The Glory Game, page 33
‘As for me, at one stage I was sure I’d had it, but now I feel very much back in the fold. In the last two months, everything seems to have revolved round me.
‘I don’t feel bitter about what happened. It’s all part of the game. You learn by it all. I know now that the club is bigger than the player. Far, far bigger. I’d probably got complacent, thinking that as captain and an England player I was sure of my place. It was a reminder to me and other players that you can’t take your place for granted.’
It’ll be interesting to see if Steve Perryman makes England’s World Cup team. His fall from grace at the beginning of the season was undramatic, unnoticed by the general footballing public, but it gave him many sleepless nights. He was well aware that his play had become predictable, that he wasn’t moving forward enough. But it all came right in the end. His two goals against Milan, which won Spurs their semi-final tie, couldn’t have been more positive. And as the season ended, he was getting ready to tour Europe with England’s Under-23 team.
Things also came right for Joe Kinnear, the full-back who lost his place to the young reserve, Ray Evans. Joe had several long and miserable months, but he came back in the team with Mullery and never looked back. ‘I’m on top of the world now,’ said Joe the next day. ‘Last night it didn’t seem a very good match, for me or for anybody, but you’ve got to think about all the hard work that went into getting to the final. It was a long hard slog.
‘It was like getting stabbed when I lost my place. You see the lads every day but you’re not part of them any more. You don’t get in the bath with them after the match, you don’t chat with them or have any laughs together. You just walk around on your own. I had a long, long wait to get back. Next season I’ve just got to fight to keep my place.’
Alas for Ray Evans. He finished the season as he began, back in the reserves. It was his best season ever, in terms of the number of first-team appearances, but it did him little good. As you would expect, he finished the season feeling sick, choked, diabolical.
Tony Want, the reserve who’d had the brainstorm, deliberately giving up his chance that time of a first-team game, was transferred on the day of the UEFA Cup final. His years of hard, loyal service on the fringes of the first team had not gone unnoticed by other clubs. He was bought by Birmingham City, newly promoted to the First Division, for £50,000. As he hadn’t asked for the move, he got his five per cent cut of the transfer. He was well pleased, though sad to leave Spurs.
During the year, that was the only sale, though there looked like being more during the close season. No one had been bought either, but it was thought by most people that a new forward would doubtless soon be bought as an eventual replacement for Alan Gilzean. It turned out to be the first and last season as a Spurs player for Bobby Scarth, the boy with a hearing problem. They decided at the end to let him go.
As for Ralph Coates, the season’s new boy, he never seemed to be too depressed by his failure to produce the sort of brilliant form he’d displayed at Burnley. He took a long time to settle into the team’s patterns and even at the end of the season he still seemed slightly out of place. During the season, he was brought back into the midfield, after his lack of success as a forward. Surprisingly, it was from midfield that he scored his only two League goals of the season, both of them beauties and worth waiting for – both the sort to endear him to the Tottenham fans. One was against Chelsea and one against Arsenal. His Arsenal goal was incredible – a run of eighty yards from his own penalty area, beating two men and scoring. He’d had similar, if shorter runs, all season, ending ignominiously, either running straight into a defender or losing control of the ball.
But in every game he’d shown great energy and hard work. If nothing else, it secured his place in the affections of the crowd. They always love a trier. Personally, he’d settled down very well, being accepted and liked by the team, finding himself a smart house and starting a second baby.
‘The first half of the season was disappointing. I didn’t really enjoy it. I wasn’t happy with my performance. Then I had those injuries, the most I’ve had in my whole career. But I really enjoyed the last two months. I couldn’t sleep last night for excitement. I got up at five and went to clean the cars. I never won anything at Burnley.’
Martin Chivers was the country’s top marksman that season. In all, he scored forty-five goals for Spurs, plus two for England. If he seemed to come in for a lot of criticism it was only because he had set his own standards so high. Chivers is the player most likely. Chivers is the player England and Spurs expect. He played sixty-seven games for Spurs and five for England, probably an all-time record for an English First Division player. ‘All I feel now is knackered. It’s definitely been my best season for goals, but I was disappointed with a lot of my games. I often got the vital goal, but deep down I knew I hadn’t played well. I would like to be more consistent next season.’
Bill Nicholson was relieved but seemed far from ecstatic. Again his emotions were as much with Wolves, feeling for them in their hour of defeat, knowing that Spurs had achieved glory without being particularly glorious. ‘As a European final, it was nothing like our 1963 win. That really was a wonderful occasion. I’d say that was the best cup victory I’ve known. Winning by five goals to one against Atlético Madrid was winning in style.’
The next day, he was in his office early as usual, interviewing parents, deciding on his youth players for the next season. In fourteen years as manager of Spurs, he’d now won seven major trophies. Spurs had still to be defeated in a Cup final. They’d become the first British club to win twice in Europe.
‘It’s been a very full season and I’ve tried to look upon each match as being important. We wanted to keep a good position in the League all the time.
‘I think the biggest disappointment was being knocked out of the League Cup by Chelsea. We gave away the goals. Being beaten by Leeds in the FA Cup was different. On the day, Leeds were the better team.
‘We still have problems. For such experienced players, a lot of them are not consistent. I can’t sit and watch them in comfort, not the way I’ve done with other teams I’ve had. But from the results’ point of view it’s been a very successful season. There’s no argument about that.’
Mr Wale also thought it had been a most successful season. ‘It was a great culmination to a hard year’s work. The most important thing is being in Europe again. There’s something lacking for a top club today if it’s not in Europe.’
During the year he changed his mind on one topic which has kept the Spurs board in discussions for generations. He started the season by saying he was against any advertising inside the Spurs ground. By the end, he no longer considered it a mortal sin. ‘It’s all a matter of money.’ They’d taken soundings and discovered that a few selected advertisements placed discreetly around the side of the pitch, without desecrating the stands, could bring in at least £15,000 per season. ‘It does seem silly not to allow it, if it can be done with taste. I think we’ll try it next season.’ In the close season, they were going to spend £26,000 on installing new floodlights, so they needed all the money they could get.
During the year, Spurs opened a club shop for the first time, something most other top clubs have had for years. It was a great success, without taking away any business from the other shops around Tottenham which sell Spurs souvenirs. At the end of the season the shop’s newest line was underpants for men and knickers for women, in white with the Spurs cockerel on the front. (‘Very good quality,’ said Ron Wick, the shop manager. ‘Very tasteful.’)
I started the season with the idea that being a footballer must be a good life. How lovely to be a hero. How wrong I was.
Footballers are worth every penny they can get. When it comes to the crunch, every player, however big a star, is disposable, as we have seen. There’s an old joke in football about the manager of a Fourth Division club, pushing out his humble team for a cup match against a big First Division club. ‘Go out there, lads, and do your best,’ he exhorts them, ‘so I can get enough money to replace you.’
Footballers are the game’s fodder, human sacrifices that are thrown without sentiment or apologies into the battlefield. The pressures only cause concern if they impair their powers. Physical injuries, like groin strains, have to be endured. If they get too bad, out you go. Eddie Baily’s continual stream of wartime metaphors made me think of the First World War trenches, with the generals sending out miles of bodies, straight into the graveyards.
It’s been interesting to see how the players react to all the pressures. They experience in extremis many of the pressures of the world today. Every occupation has its rat race, but football is one of the few where the race can end every week. From the minute they become full-time footballers at fifteen they’re being tested, week in and week out. No one at any time is ever secure.
It’s been interesting to see their group rituals, at home and at the club. Being accepted, being part of the gang, doing the right thing, being smart but not flash, is very important to them all. When you belong, you really belong. When you’re out, you become a pariah.
I don’t know how Mullery or Joe Kinnear or Tony Want or Ray Evans survived the season without a nervous breakdown. I don’t know how Ralph Coates didn’t go back on sleeping pills or come out in strange lumps the way he’d done at Burnley. Footballers are chosen for their character, as we’ve been told a hundred times, so perhaps the weakest are weeded out from the beginning. It’s not just the best footballers who survive but the ones with the strongest nervous systems.
Yet who would be a manager? They have complete power over their charges, but when it really matters they’re helpless. Most players do forget, once they’re out they’re playing, but a manager has few releases, few safety valves. Their agony is constant.
The public, of course, see it as a glamorous life. They’re not interested in the fact that it’s been a hard season. Only in the trophies. Clubs these days are always going on about the number of matches, but the public don’t really care. I didn’t either, not until I put in ten thousand hard miles, dragging round Europe. Altogether, Spurs spent five weeks of last season just hanging around strange hotels. My metabolism never got used to it. Putting in two days suspended in limbo in an Italian hotel was bad enough, but having to play before seventy thousand screaming Italians at the end of it would have turned me into a gibbering wreck.
The public don’t make allowances, naturally enough. They don’t see all the tensions behind the scenes. Like the manager and his board, they want success, not excuses.
The glamour is there, on the outside, anyway. The heroes are idolised. The fans thrill to their skills, there is big money to be earned. But inside the club, a player is only as good as his last game. Inside the club, they lead regimented lives, completely in the power of a manager who can ordain their every movement, and trained by ex-players whose own playing lives were light years away from the conditions of today. Internally, they’re despised more often than admired, criticised for being soft, accused of being spoiled.
At the same time, the old-timers feel sorry for today’s players’ apparent lack of enjoyment. I’ve no doubt the dressing-room at Spurs is little different from that at any other big club. Joe Mercer of Manchester City says he often gets the feeling that his players are going off to Vietnam, not to play a game of football.
But each and every player comes willingly to the scaffold, pushing and fighting to beat the front. They know the rules and the pitfalls. They know they’ll be sacrificed without a moment’s hesitation. They know the physical strains, the disciplined life they’ll have to lead and the arthritic middle age that lies ahead. To a man, they haven’t the slightest regret. They’re almost childlike in their gratitude for what football’s done for them.
The alternative for most of them would have been the factory floor or the building site. Thanks to football, they’re special.
‘I’m glad the end didn’t come for me last season,’ says Alan Mullery. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to have gone out like that. In the end I was able to withdraw from the England party. They didn’t chuck me out. I’ve been very, very lucky. I’ve had thirteen good years. I’ve had all the good times. I’ve seen the world. I’d have been nobody, but for football.’
APPENDICES TO THE 1972 EDITION
* * *
Football Tactics
1 Spurs’ dead-ball tactics: explanations and diagrams
2 Goal categories: an analysis of Spurs’ goals scored during the season
First-Team Pool: Basic Facts
3 Football background
4 Personal background
5 Domestic background
First-Team Pool: Football and Social Attitudes
6 Attitudes to football
7 Qualities necessary for success in football
8 Pre-match rituals, superstitions, anxieties
9 Enjoyment of football
10 Social attitudes: domestic, current events, newspapers, politics
11 Plans for the future
Management
12 Basic facts
Directors
13 Basic facts
NOTE All information was correct up to 1 June 1972. The players did not fill in the questionnaires themselves – they were each asked the questions verbally and I wrote down their answers. I am grateful to sociologist John Carrier for his help.
APPENDIX 1
DEAD-BALL TACTICS: Free-kicks, corners, throw-ins
Drawings by Paul Trevillion
Spurs, like all professional teams, have a series of dead-ball tactics which they work out in training at the beginning of each season. They don’t always use the planned move – a quickly taken free-kick, simply passed to the nearest player, or a direct shot at goal, might be more effective. Some of the planned tactics are dropped as the season goes on, or modified when they’ve been found not to work, or added to when new players come into the team, but in most dead-ball situations, they have several planned movements which they can use. From the arrangement of the team, or from the position of the ball, or sometimes by someone like Mullery or Peters calling out a number, each player knows what tactic is about to be tried and knows what position he must take up.
Dead-ball tactics are worth practising. Spurs went on to score almost a quarter of their goals last season from dead-ball situations. From free-kicks alone they scored eleven goals.
No 1 Free-kick: This is usually tried when the kick is directly in front of goal. The vital man is Perryman. He takes up his position at the end of the wall which the defence has lined up between the ball and their goalkeeper. The moment the ball is kicked – usually by Peters, with perhaps Mullery standing beside him to confuse the defence – Perryman whips round behind the wall. The defence is expecting to be blasted by a hard shot from Peters, but instead Peters chips the ball gently over the wall for the waiting Perryman either to head or shoot at goal. It’s a hard manoeuvre to finish. The element of surprise is usually on Perryman’s side – the strikers, like Chivers and Gilzean are the ones being heavily marked – but the moment the goalkeeper realises what’s happening, he comes charging out, going straight for Perryman. You have to be very brave to get in your shot, which is why Perryman is chosen.
No 2 Free-kick: This is a quickly taken free-kick, very simple and usually the most effective of all. Peters places the ball very quickly, before the opposition have arranged themselves, and kicks it straight away, without looking up. Chivers has taken up a position in front of the far post. But the second the ball is kicked, he is already moving, knowing that Peters will be chipping the ball to the empty space around the penalty spot. Chivers is meant to meet the ball with his head and score direct.
No 3 Free-kick: Chivers and Gilzean appear to be the obvious targets in this free-kick but in fact they are decoys. They both stand towards the far post, heavily marked by defenders as usual. When the ball is kicked, they start running as fast as possible towards the near post, taking the defenders with them. The space they have left empty is where Peters has to land the ball, right in the path of Mullery (or Knowles or Kinnear) who has started running forward the moment the ball is hit. He either tries directly for goal, if it looks possible, or squares it for Chivers or Gilzean to flick in.
No 4 Free-kick: This free-kick was created last season to take advantage of Coates’ talent for making a quick burst. Chivers and Gilzean are towards the far post, both heavily marked. Instead of banging the ball over the wall towards them as expected,
Peters pushes the ball low to the side of the wall, between the wall and their full-back. Coates has to burst past the full-back, race for the line and then cross the ball to Chivers and Gilzean at the far post.
Corners
At the start of the season, there were two basic corners, but they were added to as the season progressed or dropped when players were out of the team.
Left-hand corner: Perryman usually takes the left-hand corners, or perhaps Neighbour or Pearce if they are playing. They are meant to be in-swinging lobs aimed at Gilzean’s head who is standing in front of the defence at the near post. Gilzean runs out to meet the ball the second it is kicked and back-heads it either directly over his head for Chivers in the goalmouth or towards the penalty spot for Peters or England. English teams know only too well how Gilzean can flick the ball backwards with his head and he’s always heavily marked, but it still works on many occasions.
