London: The crowd sang as if summoning something sacred. “When the Spurs go marching in,” they chanted – an old gospel melody reimagined for a modern football miracle.
Flags whipped in the breeze, faces were painted in navy and white, and the High Road trembled with movement. From the fried chicken shops of Edmonton Green to the sleek facade of the new stadium, Tottenham was a city unto itself for one golden afternoon – a community momentarily suspended in joy.
It wasn’t just noise. It was release. After 17 years of waiting, Spurs had finally won a trophy. And the people who had waited – with crossed fingers, broken hearts, and half-muttered curses – spilled onto the streets to see it raised.
An open-top bus crawled along a route soaked in history and local pride. The players, medals gleaming in the light, waved down to a crowd that surged around them like a tide. They passed betting shops and nail salons, Victorian terraces and housing estates, kebab joints, boarded-up pubs, and ambitious new cafes. Tottenham – gritty, diverse, gentrifying and proud – was on parade alongside its team. This wasn’t just about soccer. It was about place, and pain, and perseverance.
And then, the man at the heart of it stepped up to the microphone.
“We’re here because of this unbelievable group of people; players and staff, absolute heroes,” said the gravel-voiced Ange Postecoglou, who had promised silverware in his second year, and delivered it. “They did it all for you. Because you deserve it. This club deserves it.”
The roar that followed was one of gratitude – and perhaps of knowing that this moment, like all things in Tottenham, might be fleeting. Two nights ago, in Bilbao, this team edged Manchester United 1-0 to lift a long-awaited European trophy, a victory that echoes far beyond the final whistle.
Postecoglou has taken an unlikely path to this point. He now finds himself in the company of a long line of Australians who have crossed oceans to chase success in London – think Kylie Minogue, Barry Humphries, Shane Warne, Clive James, Germaine Greer or Nick Cave. Some arrived with charm, others with bite, most with something to prove. All eventually found themselves, in their own way, loved as much abroad as at home.
Maybe Ange isn’t there yet. Maybe he never gets the chance. Hours earlier, BBC journalist Sami Mokbel reported that despite delivering Tottenham’s first trophy in nearly two decades, the club is already eyeing a replacement. Crystal Palace’s Oliver Glasner, an Austrian, leads the shortlist. In true Spurs fashion, stability remains a rumour, not a fact.
Still, for now, Postecoglou is the man of the moment. The architect of a cup win that didn’t just end a drought; it reset the spirit of a club and a community.
“What the history books say is we’re the Europa Cup winners and it doesn’t say how we did it,” he said.
And he suggested better times lay ahead: “All the best TV series, season three is better than season two,” he said, to cheers of approval.
This corner of working-class north London has long lived in the shadow of inequality. A postcode where housing estates lean against shiny new towers. Where immigrant families have stitched together a cultural tapestry – Jews, Muslims and Christians – from Nigeria, Turkey, Jamaica, Albania, Somalia, and beyond. Where opportunity is too often a fight, and resilience isn’t a virtue – it’s survival.
Supporting Spurs in this landscape has always been an act of defiance. A belief passed from grandparent to grandchild like a family heirloom: chipped, weathered, but never discarded.
People like 78-year-old Kathleen Sleap, who stood near Lansdowne Road with a photograph of her late husband, the man she met in the stands in 1965. “He would’ve loved to see this,” she said. “We won something for the first time in ages.”