of travel with all flights booked. There were many people who weren’t so lucky on travel arrangements to Madrid. Many would simply just want to be there in Madrid on the night. There were stories of people with better hope of a golden match ticket but no flight. Some considering long car journeys, hiking, anyway possible to get there. I messaged around. No joy. Most people were in the same sinking boat without a chance of a Final ticket or they had work commitments that meant they were shackled, or they simply did not have the money to pay the companies exploiting us and our dreams of European glory.

After a couple of days of desperation and depression, I thought fuck it. I’m going to Madrid regardless. Soak up the spirit of the football carnival and find a decent place to watch it on big screens. Make the best of what I had. I had the opportunity to actually be in Madrid after all, over the weekend of the final. Who knows, a miracle could happen, a ticket could land on my lap. I entered a Gazprom competition clearly knowing my data might be exploited by Russians, I was desperate after all. Tenuous links to Madrid were tapped. Someone through work knew a sports journalist in Madrid. Long shot tapped up. Any true fan would do the same. I couldn’t be an armchair fan for the biggest prize in club football.

I began researching bars, pintxos and tapas, sports and Irish, the shit and the shine of what Madrid could offer. I had to make a plan and a contingency if I was to do the trip and be there on the evening of Saturday June 1st 2019 without a match ticket. Rather than wander the streets with the risk of bumping into any moody sunburnt beer-soaked Liverpool fans (the vast majority of fans would be fine), I wanted to at least feel sorted and safe. After all, my girlfriend was coming with me. We were going to make an extra-long weekend of it due to the expense forked out. Let’s make the best of it. The adventure would begin on May 31st 2019. It could very well end in Tottenham glory, and I could say I was there in Madrid the night Tottenham lifted the Champions League trophy, rather than watching it on TV in my home town. The next chapter of this adventure was about to begin.

The Makings Of Success.

I originally said the adventure started with Lucas Moura’s goal, but in reality, this latest episode started with Pochettino’s appointment as manager. Then if we then look more deeply, the bedrock of change at Tottenham started with the appointment of Jack Santini, who brought along a Dutchman called Martin Jol. This for me was the start of the turnaround from mediocrity for Spurs and an assent from the wasteland years from 1991 to the mid to late noughties. Within months Martin Jol superseded Santini and first signs of improvement were notable. We hadn’t seen this glimmer of hope since Venables and Burkinshaw. Realistic Top 4 and silverware hopes. Ramos stole Jol’s League Cup in 2008. The next key ingredient was the surprise appointment of Harry Redknapp in 2008. Redknapp shone a light on further development. The reward of Champions League football at Tottenham for the first time was hugely impressive, aided by the brilliance of Bale. Then Boas and Sherwood. It is Pochettino though, arriving via Southampton and Espanol, that really moved mountains at Tottenham and installed the belief in attaining the glory days again. All credit to chairman Daniel Levy on this appointment. Pochettino in the ideal scenario would deliver a Champions League trophy on June 1st 2019, followed by 20 years of further successes at Tottenham similar to an Alex Fergusson’s reign at Manchester Utd. Allow me to dream. For the first time in decades Tottenham stand on the threshold of unlimited opportunity.

Opportunity that all depends on two people though, club chairman Daniel Levy and ultimately club owner Joe Lewis and his ENIC holding company. Tottenham must now increase investment in players wages to keep the best and attract even better players. Project Tottenham is at a crossroads and the fans want more, now they have tasted some of the best seasons in aeons. Pre Champions-League Final, this Tottenham team needs silverware. Should that proof point be attained or not on June 1st, there should be no reason now for Levy and Lewis not to invest further into the next level. Should they not, should the steady penny pinching continue on squad structure, this dreamland state will have rude awakenings and the mediocracy of the past will return soon enough. Poch will walk. Players will leave. The squad broken up. We must not let that happen.

The signals have been clear enough. If ENIC do not start to heavily invest in the squad after Champions League success, ENIC should immediately sell to owners that respect the fact that old ties must be cut, and the club must grow. A new stadium alone, however great that is, will not deliver silverware. For Levy and Lewis, the time is now to define the club’s very future on the pitch and off. Ultimately for our key man Pochettino to stay at Tottenham he must now receive the respect of a strategic plan to grow the early seeds of success sown. Without such the “glory glory” hopes are damned. Poch will “go home”. Let’s not let it be so. Levy, Lewis, you better be listening. These chances are few and far between at Tottenham. Let’s seize the day. Let’s go marching on.

Adventure begins.

A ton of money spent. Flights, accommodation, a season ticket holder with no ticket. Yet. Madrid, I’m on my way in Tottenham colours. The trip is on, and a new era of club success is hopefully dawning. Come on you Spurs.

PART TWO. Dispatches from Madrid

June 17, 2019.

In Reflection.

Photo by the author. Duncan Illing 2019 ©

Tottenham supporter, construction man, late 50’s from Hertfordshire, with two cans of lager on the plane to Madrid; “If we play Harry Kane from the start, we will lose”.

Kane had suffered an lateral ligament injury to his left ankle and had not played for six weeks, missing nine matches. The kind of injury you don’t rush back from in haste.

It’s May 31^st 2019, late into the afternoon, the day before Tottenham Hotspur’s biggest game for 57 years. This guy may not even have been born the last time we reached such heights.  I didn’t want to believe him, but deep inside I knew he spoke the truth. Everyone knew.

Out in Madrid the night before the big day, May 31st 2019.