Tottenham have insisted they are committed to becoming more sustainable as a club, despite chartering a private jet to avoid a coach journey back from Manchester.
Spurs produced their best performance of the season to thrash Manchester United 3-0 on Sunday. Goals from Brennan Johnson, Dejan Kulusevski and Dominic Solanke saw the away side run riot at Old Trafford to make it a jubilant journey back to north London.
Most football supporters would expect their team to jump on the team coach and head down the motorway. But instead Tottenham were transported to a nearby airport to board a private flight – all in aid of saving their players a few hours.
The journey from Old Trafford to Tottenham’s training ground is 194 miles and, depending on traffic conditions, should take around three and a half hours. Including the journey to the two airports at either end of the flight, Spurs cannot have reduced that by much by flying – and their decision hasn’t gone down well on social media.
A video from James Maddison’s Instagram account, showing Micky van de Ven re-watching his assist for Johnson's early goal while sat on the plane, was reposted on Twitter by the official Premier League account, where it has been viewed over three million times. Yet a quote-tweet by a disgruntled fan has attracted 2.8m views and simply asks: “Why the f*** are they flying from Manchester to London?”
It’s a question which Mirror Football has asked time and again over the past few years, albeit in a not so blunt fashion. Last year we revealed the shocking prevalence of such short-haul domestic flights while BBC research has revealed that 81 flights were taken by Premier League sides in a two-month period which contained just 100 matches.
Asked to explain the decision to fly – which is around 40 times worse for the environment than taking the coach – a Tottenham spokesperson said: “Tottenham Hotspur is committed to minimising its environmental impact across all club operations, which will take time and effort. As part of this commitment, and as a signatory of the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, the club has a policy in place to ensure all its playing teams – comprising of the men’s first team, women’s first team and academy age groups – travel to and from matches as sustainably as possible.
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“This includes minimising air travel where possible, with team officials and delegates travelling on the team plane. During the season, the team will travel by coach for all distances under 2.5 hours, whereby player physical optimisation and performance is not compromised as a result.
“The club works with its official travel partner, Destination Sport Travel, to measure, manage and report on travel emissions, with the objective to reduce emissions where possible and identify sustainable team travel options. Destination Sport Travel is also working with the club to offset emissions where possible via the purchase of carbon credits verified by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
Recent analysis by campaign group Possible shows that 84 per cent of Premier League away games could be reached by coach in less than four and a half hours. Tottenham are far from the only club guilty of making short-sighted decisions and of putting performance above all other considerations, but this backlash compounds another jaw-dropping call from earlier this year, when they flew 21,000 miles to Melbourne to play a friendly against Newcastle.