Good day, Emma here tuning in from yet another sunny Monday! Such a mood booster to have those rays hitting your face, but nothing like a shitty result from Tottenham to slap you right back down. I’m just going to cut right to the chase.
Not a very good day to be a Spurs supporter, but when is it ever really. After last night’s loss, I feel a deep frustration with this club and this team, my issues are mainly with Daniel Levy and management but sometimes it feels so difficult to address, high up in their board rooms made out of oak and steel-cut frames and leather. It’s easy to say that these feelings are normal, most supporters of a football team experience this restlessness on a varying scale of severity, and considering that fact that being “Spursy” literally means “to consistently and inevitably fail to live up to expectations”, I think Tottenham fans are especially well-versed in this, we know how it goes.
This time around something’s different though, it’s hitting me harder than usual. It might be the simple fact that we have tasted heaven (under Mauricio Pochettino’s leadership) to lose it and fall under the reign of a grumpy, grey-haired Portuguese. We’ve seen what many of these players can do under the right coach with a philosophy, how well they take to the hearty man-on approach that Poch has, and to have to witness this five-year project fall apart at the seams. Read the desperation on the players’ faces witnessing the same thing, as they’re unable to keep it together in front of the cameras. I can see so many of them scatter in the wind in the summer, because it’s futile to believe that anything like love would have them sticking around. A player’s career is short in comparison. But our fandom is for life and I love these players so much, because they have been such a huge component of an exciting part of my fandom this far, and I would love to see so much more for them in a Tottenham shirt, like holding up a trophy.
It hit me as I was repotting a plant the other day. I’ve nurtured this plant since it was just a wee cutting that I got from my roommate, and it has long since outgrown its pot so it was about time. I was elbow-deep in soil when I realised that I have never done this before, repotting a plant. And the reason why is simply because I’ve never stayed long enough in one place to have plants, or to have plants that would thrive under my care and outgrow their pot. But alas, here I was, repotting my plant and reflecting on life, and having mulled over the loss all day that was naturally where I ended up in my mind and I realised that I might’ve spent time in a lot of places, but the one thing that has followed everywhere I’ve gone has been Tottenham.
Tottenham has been one of the few constant things in a life which scenery has been ever changing. Supporting this club is my safe haven, I see it as a piece of driftwood that I’m holding onto going down a river. As I have moved houses and countries, as I’ve gone through grief and loss and broken hearts (sometime’s their fault). Whether it’s been making a night out of it in Gothenburg dragging friends along, or just scurrying down the stars from literally every place I’ve lived and headed in to the local pub. At countless Italy visits, Nicaraugan mornings, on our New Years trip visiting friends in Brussels, drinking shots in Kigali and turning chairs that had landed on the floor in the celebrations, crying my eyes out in Cape Town: I have watched Spurs play everywhere.
Football fandom is a comfortable conversation starter and it gives a somewhat predictable structure to life. It also means that when the team is not balanced, when they’re not doing well, neither am I (at least not when the issues are deep and systematic like these). But there’s nothing that I can do about that, and there’s something so beautiful and equally terrifying about the power an external entity can have over you. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
A rant could not be held back at this time, there’s just so much going on in the team at the minute and therefore in me. As much as I would like to think that I am beyond the whims of this silly team, that I can somewhat stand above the sly digs in press conferences or players being benched for mysterious reasons - I cannot, I get dragged right into it.