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There was a tender moment at the end of Tottenham’s win against Elfsborg on Thursday night as Ange Postecoglou walked out on to the pitch looking a little haunted and jittery, a strange kind of light in his eyes. It took a few seconds to work out what was up. The reason for this was he was happy. Here was a man remembering how to smile, willing his face into the right kind of shape, searching for the muscle memory.
It was also a nice moment. The recent run of Bad Ange stuff, the Ange who does interviews like a policeman standing too close to you in a tiny lift, has been painful to watch. The Premier League is brutal. It will stretch you thin. And it has been rough with Postecoglou, who came with no comparable experience, who is 59 years old, and has had the air of a man finding the end of his reach, radiating sadness from every rain-sodden panel of his quilted coat.
Spurs were set up for another bad night on Thursday, stuck at 0-0 in the second half, with the TV cameras cutting hungrily between Postecoglou and a group of bored-looking cool guys in baggy clothes slumped on a bench, which turned out to be an example of the new trend for parading your injured players like captured gladiators. At which point something good happened instead. A 20-year-old scored. Then a 19-year-old scored. Then a 17-year-old scored. Spurs ended the night in the last 16 of the Europa League, with a Carabao Cup semi-final second leg and a fourth-round FA Cup tie to come.
The players got to hug each other in front of a happy crowd. Ange smiled his smile, wandering around looking, as ever, like a bear that has only just realised it’s not supposed to be wearing a raincoat and walking on its hind legs. Even Glenn Hoddle was out on the pitch telling the TV cameras about “finishing with aplomb”.
And yes, this is an excuse to talk about Daniel Levy and the state of Spurs from a place of brief and brittle safety. Not just for Spurs reasons. This is perhaps the most interesting dynamic in football’s elite tier, one that goes to heart of what this thing is supposed to be.
Defending Levy is a tricky game. It can be taken as deliberately contrary, an insult to supporters who are justifiably frustrated at certain elements. Some will say that even pointing out Levy’s successes running the club is to admit to being part of some covert loop of paid insiderdom (I would really like to be in this loop. Covert loop, if you’re reading: DM me).
Last weekend brought chants of “Levy out”, as though this is even likely or possible (he, er, part-owns the club). After Thursday’s win, a Spurs blogger could be heard on the radio talking in longsuffering tones about “failure from the top”, like this is just a given, as opposed to demonstrably untrue.
In reality, Levy represents the exact opposite of this. Football actually is full of incompetent and greedy people. What we have here is a rare case of someone operating at a genuinely elite level in their area, which is essentially genius-level accountancy. This is not just accurate bean-counting. It’s a transformational miracle.
What are the facts? Do they matter? Let’s experiment with the idea they do. Spurs have the best stadium in the world. Yes. Spurs! This is now a self-sustaining mega business, the 10th most profitable sports business in the world. The debt is big but stable (Levy is the Pelé of debt structuring).
Spurs are so well run they could basically exist outside Uefa competitions and make enough money. The extras, the non-football stuff, is not a distraction. It’s the whole game. Don’t mock Beyoncé or disregard the phoney cheese room. Beyoncé is your Roman Abramovich. The phoney cheese room is why you’re not owned by a propaganda state.
At which point it is important to talk about two people who are both wrong, but in an influential way. The first is the usually spot-on Ian Wright, who was all over the internet this week restating the shibboleth that it is Levy who has caused Spurs not to win things: “Tottenham used to win trophies, used to win stuff. It’s him. He’s the one, they’ve got to get him out.”
The point is: everyone outside the elite used to win more stuff. We live in an age of stratification. The total number of teams sharing domestic cups has fallen by 40% in the Enic/Spurs era. Thirty-one of the past 33 domestic cups have been won by the same five teams. It has just become harder to do this, a consequence of profound structural forces, the hoarding of talent at the very top. And it’s definitely not Daniel Levy making this happen.
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The other person not telling the full story is Antonio Conte, whose famous rant after the 3-3 draw with Southampton is often circulated at these moments. Conte was angry about his players: “This is the first time in my career to see a situation like this.” He also blamed the owners, presumably for not buying better players. At which point it is worth taking a look at the clubs where Conte was so much happier. Arezzo went bankrupt. Bari went bankrupt. Siena went bankrupt. Juventus were docked points for iffy financial dealings. Chelsea almost went out of business after being bankrolled by a Kremlin-connected oligarch. Internazionale have been a basket case on and off for years.
Conte isn’t responsible for these issues. But the fact is every club he has managed has fallen apart at some stage. The one exception is Spurs, where something Conte has never seen before happened and made him really angry. And yes he was right about needing better players. But he also gets to watch the crash in his rear-view mirror.
Levy has been far from perfect with the on-field stuff. Bad choices have been made. Fans are frustrated at how low the wage bill is. Plus there is Levy’s own private financial miracle, the half a million or so he stands to make when this entity he has personally transformed from debt-ridden husk to fully extended show home is finally sold. This angers people, even if it is reward for work well done. Even more maddening, the fury is in itself part of the business plan. Displays of anguish say: look at how much people care about our product.
It is also a transformation that asks the basic question of what success is supposed to look like now. Do we want precarious, manic success, the high that brings the low? Or a sustained, carefully medicated sobriety? This is Levy’s response to that existential question, a brilliantly constructed self-fuelling entertainment vehicle.
In the meantime Levy has Postecoglou where he wants him. Win a trophy. Or don’t and we start the cycle again. How many more of these patsies does he need? When will that sale finally come? When it does the new owners will take on a state-of-the-art entity ready to enter its latest cycle, Tottenham 3.0.
Odd as it might sound now, get the right ones in and Levy really could find himself cast in bronze outside the ground he built, architect of a very modern kind of super-club.
