With a big game against Real Madrid coming up midweek, Tottenham Hotspur are going to get the chance to see how they measure up against, literally, the world’s best side.
Whatever happens in this week’s game, the future does look incredibly bright. We look to be competitive in the league as well as competitive in Europe and our team of bright young talents could well carry us into our new stadium and onto bigger and better things.
But what does come next? And should we even try to look into the future and guess what may come?
As a Spurs fan, it doesn’t always pay to look too far ahead. We’ve had periods where we thought things were looking up, only for those hopes to be dashed against the rocks as “bigger” clubs came in to take our best players.
Gareth Bale looked ready to take us to the next level as his heroics were not just confined to the Premier League but also to the Champions League, then Real Madrid swooped in with their money. Luka Modric was playing the best football of his life when Real Madrid stepped in. Dimitar Berbatov and Robbie Keane had combined into a fantastic partnership when Manchester United and Liverpool put their money down.
Going back even further, when Jurgen Klinsmann joined, it looked like the start of something, even after Ossie got the sack, Gerry Francis seemed to have the bare bones of a decent side when Bayern Munich offered him the chance to go “back home”.
We now seem to be at a step beyond where we were with all of those players. We seem to have established ourselves amongst the best in the land and have stood toe to toe with some of the best clubs in the world, something we get the chance to do again this week.
Is there a difference between now and “then”? It seems that Tottenham Hotspur is more than just one player, we are not the “Harry Kane” team, we’re much, much more than that. We have 6-7 players that could feature at the very best clubs in the world, we have one of Europes best training grounds, a stadium being built that is really going to take this club up a notch and a chairman that, although he’s taken a few knocks along the way, really seems to have a plan for progress, a plan that’s working.
The one element that does stand out amongst all of this is Mauricio Pochettino. The fans love him, the players love him, the board loves him. At some point we’re going to need to fend off interest from the biggest clubs in the world for him. We haven’t been able to do that with our previous players, let’s hope we have more luck next time round.
