Tottenham, Washington and Word Re-appropriation

The Clarke Carlisle-led documentary that aired on BBC Three tonight posed the question Is Football Racist?, and in attempting to answer this question it looked at areas of the game where racism is perhaps not so obvious. Throughout the programme Carlisle was presented with theories of sub-conscious, covert, passive racism - to use just three of the descriptions used - and in doing so touched on the subject of ethnic stereotypes used in judging athletes (a topic I touched on in a previous post about Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III and their relative evaluations).  However, the most fascinating part of the documentary for me was the debate about the use of the word "yid" by fans of Tottenham Hotspur - a topic that I have much familiarity with - as it reminded me of the ongoing debate surrounding the name of the NFL's Washington Redskins.

There are differences, of course. Tottenham have never officially endorsed the use of the Y-word, unlike the name Redskins which is the key theme of Washington's branding and identity. Concurrent with that is the fact that Tottenham's use of the term came as an attempt of re-appropriating what was widely known to be a racial slur, constantly aimed at the club's supporters due to the team's large Jewish following. The idea of re-appropriating a new, positive meaning or image for the word is a defence often used by those in support of Washington's continued use of their name. The problem with this, as David Baddiel, a prominent Jewish comedian, points out in the documentary, is that in both cases the term is being used by demographics in which the appropriate group is in the minority. It's all well and good claiming to be "taking the word back", but what gives a non-Jewish Tottenham fan or a non-Native American Redskins fan the right to do so? It is easy to claim solidarity when it suits, but I'm sure that many of these fans wouldn't align themselves with Jewish or Native Americans on other issues in different walks of life. Furthermore, many would point to the prevalence of the N-word in hip-hop culture as an example of re-appropriation. This is forgetting that some of the most prominent African Americans comedians, with huge cultural impact, in Richard Pryor and Chris Rock have both publicly denounced its use in the past, amongst others. The simple truth is that by keeping the word alive and in people's minds, you are never going to rid it of its negative connotations.

Tottenham have taken steps to try and eradicate the use of the term, through short films and notices in the match-day programme, and seem to believe that if you educate the fans enough on the true nature of the term that it will eventually be dropped. However, Washington appear unwilling to negotiate on their use of their nickname. This is particularly disappointing as there are several instances throughout American sport where institutions have been able to be somewhat progressive on this issue without altering the team's identity: Miami (Ohio) University changed their athletic teams' nickname from Redskins to RedHawks, as well as other examples where universities have agreements and/or permission from the tribes they take their name from, which is the case with the Florida State Seminoles, the Illinois Fighting Illini and the Central Michigan Chippewas, among others. It will never be easy to force through cultural change, but in standing out on an issue and being progressive the process can leap forward several steps.

I Adore Mi Armour

Tottenham unveiled their new kits for the forthcoming season today, and they can be seen below.

With apologies to Hannover 96, this marks the first instance of Under Armour as the kit provider for a major football team, a new foray into a potentially lucrative market for the American company. For Tottenham, the opportunity to become the flagship team of one of the fastest growing sports apparel companies in the world was not one to be scoffed at.

It is encouraging for the club to see the way in which Under Armour utilised many of the techniques par for the course in American sports in their build-up and release of the kit, from the myriad of social networks on which the unveiling could be accessed and followed to the extravagant kick-off event being held at White Hart Lane on Saturday - more details of which can be found here. I don't remember a kit unveiling with such pomp and circumstance in English football before, let alone at Tottenham. Under Armour CEO and President Kevin Plank was at today's unveiling, a hint that Spurs are not about to become a side interest for the company, they mean business. 


I have held the belief for a long time that English sport lags behind its American counterpart in terms of marketing and fan interaction, this move represents a small but significant move in the right direction. Again, Plank's presence alludes to a closer relationship than is usually seen between club and supplier, and hopefully this will be the first in a number of moves rolled out over the season.

As for the kits themselves? The full picture set can be seen here. Overall a good look. Distinctive without being busy. I personally don't care for the collar on the home shirt, feels a bit too close to last season's effort - a v-neck like on the away shirt would have improved the look. In fact I have no complaints about the away shirt at all. The away goalkeeper's kit is a huge improvement on the previous designs under Puma, a clean, retro feel that would go great with Hugo Lloris' haircut for a 60's feel, let's hope. I would have thought it would go better with the home kit, but the home goalkeeper's shirt is not too shabby either. As I said earlier, distinctive from previous shirts and other manufacturer's designs across the league, but without sacrificing a clean look.

A New Era

Andre Villas-Boas has been charge barely 36 hours and yet already the press are talking him down. About how much he has to prove after indisputably failing at Chelsea, that he has much to learn and that his appointment by Tottenham is a gamble. However, Phil McNulty of BBC Sport gave the game away somewhat when, in his article, he spoke about how Villas-Boas alienated the press while he was at Chelsea. My favourite quote in particular is this line, after a Chelsea Champions League victory:

"It is unfortunate for you guys in the media because you have to report on a brilliant win for Chelsea and we qualify first in the group. It is difficult for everybody and today this is difficult for you."

Does that not sound like something Jose Mourinho would have uttered? Followed by newspapers eating it up and pining about how much they miss "The Special One".

The biggest adjustment Spurs fans are going to have to make over the coming year is not one of playing style, or personnel, but of perception. Harry Redknapp, the tabloids' golden boy, has gone - and who is Daniel Levy to sack him? Scour the many articles after his departure and you'll see the same refrain, essentially that two fourth place finishes were somehow not good enough. Any spurs fan familiar with the situation will correct you on that. Redknapp made his position at the club untenable through his inability to keep quiet.

The media circus surrounding the England job was followed by despair when the "People's Choice" was overlooked for someone with, to put it bluntly, a more accomplished background. The fact is, Tottenham threw away what should have been their best season since the establishment of the Premier League twenty years ago. Third in the league in January with an apparently insurmountable lead over their closest rivals in 4th. England job or not, what followed was a catastrophic run of results that would put many a man on the hot seat. In fact, at the very same time, Liverpool were undergoing a similarly horrendous period, and they ended up sacking club legend Kenny Dalglish. If it's not good enough for "King Kenny", then why should Redknapp, a man whose loyalty has been proved again and again to be to himself, be spared?

All this was before his ill-timed comments about his contract. Unhappy at how slowly negotiations were progressing, Redknapp did what Redknapp does best and moaned to his mates in the media (probably out of a car window) while the chairman was on leave after the death of his mother. Levy and Redknapp were already on thin ice, this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Already, in the few hours that Villas-Boas has been in charge, you can feel the tone towards Tottenham beginning to change. Media darlings last season, with a quote-a-minute manager, now arguably looking more stable, but with a young, self-confident manager who does not care much for how the British media go about their business. 

Already you can feel it, reading between the lines, and I fear it is a mood that will be prevalent throughout the coming campaign. I worry what effect this may have on the supporters who take tabloid stories as gospel, who will believe what they are told and will become alarmed at the first sign of a "crisis". All I ask of them is that you follow these instructions:

That's Why They Don't Play Games On Paper

As commentator's like to say when a side gets a goal back, the Arsenal result tonight means it's "game on" once more.

These are the facts - Arsenal sit five points ahead of Tottenham, having played an extra game. Arsenal's remaining games are Chelsea (H), Stoke (A), Norwich (H) and West Brom (A). Spurs have got QPR (A), Blackburn (H), Bolton (A), Aston Villa (A) and Fulham (H). Tonight's result proved once again that there's no such thing as a foregone conclusion in the Premier League, but given the relative strengths of the two run-ins, at this point it certainly seems like it's all to play for, once again. 

The loss for Arsenal could be the perfect motivation for this Spurs side after Sunday's crushing defeat against Chelsea. The prevailing feeling amongst the fans  travelling home from Wembley was "where do we go from here", with our cup hopes dashed and Arsenal's lead seemingly insurmountable. This has thrown the door wide open, and it was only two years ago that after a disappointing FA Cup semi-final loss to Portsmouth, Spurs went on to secure fourth, finding a sense of urgency and purpose to beat Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City. Could we be about to see them do the same now, in the race for third and the top position of the London clubs?

Amongst the unpredictability of the Premier League season, one thing is for sure: this just got interesting.

Time To Panic?

"If I'd offered you the chance to be in 4th place going into an FA Cup semi-final in August, you'd have jumped at the chance."

That phrase, or thereabouts, has been uttered many times over the last month or so, as Tottenham's shot at third place and seemingly tight grip on a place in next season's Champions League have slipped away from them. The reality is a club's ambitions are fluid, and for a team that were seen to be genuine title contenders in January, to scrape into the competition in fourth place should be seen as something of a failure given the position the club were in. Particularly as it would almost certainly mean finishing below Arsenal once again, a fact that Spurs fans are going to be reminded of again and again over the coming months.

I've personally remained optimistic over the last month, citing excuses for staying upbeat ranging from the fixture list (anyone would struggle playing at Anfield, the Emirates, Goodison Park, Stamford Bridge and facing United at home in the space of six games), to the fact we were due some kind of blip, or simply pointing on what looked like a fairly comfortable last eight games.

The results, and more importantly the performances over the weekend have changed much of that. Spurs look like a team that are stuck. Results against Bolton in the cup and Swansea seemed to point to a return to form, but maybe they were the anomalies. The supposedly favourable run of fixtures now looks trickier. Play like the team did against Norwich and suddenly the prospect of an away game at Q.P.R. and a resurgent Fulham side at home no longer look like foregone conclusions.

The belief, the motivation seems lost, and the responsibility for that rests with the manager. Redknapp's never been known as the most tactically astute, and in the recent run of games he's been out-thought tactically again and again. When he arrived at the club, the most important thing he did was have players in their preferred positions, a simple enough task but one that was seemingly overlooked under Ramos. This Tottenham team continually look disjointed and unbalanced, with the loss of Aaron Lennon to injury shunting either Luka Modric, Rafael van der Vaart or Niko Krancjar out to the right, where none of them prefer to play, and where they are subsequently marginalised.

With the way the team are playing at the moment, you would not surprised to see them drop out the Champions League places and get knocked out of the cup, and where would that leave them? If, as looks likely, Redknapp then takes the vacant England role then Spurs could be looking at something of an end of an era, particularly as the likes of Modric and Bale may leave in search of Champions League football. Could it really be back to square one?

Luck, Griffin and Stereotypes

Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III are two fantastic collegiate quarterbacks and are widely expected to be the top two picks in this year's NFL draft. Despite their stature and the exposure that comes with it, the same myths are repeated over and over about the differences in these two players' games. Ask most people with a passing knowledge of these players and they would tell you that one is more of an athlete, the other more cerebral and more accurate, and there's no prizes for guessing which label is attached to which quarterback when you know that Luck is Caucasian and Griffin is African American.

My main problem with this is not that these descriptions are wrong - Luck has a great football mind, as you'd expect from the son of an NFL quarterback and Griffin is a fantastic athlete, having won medals at a national level in hurdles while at Baylor. My problem is that these attributes are assumed to not be there in the other quarterback, an assumption that is often even turned into a flaw by so-called analysts.

I will deal first of all with the assumptions levelled at Robert Griffin. Journalists and talking heads are quick to point out his speed and his ability to throw the deep ball, certainly traits that adhere well to the "athletic" stereotype, but even on a show as prominent as ESPN's Pardon the Interruption you see Tony Kornheiser, who was in the Monday Night Football booth as recently as 2008, say that Griffin's weakness is his accuracy. One of the most startling statistics of the early part of this year's college football season was Griffin's impressive ratio (through his first three games) of 13 touchdowns to 12 incompletions. That's incompletions, not interceptions. The man had more passes find the opponents end zone than he did fall incomplete, despite all the variables that contribute to an incomplete pass. Yet talking heads of some stature continue to doubt his accuracy. That ridiculous streak of course came to an end, but Griffin still finished the season with a completion percentage of 72.4, a respectable mark that actually bests (albeit not by much) the score of the supposedly more accurate Luck at 71.3%.

People are quick to point to the spread-based offence that Baylor ran in order to suggest these figures are inflated somewhat by a more passer-friendly scheme than the pro-style ran by Luck at Stanford. However, Luck actually attempted almost the same number of passes as Griffin, two more in fact. Luck threw 404 times, Griffin 402. Given Griffin's reputation for throwing a deep pass as well, a significantly riskier throw, the fact that they threw for roughly the same amount of passes and completed those passes at roughly the same rate, then to state that one quarterback is more accurate than the other can be seen to be making quite a leap of faith. Unless these pundits are weighing in on a hunch taken from some kind of stereotype.

Furthermore, I would argue that Luck's athleticism is downplayed because of the colour of his skin as well. At this year's NFL Scouting Combine, while Griffin did indeed run one of the fastest 40 yard dash times of a quarterback ever seen at the event - between 4.38 and 4.41 seconds depending on what source you find - Luck posted a time that, any other year, would have had jaws dropping. Luck ran the distance in 4.59 seconds, the same time as Cam Newton did the year before. Newton was drafted first overall with his athleticism seen as his main selling point, and in fact set a new record for total touchdowns in a season by a rookie, mostly due to his 14 rushing touchdowns, the most by any quarterback in a single season in the history of the NFL. Though Luck does seem to prefer to throw from the pocket, he actually posted a 3.2 yards per carry mark over the season at Stanford, a number not as astronomically different as some would have you believe from Griffin's own mark of 3.9. Not to mention Luck did this.

Once more, I am not writing this to make the case that Luck is inaccurate, or Griffin not athletic, they are both supremely talented players, it just galls me that, given the evidence outlined above, people are overlooking just how talented these players are in order to try and shoehorn them into predetermined boxes that just don't fit. Boxes that are scarily similar to the stereotypes attached to quarterbacks of different races.

Statistics from sports-reference.com and nfl.com

The 'New' Football Supporter in England

A few weeks ago I was approached by a Danish journalist who'd been put in touch by a friend to answer a few questions about what he's calling the 'new' football supporter in England. I'd been meaning to start a blog for a while, and it was in answering his questions that I finally felt compelled to make it a reality. What follows are my answers to his questions, albeit already a little outdated in some regards.

Why is the British fan changing behaviour - if you think, there is a trend?

 

I would agree that there is a trend, that behaviours are changing, and I think much of this can be attributed to football embracing the internet as a tool for engaging supporters. Even as recently as five years ago, I believe football clubs undervalued and underused this opportunity, but now we see clubs with active Twitter and Facebook accounts, interacting with fans through social media, as well as the rise of websites such as Footytube.com, which provides highlights to games from all around the world. The internet has nurtured a hunger for immediacy in our football coverage, to the point where stories that are "breaking" on Sky Sports are already seen as old news if you are following the right websites and/or Twitter accounts.

However, as a counter to the numerous avenues through which a fan can now interact with their club, I believe that the relationships formed are not as deep as before. A culture has emerged where many feel they must follow a team, even if only as a badge they can post on their Facebook profile, and considerations such as location and tradition are replaced by a thirst for success. A friend of mine that was once a Manchester United supporter now follows Manchester City, a switch that would have been seen as a form of betrayal by many fans only ten years or so ago, though he does not receive nearly as much criticism for this from his peers as one would think.

In summary, I think the internet, through its culture of immediacy, has created a need for instant gratification for a lot of football fans, to the point where they will even change teams in order to be associated with something successful.

 

How is the situation around Tottenham Hotspur? 

Is the vocal support still as supportive as ever at White Hart Lane, or do new formations demand changes (the situation around the new stadium for example)?

 

At Tottenham, we are enjoying a period of success we have not seen in my lifetime, and not since the early 1980s. There is a great pride in the supporters at the moment at the way in which we have achieved this, without spending to the same extent as clubs like Man City and Chelsea, and in the style of football being played. As a group of fans renowned for our pessimism when it comes to our club, the mood is unusually buoyant, and rightly so. Though that doesn't mean we aren't worrying about Harry Redknapp's possible departure for the England job!

That said, I have noticed a different atmosphere at some of the games at White Hart Lane, recently. The crowd is as vocal as ever in the big games, against the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea, but against the supposedly "smaller" teams, the recent games against Wolves and Wigan in particular, the mood has changed slightly towards one of expected success, and when this is not seen immediately, you can sense large pockets of the ground becoming disgruntled. It can be heard in the moans and groans at misplaced passes, and, in these frustrating matches, an impatience with the possession based style of football, with many calling for players to "get it in the box" and "stop playing it backwards".

The worst way I have seen this mood manifest itself was in a game last season where Tottenham fans booed their own player, Wilson Palacios, after a string of poor performances and bad start to this game in particular. Though quickly drowned out by others singing his name, trying to put the "support" back in "supporters", it was noted by many at the time and, in my opinion, can be seen as the inevitable outcome of the culture of immediate gratification I wrote about earlier. In demanding absolute success from a player immediately, those fans had lost their ability to be patient with Palacios, a player who had been through much in his personal life, in the kidnap and murder of his brother in his native Honduras, and who had also been in and out of the team at this time, and has since been sold to Stoke City. This behaviour was startling to see from our fans, but these fans are a minority, albeit a vocal one, and most of the Tottenham fans I talk to, and see on forums and blogs, do not share this view of the team. This is reflected in the continued strong away support that the team receives, with the fans that are making the trip being the more seasoned, loyal core of the fans.

 

Is English football in your view being drowned in its own success - and where did the supporters go?

 

Two years ago I think a case could definitely be made for this, with the "big four" teams of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United having a monopoly on the Champions League places and the title alternating between them. English football felt stagnant, with the same teams and same characters dominating year in year out, and I think there was something of a boredom factor for some fans, and for teams on the outside attempts to break in felt futile. Tottenham and Manchester City have changed this over the last couple of seasons, each achieving a top four finish and now each sitting in a position in the top three of the table this year.

Much of this is due to the successes of Spurs and City, but the demise of Liverpool, and this year Chelsea and Arsenal, also plays a part. In Chelsea's case, I think they were certainly a case of a team being drowned in their success. The success under Jose Mourinho has seemed to have gone to Roman Abramovich's head, especially in the case of the sacking of Carlo Ancelotti, where league and cup success in his first season was not enough to earn the patience of the owner after an underwhelming campaign in his second.

With Arsenal, Liverpool and United, the issues seem to be of a more financial nature. Liverpool stagnated as they struggled with debts before their recent take over, as United still do with their debts, though their demise has not been felt quite as much as with the other clubs. These debts were accrued in chasing success, so a case can be made that it is somewhat responsible for their downfall.

The poor performance of English teams in the Champions League this season also reflects this, to an extent. Though I think it would take more than one bad year in the competition to be able to really recognise a trend.

 

How can the game and the supporters be reunited on the stadiums (so it's not just Chinese tourists going to football at Old Trafford, Anfield and The Emirates...)? Will the German example be the way to 'take football back to the roots' in Premier League?

 

The issue surrounding this question is complex. Many blame rising ticket prices, and rightly so, but I don't think these prices are going to come down any time soon, particularly with the advent of the Financial Fair Play regulations. Clubs don't seem to be too worried about the lack of atmosphere as long as these tickets are being bought, which is a shame.

That said, I know that clubs have been making enquiries into bringing back "safe standing" at games in order to resurrect the atmosphere. Strides have been made in this department in Scotland, though I think Aston Villa are the only major English club to have made such enquiries so far.

 

What happened to organised fangroups in England - are there still organised singing, tifos, etc at most stadiums?

 

Once again, I think that these groups are another casualty of the rising cost of attending games. Many members of such groups are priced out of attending and so the effect is diminished. That said, a popular Tottenham fans' podcast, called The Fighting Cock, recently organised a group that they are calling the Tottenham Ultras to attend last week's FA Youth Cup tie against Charlton Athletic, bringing around 200 fans with them to the game and singing throughout, in an attempt to rekindle that kind of atmosphere. More information on that can be found on their website, thefightingcock.co.uk.