According to the Mail Online, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club has no plans to erect a memorial to Jimmy Greaves, or any other stars from the club’s past either, for that matter.
Football clubs have always gone in for this sort of thing, in fact, I’m struggling to think of clubs that don’t have great bronze tributes to their heroes in front of their stadiums. Ipswich Town honour Sir Bobby Robson, Billy Bremner cuts a triumphant pose outside Elland Road, and fans ensure that there’s always a scarf or hat adorned upon him. Bobby Moore is outside Wembley and so on. The list is a lengthy one. These tributes not only honour the past, but remind fans of today of the expectations and ambitions of their sides. The core values, if you will.
I take a view that ENIC doesn’t want football to cloud their commercial offer, and the stadium has been built with a chameleon feel to it, so it can become anything, be it a rock venue, a conference centre or a place where one can go twice a year to pretend to be American.
This is a peculiar outlook, give that sponsors do tend to buy into clean and clear messages. Daniel Levy’s offer is a name above a door of a football team that doesn’t win anything.
Shameful.