Tottenham’s golden child is a mixed blessing
By Ryan Wrenn
Among the few griefs Tottenham fans might hold at the end of a remarkable 2016/17 season is just how many pundits and writers assume that this team is too good to last.
The realities of the modern football economy, so the theory goes, inherently work against a club like Tottenham. While hardly poor, they are no where close to elite — even if they play like it.
In many ways these fears are overblown. Spurs might be heavily invested in the construction of their new stadium, but they are financially secure. They shouldn’t so desperately need £50 million that they would feel compelled to sell their best and brightest.
Player compensation, admittedly, is a bigger concern. Spurs can’t promise the salaries of Europe’s mega-clubs, and likely won’t for the foreseeable future. Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona simply operate on an entirely inaccessible plane of existence for virtually any other club out there. They shrug off Spurs’ self-imposed salary cap of £100,000 a week, and can offer as much as two or three times as much for the right player.
What Tottenham can do — and have done — is promise that, under Mauricio Pochettino, these players will actually get minutes on the pitch. They will also be part of a tightly knit group of young talents that have a real chance of making history and, with time, winning silverware. That experience might not pay particularly well, but it’s a much better way to spend your time than wasting your youth on Real’s bench.
To date Pochettino and Daniel Levy have proven remarkable good sales men for this core Spurs message. Dele Alli, Danny Rose, Harry Kane, Hugo Lloris, Eric Dier and others have signed new contracts in this past season alone. While contracts in football are hardly worth more than a handshake, they do suggest that the players are committed to the club’s philosophy in the immediate future.
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It doesn’t always work, of course. Kyle Walker appears unlikely to sign a new deal with the club, with the right-back reportedly interested in the higher wages possible with a club like Manchester City.
Walker might be remembered as the exception that proves the rule, but in reality there are greater risks Tottenham fans should fear.
The biggest, at the moment, is the fate of Harry Kane. If there was some tiny minority of doubters still out there about the 23-year-old’s ability, it’s fair to assume they have taken a vow of silence after the Spurs striker scored seven goals in the last four days of the season to secure his second consecutive Premier League Golden Boot.
While that is a huge boon to Tottenham, Kane’s magical season also exposes their biggest weakness.
Kane is a tremendous star, on the level of Gareth Bale in the Welshman’s final season with Spurs. Though he is still young, his form demands that he be compensated in accordance with his contribution. No amount of proselytizing about Spurs’ grand project is going to make up for the fact that £100,000 a week is criminally low for a player of his caliber.
And the problem only gets worse if Spurs actually pay Kane what he’s worth. What do you tell Hugo Lloris — arguably one of the three or four best keepers in the world at the moment — or Dele Alli? They, too, deserve closer to market value for their services.
Even after Spurs’ new stadium is up and running, it’s hard not to imagine that this will be a perpetual concern. There is always going to be a City or a Bayern or a Chinese club out there anxiously waiting to poach the best talent in the world. With so much of that talent currently concentrated at Spurs, it’s only reasonable to predict turnover and, perhaps, crisis.
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There is, as ever, a silver lining. Pochettino has proven what a keen eye he has for talent and knows how to get the best out of his players. Kane and Dele are spectacular success stories, but they won’t be the last under Pochettino.
Besides, his project at Tottenham was never about reaching the same level as football’s wealthiest clubs. It was about surviving in the world alongside them, about finding a third way between prey and predator. Maybe Spurs can’t hold onto Kane and several other of their best players, but they can and will persist.