The most striking events of yesterday’s game at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium came long before kick-off, with an organised protest march to the stadium. It was the biggest organised display of discontent Tottenham have seen for years. There have been moments of frustration and disappointment over the years, just as you would endure at any football club. There was a real outburst of anger in April 2021 when Spurs signed up to join the Super League and fans congregated outside the stadium with anti-ENIC and anti-Levy banners not too different from those seen on Sunday.
But that was still the era of Covid restrictions and those
protests were just a few dozen fans outside the ground, many of them wearing
masks. This was something bigger.
It all started two hours before kick-off at the junction of
Lordship Lane and the High Road, just down the road from the stadium. At first,
a few dozen fans were gathered on the pavement in front of The Trampery, the
grand red brick building on the corner opposite Sports Direct. They had their
anti-Daniel Levy flags and banners and were singing their anti-Levy songs. At
this point, it was not clear whether this would turn into anything or not.
“Don’t walk past, join in,” one fan implored those walking north past him.
“We’re 15th!”
But soon enough, the road was closed, first by traffic cones
and then by six police horses. The numbers started to swell, between The
Trampery and Sports Direct. Many of the songs and banners would be familiar to
anyone who has been to Tottenham recently. There were plenty of yellow ‘Time
for Change’ scarves, the colour of this particular moment.
Ultimately, ‘Change for Tottenham’ is a slogan, a banner
that some fans will choose to associate with, rather than a coherent movement
or membership organisation. There was a range of views among the fans there and
different people were drawn to the march for different reasons. Even if some of
the themes — high prices for tickets, underperformance on the pitch — were
broadly consistent between them.
“We are a group of match-going fans who have had enough with
the direction of the club,” said Jay, a spokesperson for Change for Tottenham
earlier this week. “We can’t be satisfied with winning off the pitch rather
than on it.”
Spurs fan Aniel pointed to how low the Spurs wage bill is
relative to their turnover. “As fans, we pay some of the most expensive prices
in Europe,” he said. “I pay £1,600 ($2,014) for my season ticket. Everyone has
a tipping point. We’re not seeing any ambition on the football pitch. We want
to see more.”
It is hard to quantify how many fans exactly were there and
how many were part of the march rather than just caught up in it, but it felt
like a few thousand.
The big question moving forward is whether this was just a
one-off. Was it an explosion of anger at a season that has gone worse than
anyone could have expected? If so, maybe the return of players, and steady
progress back up the league table, may serve to change the mood. Protests
against ownership are generally inversely correlated with the form of the team.
Attention will soon move to the Europa League last 16.
Or is this the start of something bigger? Are there deeper
roots to this than just what happens on the pitch? Will people look back on
this as a turning point?
One fan put an alternative view: ‘Levy and ENIC going out
means someone else comes in. And I would hate it if Spurs were bought by some
consortium from Qatar or a group of Saudis with absolutely no ties to the
regime. We could get lucky with new owners, but look around the league, we
probably won’t. Levy has spent money on transfers the last couple of windows.
If he keeps on doing that and buy high quality players with experience like
Solanke and pay the wages, I’m okay with our current owners.’
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