I’ve been a Tottenham Hotspur fan for 18 years. In 2008 I was nacent and unformed, a true baby COYS, when Juande Ramos took another deeply flawed Tottenham side to the League Cup title, and I will admit I had absolutely no inkling of its significance at the time it happened. Oh, Spurs won something? Neat! Guess I picked a good team.
Flash forward 17 years later and I was sitting in my house, watching Son Heung-Min lift a trophy in Bilbao for what was the first time since then and the first European title since 1984’s win over Anderlecht. I had tears in my eyes. It was cathartic. It was glorious. It was the best day of my fandom.
And it means everything, not just to Spurs supporters, but to the club itself.
Tottenham has always been the club of losers, the almosts, the we’ll-get-’em-next-seasons, the put-the-pressure-ons. Spurs bootstrapped their way under Daniel Levy and ENIC from a mid-table club that occasionally won a domestic cup to one that regularly participated in the Champions League and occasionally challenged for Premier League titles. That’s laudable enough, but the one thing that has held the club back, the ultimate source of banter, was the long trophy drought. Never mind that many, many clubs have gone longer without winning silverware — Tottenham wanted to sit at the big boys table, and they wouldn’t let it happen because what have they won? They aren’t even owned by a billionaire! Well okay they are, but not THAT kind of billionaire. You don’t even go here!
Ange certainly noticed. For the past few weeks he’s been banging on in press conferences about how people, even Spurs fans, seem determined to qualify everything that happens to this club. Back in early April, responding to a perceived slight when Mathys Tel took a penalty (which he converted) ahead of Brennan Johnson in a win over Southampton, Ange summarized the frustration pretty succinctly.
“It’s incredible, it’s just literally turning gold into crap when it’s Tottenham. Seriously. If we’re 2-1 up tomorrow night and get a penalty in the last minute, I want the best penalty taker to take it. The one slight against this club is apparently it hasn’t been a winner. Well the winner’s mentality in the last minute of the game is to score a goal.
“...I just think we’re in that position that the good stuff we may do is going to be turned into a glass-half-full rhetoric and, from that perspective, I don’t think that can be a driver in what we want to do. The lads are really keen to bring success to the club. I just think there’s a real determination to take the opportunity that they’ve earned at this point.”
Now, they’ve done it. Tottenham club captain Son Heung-Min has lifted a European trophy, the club and the fans are celebrating, and the club can finally move on. It’s not hyperbole to say that yesterday was a club-defining event for Tottenham Hotspur. If the major knock on Spurs was that they hadn’t won anything... well now they have. It’s as though everyone has let out a collective breath they’ve been holding for nearly two decades. We no longer need to imagine Sisyphus happy.
Will that stop the banter? Of course it won’t. You could see the narrative shifting even before the match kicked off, with pundits and media outlets talking about how Spurs didn’t deserve to be in the Champions League if they won the tournament because the Europa League is somehow weakened by the new format, and their wretched league form somehow diminishes winning a major European cup competition. For years, these same pundits slagged Spurs off when they’d finish inside the top five because they hadn’t won anything. Now that they’ve won something, those same pundits immediately pivoted to “well, sure they won something but have you seen their league form?”
But that’s just salt. Tottenham’s league form can and will improve. There’s almost no way that it won’t! Postecoglou’s decision to laser-focus on the Europa League with his injured and thin squad to the detriment of Premier League position was certainly stressful for fans, but once Spurs eliminated relegation from the equation, it became something of a moot point. It looked like a stroke of genius the moment the final whistle blew and the Estadio San Mames exploded with a roar from those wearing blue and lilywhite.
One trophy doesn’t guarantee future success. But it is not at all difficult to imagine Tottenham Hotspur, now that they’ve gotten that nearly college-aged monkey off their back, can use yesterday as a springboard to better things. If before yesterday players might have viewed Spurs as a club where success goes to die, maybe now they’ll look at Ange Postecoglou’s project as something they want to be a part of. Maybe the idea that the team that finished 17th in the league will now play in the Champions League next season is appealing. Perhaps they look at Ange Postecoglou and Spurs in a completely new light.
There is, for sure, a huge amount of work to be done. The squad needs significant improvement and the floor needs to be raised if Spurs want to compete in four competitions, including the Champions League, next season. There will undoubtedly be more bumps in the road. Hell, Ange’s job still isn’t secure!
But those are all problems for tomorrow. Today, we celebrate.
Spurs have won a trophy. The future stretches out before us, full of endless possibility. My god, what else might happen now?