I once met Sol Campbell, but don't let this fact ruin
your Saturday. I was working in the world's largest record store and helped him
find some music for his sister, I also asked him to sign a CD, ‘Spurs: The Cup
Kings’, which he did with all the enthusiasm of an hydrophobic going for a bath.
Much as the signed sleeve is a devalued memento of another, less satisfactory era, the rest of the CD is special. The crisp sepia/ Pathé news commentaries (no dull speculation or broken metaphor), the names of medal winners from years gone by... I'll have it on my phone pod later today on the way to the ground and the hirsute bit of the back of my neck will be standing up.
The Cup means a lot; we won two years on the bounce in the early years of my Spurs addiction and, at the time, had won it more than anyone else. In the days before the Champions League it was still universally regarded as the greatest tournament on the planets (all of them). In my first trip to Wembley with Spurs, we lost to Coventry, I couldn't get to the '91 Final and so this is still my most power memory where the cup is concerned, over twenty yeas is a long time to wait to dispel it. In the old days we had a cup tradition par excellence and some songs to boot, in the modern era we have a series of failed semi-finals and the odd, decent podcast.
I think the current team are good enough to cut a record, or release a download.
Whilst the Azza rap may turn out to be an acquired taste, the Adebayor/ Defoe partnership could just strike up a legendary gospel backing vocal whilst Parker either croons like Tony Bennett or rocks like a lost member from The Jim Jones Revue, Gareth Bale does Kelly Jones, Brad plays the drums and Disco Benny throws shapes for the video whilst Niko wafts about, doing a bit of cross-dressing (it's a winger thing), finally putting a belt around his dress-sized shirt. Sadly, our bass player Corluka is moonlighting elsewhere at the moment - I knew there was a genuine reason for signing Ryan Nelson to be had somewhere and this must be it. Glenn and Chris beware, Diamond Lights could finally have met their match.
Much as the signed sleeve is a devalued memento of another, less satisfactory era, the rest of the CD is special. The crisp sepia/ Pathé news commentaries (no dull speculation or broken metaphor), the names of medal winners from years gone by... I'll have it on my phone pod later today on the way to the ground and the hirsute bit of the back of my neck will be standing up.
The Cup means a lot; we won two years on the bounce in the early years of my Spurs addiction and, at the time, had won it more than anyone else. In the days before the Champions League it was still universally regarded as the greatest tournament on the planets (all of them). In my first trip to Wembley with Spurs, we lost to Coventry, I couldn't get to the '91 Final and so this is still my most power memory where the cup is concerned, over twenty yeas is a long time to wait to dispel it. In the old days we had a cup tradition par excellence and some songs to boot, in the modern era we have a series of failed semi-finals and the odd, decent podcast.
I think the current team are good enough to cut a record, or release a download.
Whilst the Azza rap may turn out to be an acquired taste, the Adebayor/ Defoe partnership could just strike up a legendary gospel backing vocal whilst Parker either croons like Tony Bennett or rocks like a lost member from The Jim Jones Revue, Gareth Bale does Kelly Jones, Brad plays the drums and Disco Benny throws shapes for the video whilst Niko wafts about, doing a bit of cross-dressing (it's a winger thing), finally putting a belt around his dress-sized shirt. Sadly, our bass player Corluka is moonlighting elsewhere at the moment - I knew there was a genuine reason for signing Ryan Nelson to be had somewhere and this must be it. Glenn and Chris beware, Diamond Lights could finally have met their match.
 |
| A broken Cup record. |
Putting it more coherently, we should win the F. A. Cup. There are some good teams still left in the tournament, I suspect a final against Chelsea could be in the offing again, but there is much to do before we retrieve our broken record and start catching up with Arsenal (10 wins) and Manchester United (11) but, amazingly, for all the failures in the penultimate stage, we're still third in the Cup count. That we have more F.A. Cup wins than all but two teams is a measure of our glittering past, that we've got so far in the tournament this year without playing anything resembling our best football is a measure of our glittering future. This team's got potential.
Rumours abound this morning about Mourinho and Hazard, but the key piece in the mainstream media for me is Gareth Bale's interview in The Guardian, where he talks not about what might happen should our 'blip' continue but how Champions League football will keep the team together, and the possibilities that that may hold. Okay, he also goes on about discovering himself and going through the middle of the park if nothing’s happening on the left flank (please stop it) but apart from that makes all the right noise and, surprisingly for The Guardian, there’s no speculation linking him to either of the Manchester clubs. Oddly, Gareth appeared in my 'people you might know' thing on Facebook last night - was that really him?
So it's time to start playing again, expect Bolton to loosen the straight jacket of their lowly league position and raise their game to once in a lifetime performance levels. The promise that "anything can happen in the Cup" will have Bolton believing and, if our performances against Watford and Stevenage are anything to go by, we have to raise our game significantly to be able to start thinking about that trip to north west London, seeing Ledley King holding a trophy aloft (for possibly the last time), cementing third place and hearing the sweet music of that Champions League anthem at the Lane again.
Put a needle on the record and let’s get playing.
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