Antonio Conte seems to be on his way out at Tottenham (Picture: Shutterstock)
There is a library in Oslo running a project to collect a sequence of books that have not yet been written, printed on paper made from trees that have not yet been felled.
The books will be made available to the public in 2114, by which time Tottenham Hotspur Football Club will still not have won a trophy.
Or so perhaps Daniel Levy, club chairman and a boyhood Spurs fan, lies awake believing with increasing panic. Because Tottenham have not won a trophy since 2008. And even then that was the League Cup which – with all due respect to Carabao – is everyone’s least favoured cup, miles behind the sadly departed Intertoto.
Despite this under-decorated recent history, most would still agree Tottenham are one of the ‘big six’ – England’s most powerful clubs who feature regularly in the Champions League and, partly as a result, have the biggest budgets. Spurs made the Champions League final in 2019, boast one of the finest players in world football in Harry Kane and have built what is currently the best modern football stadium in the world.
Since appointing Antonio Conte – a man with more recent silverware than the club, including the 2020/21 Serie A title with Inter Milan which ended Juventus’ run of nine – Tottenham’s owners provided an equity injection of £150million for transfer spending, signed players who win things like Cristian Romero, Rodrigo Bentancur and Ivan Perisic plus talented youth like Pedro Porro who can perform now and could build their future.
Yet they were dumped out of the FA Cup by Sheffield United before being relentlessly and boringly schooled in their own stadium by AC Milan and their shirtless traveling hardcore to miss out on a place in the Champions League quarter-finals.
I’d forgive it all, they say, the Spurs fans, crying with frustration, if we could just win a trophy. If we could only catch a glimpse of Kane’s face reflected all shiny in an FA Cup he actually gets to hold. If the best bit of recent memorabilia in our kitchens was not a Carabao Cup Finalists 2021 mug bought by a laughing colleague.
Mauricio Pochettino is well loved at Tottenham (Picture: Getty)
And, frankly, if we could post a picture on Instagram holding a drinking vessel without half the comments observing this is as near as we are likely to get to a cup. Because yes (did I bring you this far without guessing?), I am one too. A Tottenham fan.
I’d chew your arm off for silverware. But this is exactly the problem – the trap that we have fallen into. Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte, Spurs’ last two managers, were quick-win appointments, with a track record of success. But they are not people who’d build for Tottenham’s future. They are destroyers, monomaniacs.
Anyway, it hasn’t worked. We appreciated finishing fourth last season and qualifying for the Champions League again – beyond my dreams as a kid – but as I stood pitchside watching our 0-0 last-16, second leg with Milan, I couldn’t help feel that if this turgid crap is all we can put out in a game such as this, there’s merit in giving it a miss if we can use the time wisely. The performance belittled the occasion.
So what next? Though he’s magic, you know, my head says ‘maybe’ about a return of Mauricio Pochettino. The situation in 2014 is not today’s, and the fact he wasn’t backed after all he’d achieved – including 18 months without a single signing – well, the trust would be hard to rebuild. If it could be done, however, I’d carry him back into the N17 dugout myself.
Wiser men than me suggest Ruben Amorim, who won Sporting the Portuguese league for the first time in 19 years on the cheap, and who is great with young players. Or Sergio Conceciao, who may be about to leave Porto if he isn’t backed.
But whoever it is that replaces Conte, it needs to be an Oslo Library Manager. One for the future, whose process is worth trusting – like Arsenal, gallingly, have down the road. And who – important, this – does not disdain the club.
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Tottenham have to get it right with their next manager