UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
Not having met Spurs manager Keith Birkenshaw before, I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at the training ground at Cheshunt, 12 miles north of Central London. I needn’t have worried. He was genial and friendly and made me feel welcome and at home. I was there to observe, to meet the squad, to watch them in action, to examine what they did during training sessions. It was a fantastic opportunity.
It was a star studded group — players like Gary Mabutt (he played 477 times for Spurs, and 16 times for England), 1978 World Cup winner Ossie (Osvaldo) Ardiles from Argentina, and Steve Perryman. Steve played even more times for Spurs than Mabutt — an astonishing 854 appearances, but only one England cap!
Ardiles had caught Keith Birkenshaw’s eye at the World Cup, and Keith set about enticing him to come to White hart Lane. Ossie was a law student at the time, but the pull and the rewards of professional soccer at a famous club like Spurs were stronger attractions than a future in the dry world of the law. Ossie became a legend of Tottenham Hotspur.
With Spurs at Cheshunt I watched the players in a 7-a-side, plus goalkeepers.
It was carried out at a very fast pace on a full size pitch. At the beginning it was 2-touch, but that quickly changed to 1-touch. Because the squad was a big one, a lot of rotating went on with the outfield players — in and out of the game approximately every ten minutes. The passing was fast, accurate, and inventive, typical of the way Spurs played in full-scale competitive games.
It was as the players came on and off the training pitch that I got a chance to speak with some of them.
I found Bristol-born defender Gary Mabutt to be a very caring man. He was a diabetic, and had to inject himself every day. But the FA Cup winning captain made light of it, as if for him it was no big deal. We chatted about the club’s upcoming EUFA second leg tie with Anderlecht. The first leg, played in Belgium, had resulted in a 1 – 1 draw.
When the practice match ended, Glenn Hoddle wandered over for a chat. He had seen me earlier doing some tricks with a football. To my delight he suggested we do a little exercise together — keeping the ball up between us. The attached photograph of Glenn and me tells its own story.
Then he showed me a trick of his own whereby he kept the ball balanced on his instep, and walked on his heels. Mind you, it helped that he had, as far as I could see, extraordinarily large feet!
An added bonus from this memorable day was the invitation I got to give an exhibition and coaching session at Gary Stevens’s Soccer School down on the south coast at Brighton. But that, too, is another story.
