Prioritizing business over club traditions should not be entertained
LONDON --
It was in 1984, shortly after Tottenham Hotspur had won the UEFA Cup, that coach Keith Burkinshaw fell out with the board and quit the club, uttering, with a backward glance at the outer walls of White Hart Lane, words to the effect that "there used to be a soccer club over there." More than three decades on, the quote still resonates and is often recalled when any club -- not just Tottenham -- are thought to have betrayed the game's traditional values.
I thought about it when I heard that Manchester United, extensively rebuilding under Louis van Gaal, were preparing an offer of $70 million or more for the young striker Harry Kane, one of this season's sensations, whose goals and general verve have done much to invigorate Spurs -- not least in the 5-3 victory over Chelsea at the Lane on New Year's Day -- in their first campaign under Mauricio Pochettino.
Kane has also been promoted to the senior England squad (though he will step back down to the Under-21s this summer, so serious is the intent of Gareth Southgate and his squad to become champions of Europe) and been honored by his fellow professionals with the title of Young Player of the Year. It's extraordinary to reflect that at the start of the season, having returned from Leicester, the fourth club that had been allowed to take him on loan, Kane had to rely on Europa League qualifiers for a starting place and tended to be no more than a substitute in the first team until November.
As Pochettino has said, Kane simply forced him to rethink the pecking order and relegate the costly Robert Soldado, so successful was the partnership between the 21-year-old Englishman and Danish playmaker Christian Eriksen. This, everyone seemed to assume, was the bright new future of Spurs. But van Gaal saw it more as part of his United jigsaw. Van Gaal wants a bigger and better squad for next season, which is almost certain to involve the UEFA Champions League -- at least a qualifying spot will be confirmed if Arsenal fail to win at Old Trafford on Sunday, or even the day before, if Liverpool only draw at home to Crystal Palace.
History shows that if United want a Spurs player they usually get him. The pull of Old Trafford, and the taste for business of White Hart Lane chairman Daniel Levy, meant that Dimitar Berbatov, for example, hit the road north in exchange for around $47 million in 2008. The money was well enough invested -- not least in Luka Modric -- for Spurs to finish fourth in the Premier League two years later and qualify for Europe's top competition for the first time since the 1961-62 double-winning team -- their greatest ever -- and no one asked if there was a soccer club at White Hart Lane.
But this is different. This is not a Berbatov or a Teddy Sheringham passing through. This, in Harry Kane, is as near as you'll get to the soul of a soccer club. He was born in Chingford, just five miles from the stadium and was a fan when he joined the club at 11. That's why the fans, when they chant his name, roar out: "He's one of our own!" He is not alone -- midfielders Ryan Mason and Nabil Bentaleb, though they joined Spurs' academy in their later teens, have also come through the ranks and settled themselves in Pochettino's team -- but no one more than Kane offers hope of establishing the sort of home-bred hero that can help to define a proper soccer club.
Arsenal had one in Tony Adams, their captain in the glory years under both George Graham and Arsene Wenger, but really we need look no further than Anfield this weekend for a more recent example. Steven Gerrard will be playing his last home game for Liverpool before he emigrates to MLS (though there is talk of a loan move back in January) and the emotion will be almost tangible.
The occasion will also be a reminder that one of England's finest midfielders could never quite break the bond that existed between him and the club's supporters. Gerrard -- he's one of Liverpool's own all right -- would not swap the Champions League title so dramatically won in Istanbul ten years ago for all the trophies he might have collected had he taken Jose Mourinho's invitations to join Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid -- or any of the other offers made to Liverpool since Gerard Houllier plucked him from the club's academy in 1998.
Only a proper soccer club could inspire such devotion and, if Spurs seek to demonstrate that they still deserve the description, the idea of driving another hard bargain, as Levy did not only in the case of Berbatov but with Real Madrid when they came calling for Gareth Bale the summer before last, should not be entertained.
Kane signed a five-and-a-half-year contract only in February and should be both held to it and encouraged with further signings of the Eriksen class so that he and the support can be convinced that when the club move into the new White Hart Lane in a few years' time the best traditions of the glory game that filled the old place are observed.
