Making New Friends
FOOTIEBALL!
Going well so far!
They should all be sent off!
YEEEEEEAAAAH!.
CROUCH!
Just some of the texts I received on Tuesday evening from my resident web-brain. Regular viewers will know him as The Overlord- he’s the chap who floats in under the radar from time to time; polishing up the banners, unclogging the spam-filters; generally doing a bang-to-rights job of solving all of your technical conundrums. He is also someone, who, up until this week, cared little for the fortunes of Tottenham Hotspur or even this curious creature we call Soccerball. A stand-up gent, no doubt, happy to do his bit for the cause- but never one to invest anything more than the odd ironic fist-pump when the valiant men in Lilywhite ‘did a goal’ or ‘kicked a win’. An honorary Yid, you might say, a fan by association.
Give the sod a few bottles of continental lager, though, and ninety minutes of barnstorm and bluster at the San Siro and we’ve got ourselves a convert. A full-boiled Hotspur aficionado. Now he sees what all the fuss is about. Now he’s got the bug. And what wasn’t there to like? As a spectacle it had just about everything. A clearly defined narrative: those cantankerous foreign types with their dastardly tactics and villainous beards, against the plucky underdogs with their strong hearts and spirited resistance. Unlikely heroes in Peter Crouch and Sandro; pantomime villains in Flamini and Gattuso. Drama of a box-office standard. And which might well have earned us a few more friends than just our mild-mannered neighbourhood web-slinger.
From this end, I was fearful of moving too quickly in-case I burst like an old tyre and spluttered out the window and off down the high street, such was the extent of pride ballooning within. Every last one of those players were staggering, colossal or any other word you might usually reserve for describing the aqueducts of ancient Rome. A better evening being a Spurs fan I shan’t care to remember. And one feels there’s plenty more to come. What a night, what a performance, what a team.
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