Tottenham’s Manchester City match up about more than winning and losing
Tottenham’s Champions League tie is about more than winning or losing a big European tie. It’s about pride.
Last season one of the only teams in the land that could match Manchester City blow for blow was Tottenham. This year Spurs are some way behind that standard and there’s not a lot of reason for that other than the distractions of the stadium transfer and all of the trouble that Tottenham seem to have brought upon themselves in sadly seemingly classic fashion.
That is why it is so important that Tottenham were able to beat Manchester City in the Champions League. They were able to do it without Harry Kane for a period of the match and also to show exactly how strong their side can be. Though it is possible that Liverpool will win the league this year there are few people who would deny that the obvious and dominant power in English football at the moment is Manchester City.
Tottenham though are a light in that darkness. Manchester City are an affluent, successful and efficient machine and yet despite this something about them simply lacks soul. It’s true Pep Guardiola has them playing wonderful football and they can be very easy to watch. But something about them seems cold and dull still. They’re a huge and perfect McMansion built in the middle of a glorious field. The air conditioner works, the faucets are all perfect and not a single beam squeaks. Each and every room has a vaulted ceiling and large windows and yet somehow in this grandeur one does not feel any richer because wealth is after all a state of mind and being and not simply a number after all.
That is where Tottenham’s role is so important here. Their team is homegrown. They are in many ways the defining architects of England’s current national side as well. They are young and have been coached by the same man for ages. Having just emerged from one of the most disaster strewn and ridiculous periods in their history to finally move into a new well earned stadium Tottenham are different.
Tottenham are the historic manor house around whom somehow the breeze blows beneath the trees just right. Where though the water can sometimes switch from cold to scalding at a moments notice and the floorboards can present as much personality as the children who play in the halls themselves it seems somehow each and every corridor is filled with laughter and a bond and a warmth despite their not being a single fire in the hearth.
It is important in football that sometimes proof is made that everything is not for sale and that some things must be done the old fashioned way. Sport should be about showing character and strength and history, and though Manchester City are building a magnificent one it is important that the football God’s show them that they can’t simply have it because it is their latest will.
Tottenham victory over Manchester City is about more than winning and losing it is about football itself. The question is now that the letter has been stamped how will it read in the return fixture in two weeks?