Very few things in football are assured, but one thing is for sure—on August 13, in the UEFA Super Cup, newly crowned Champions League winners PSG will play Tottenham Hotspur, recently crowned Europa League winners.
For the mighty Spurs, who hadn’t won any European trophy in 41 years, it’ll provide an opportunity for a second trophy in just three months. While PSG will be overwhelming favorite, as of June 1, we don’t know who Tottenham’s manager might be for that Super Cup game.
On a more positive note, I asked for a contribution from actor-writer-producer Charlie “Unruly” Bewley, who is a lifelong Spurs fan who has lived and died and lived again in expectation of Spurs recapturing its once former glories. Charlie goes back to those recent glorious days in late May, when Spurs ruled Europe and North London.
Guest Blog Post by “Charlie Unruly—when we were Kings.
OK. Fun and games will begin hazily sobering up as of the beginning of next week—unless you're Cuti Romero. I wish I too could be as inebriated by this beautiful moment, but I live in the Cali mountains—I jog amongst bears—and as such am confined to YouTube, ExpressVPN and a Big Bear Spurs Supporters Club with one fanatical member. Naturally, I'm forced to get ahead of myself.
Here's where I'm at…I turned at the end of the season—to apathy. And, when apathy hits at Tottenham, so do we collectively hit the big red button. But even the great finger of Darth Levy—though reports suggest he was making preemptive decisions regardless of the result in the final—must be hovering now. And credit to him for holding off for so long. Madness.
It comes down to the "Spursy" tag, which I see subtly and not so subtly, literally everywhere: in X/Twitter posts; in fans never believing until that final whistle blows; in the body language permeating most every member of staff at the club…I see it. I see Spursy.
BUT—one man has changed that.
That victory parade today (in North London on Friday May 23), I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I cried. We have been abused. I was a battered housewife for years at the whim of 11 men taking any given field of play. My entire emotional well-being somehow hinged on pig skin hitting the back of the net more times than the opposition, whose fanbases mocked us relentlessly for never pushing one, just one, over the line.
But that one man, Ange Postecoglou has battled, BATTLED against media, pundits, horrible results and our own fans. He dug in and has done it. What happened today in the streets of N17 was fairytale stuff. And not just because we finally won something. But, also because that beautiful barbecuing bastard (Big Ange) has single handedly performed open nervous system surgery on a club that was frail and mentally scarred by years of mediocrity under the guise of "The Game is about Glory."
Well finally, it is. And that's not because we got lucky.
I feel exorcised. And it's all down to Ange Postecoglou.
Not Conte, not Mourinho, not even Poch could do that. But he did. He deserves the absolute kitchen sink. We needed a winner regardless of circumstance. Ange has fought for us with every stubborn word; against intense personal mockery—tooth and nail against our own sense of not being enough—against this very real condition we once knew as "Spursy."
The glass case has firmly sprung back over the red button. Pressing it now, after what we all bore witness to today, not even Daniel, surely? I dare him. I double Dare him to Do it.
This feels like 2019 all over again. Except, this time, we bloody well won it—a European trophy champion, again, first time since 1984. And there's no excuse not to power the f••k on. No painful rebuild—this time, it's a clear path to the summit.