Team That Dared to Do

Gerry Francis

Description

Football isn't about winning trophies, it's about the unforgettable moments that create the stories handed down through generations. Never has that been truer than at Tottenham in 1994/95. In The Team That Dared To Do manager Gerry Francis reveals, for the first time, the diary entries he made in the months after being forced out of QPR and taking on one of the toughest jobs in English football at White Hart Lane. With outspoken chairman Alan Sugar fighting a points deduction and FA Cup ban in the courts, Francis replaced the sacked Ossie Ardiles. In a series of exclusive interviews conducted by BBC sports journalist Chris Slegg we hear from former players including Jurgen Klinsmann, Teddy Sheringham, Darren Anderton, and Sol Campbell about what life was like in the dressing room and on the training ground. From the magic of Klinsmania and Ardiles' audacious attempt to make a success of his 'Famous Five' forward line, to some magnificent performances under Francis, it was a season that had it all.

Sujets

• Gran Londres
• Greater London
• Grand Londres
• London

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785313561
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2017 Pitch Publishing A2 Yeoman Gate Yeoman Way Durrington BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Gerry Francis and Chris Slegg, 2017
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-309-7 eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-356-1
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Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Author s Note
Acknowledgements
About the authors
What Happened in 1994 and 1995
PART 1: KLINSMANIA
1. Famous Five
2. Overhead Kick
3. Never Offside, Lino
4. Portman Perfection
5. On the Slide
6. Ossie s Nightmare
PART 2: THE FRANCIS REVIVAL
7. Meanwhile at Loftus Road
8. Changing of the Guard
9. The Francis Revival
10. Up for the Cup
11. On our way to Wembley?
12. Ovation
13. Deflation
PART 3: FOOTBALLER OF THE YEAR
14. Footballer of the Year
What Happened Next to the Boys of 94/95
Points of Interest
Bibliography
Photographs
Foreword
by J rgen Klinsmann
W HAT I remember most about the 1994/95 season with Tottenham is the amazing energy that surrounded the club. It wasn t just a team spirit. It was a club spirit. It was a spirit that was created by Alan Sugar and his fight against the FA, and which filtered out to everyone, no matter what position they were working in, whether front office, back office, on the training ground, or in the stands.
White Hart Lane is a stadium which harnesses that energy too. I still feel it when I drive up to the stadium today, on the occasions when I am able to come and visit. The Tottenham fans are a really knowledgeable and sophisticated crowd. They know when the team needs them, they can sense the momentum of a game. I couldn t stop running during that season, because the crowd was always there right behind me. If the game had stopped and the crowd had still been there after the final whistle, I would have still been running.
The memories I have of that season will stay with me forever. I was privileged to win the World Cup, Euro 96, the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich and the UEFA Cup with both Bayern and Inter. I was fortunate to play for some great managers and with some great players. I include the Tottenham players and both Ossie Ardiles and Gerry Francis among that number. I learnt things at Tottenham that served me well in the rest of my career as a player and then also as a manager too.
The Liverpool goal in the FA Cup quarter-final is the goal I remember the most. It was a great team goal, because it was a lovely flick by Teddy that set me up. At the end of the game, when we were walking towards the Tottenham fans at Anfield to say thank you, and the Liverpool players had already left the pitch, we realised the home fans had stayed on to clap us too. That was an incredible experience. It summed up the English spirit, that the Liverpool supporters were prepared to honour us as winners of a great game. That was a really special moment in a season which was full of them. I hope you enjoy reliving many of those moments in this book.
Introduction
by Chris Slegg
I T S close to 6.30pm on Sunday 14 May 2017. The White Hart Lane pitch looks like it has never looked before. Barely a patch of green is visible. It s white and it s blue, and it s a heaving mass of movement, a heaving mess of emotion. Around 15,000 Tottenham fans have reclaimed it in a fond farewell to the place that s been home for almost 118 years. Some are on their knees kissing the turf, some are taking selfies, some are walking round trance-like, struggling to take it all in. Moments ago referee Jonathan Moss blew the final, final whistle ever to be sounded at White Hart Lane, sparking a joyous pitch invasion. Tottenham have beaten Manchester United 2-1, but to some the result barely mattered. This day was all about the occasion. From tomorrow morning, when the demolition wrecking balls move in, this stadium will be no more.
The PA pleads with the fans to return to their seats so that the formal farewell ceremony can get under way, and many respectfully begin to do so. As the pitch thins out of bodies a gap opens up in the corner between the Paxton Road end and the West Stand. It gives three or four fans who are still on the pitch enough room to undertake an action they ve clearly been desperate to carry out. In almost exactly the same spot where their hero did so after scoring on his home debut against Everton almost 23 years ago, they each re-enact J rgen Klinsmann s dive celebration, hurling themselves to the turf.
Tottenham aren t just saying goodbye to White Hart Lane today, they re doing so as North London s top club, for the first time since that Klinsmann season of 1994/95. They ve been sure of that for a fortnight now. A 2-0 win here against Arsenal on 30 April ensured their rivals could no longer catch them and put an end to St Totteringham s Day, the day on which Gunners fans had celebrated finishing above Spurs for each of the last 21 seasons.
When the formal farewell ceremony is eventually able to get under way, seven members of that 1994/95 squad are among the 48 Tottenham playing legends from the 1960s onwards invited on to the pitch to take the acclaim of the fans. Klinsmann himself has been unable to make it, but Darren Anderton, Justin Edinburgh, Micky Hazard, David Howells, Gary Mabbutt, Teddy Sheringham, and Erik Thorstvedt are here. Admittedly they aren t being honoured for 1994/95 per se , but the fact that squad contained so many players held in high enough esteem to warrant an invite today helps explain why it was such a special year. They were players who gave their all, players who generated not just a special team spirit in the dressing room but a bond with the fans which perhaps hasn t been felt so strongly at White Hart Lane again until now, in 2016/17.
After the legends have taken their places on the pitch, current manager Mauricio Pochettino and his players do likewise. Make no mistake, as a team, Pochettino s is unquestionably better than Tottenham s 1994/95 incarnation, but the last Tottenham side to finish above Arsenal certainly shares many qualities with the modern-day heroes of White Hart Lane: a gift for the spectacular; playing the game for the love of it; and an acceptance that the club motto To Dare Is To Do is an apt mantra by which to approach every match.
For supporters of the vast majority of football clubs, the vast majority of seasons end without a trophy. That s true even for a club as big as Tottenham Hotspur. That was true in 1994/95, and in 2016/17, just as it has been in all but two of the last 26 seasons. A fan s love of his or her club though remains undimmed. The love doesn t come from silverware, it comes from the sharing of memories, the sharing of unforgettable moments, the sharing of heightened emotions, be they good or bad. To be a Tottenham fan in 1994/95 was to experience every single one of those heightened emotions football is capable of stirring in the space of ten short months.
It seems that wasn t just true from a fan s perspective, but from the manager s too. Gerry Francis has had a long and distinguished career spanning 50 years. Most recently, while working as assistant manager to Tony Pulis at the Hawthorns, he has helped steer West Bromwich Albion to respectable mid-table finishes in 2015/16 and 2016/17. Even at the time that he took over as Tottenham manager in November 1994, aged 42, he had already achieved so much. As a player he captained England at the age of 23 and was skipper of the QPR team that so narrowly missed out on the league title to Liverpool in 1976. As a manager he guided Bristol Rovers to the Third Division title and to Wembley for the first time in their history, then he returned to Loftus Road to lead Rangers to fifth place in the inaugural Premier League season of 1992/93, seeing them finish as London s top club.
For all of that though, it was 1994/95 - a season when he repeated that feat of finishing as the capital s top dogs with Tottenham - that has left the greatest impression on him. So great in fact that, when I first met him to interview him about his memories, he mentioned he had committed many of his experiences to paper during his days at White Hart Lane, and so we set about incorporating those diary entries into this book.
As a result, this story comes together in three parts. Part One covers the months before Francis took over, the FA s punishment of Spurs with a six-point deduction and FA Cup ban, the height of Klinsmania, the thrilling, yet ultimately failed, attempt of manager Ossie Ardiles to make a success of the Famous Five forward line and the Argentinian s eventual sacking by chairman Alan Sugar. We flash back to the matches as they took place and also hear the present-day views of the players who were at the heart of it all.
Part Two begins with Francis taking over from Ardiles, having been forced out of QPR. It includes Francis s writings as he set about moulding Tottenham into a team capable of some magnificent performances. His introduction of intense running sessions - which the players labelled Terror Tuesdays - video analysis, and a greater emphasis on defence, created a side in which the forwards were still able to express themselves but could now do so under the cover of a new-found stability.
Spurs hadn t kept a clean sheet all season prior to the arrival of Francis, but with no money