Once upon a time, maybe 60 years or so ago, European football was somewhat of an exotic experience for British football fans. To drop some perspective into the mix, it wasn’t until 1966 that an Englishman called Freddie Laker started an airline company that was aimed at ordinary people.
Affordable travel within Europe (and via transatlantic routes) was essentially a complete novelty, and suddenly a new generation of regular folk could not just holiday abroad, but also begin to indulge in short haul flights for such fripperies as ‘football matches’. The Internet wasn’t the first thing to make the world a smaller place.
Bill Nicholson didn’t just manage Spurs from 1958 to 1974, the man quite rightly also managed to achieve quite shamanic levels of respect from the club’s supporters that still exists this very day. Bill had won the double in 1960/61, but he’d seen that notable success eclipsed by the end of that decade. The season before that, Bill’s side had finished 3rd in the old First Division to Manchester United, and by the 1967/68 season, Manchester United beat Benfica 4-1to go from being recent champions of England to the champions of Europe.
By the 1971/72 season, Bill had won the UEFA cup, which at least kept Tottenham in the European footbal frame. Where cynics might argue, we’ve been ever since.
“It’s magnificent to be in Europe, and this club – a club like Tottenham Hotspur – if we’re not in Europe… We’re nothing. We’re nothing.”
Bill Nicholson.
Spurs won the UEFA in the 1983/84 season under Keith Burkinshaw, but since then Tottenham have fundamentally failed to pass muster in Europe. Apologists for ENIC will cite the 2018/19 Champions League final appearance against Liverpool as if it were of substantial value, but football is a professional sport, and winning is the metric. Hence, no Spurs fan retweets clips of that game – just the Ajax one that took us to the final.
Fast forward to this current season and Spurs are looking like favourites to end up back in the very competition that Bill used to make Spurs relevant again.
The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust published a report of their latest THST board to THFC board meeting today and this particular line stood out for me: “Funds were ring-fenced for the summer however not qualifying for Champions League would have an impact all round.”
The rebuild of this existing Spurs’ squad will be slow and in certain respects, a little painful. But it could be better than the current living death that is “competing”.
José Mourinho ought to be asked politely by ENIC’s representatives on Earth, to pursue the Europa League next season. It would be an achievable compromise between the Champions League – for which Spurs are patently unfit to compete meaningfully in tight now – and seeking to win a domestic trophy, which would be of negligible value to our owners.
Mourinho isn’t too many additions this summer from stabilizing what is still a dysfunctional squad. Breaking the business model chains that currently binds us isn’t going to happen anytime soon. And so what I am suggesting here is precisely what it looks like – a plausible if unpalatable compromise.
Everyone in the 21st century takes European football for granted. Maybe it’s time as fans we cut our cloth according to the provision of said fabric by our masters, and lowered our sights a little?