Tottenham’s dream comes true at last with tearful homecoming
Spurs opened their £1bn stadium yesterday – on first impressions London rivals will be envious
Eleven minutes into the first proper game at Tottenham Hotspur’s new palace, a 17-yearold from Camden cut inside and curled a low shot round Southampton’s goalkeeper. Harry Kane and Christian Eriksen will soon be doing this, but the opening goal, and the first knee-slide, belonged to J’neil Bennett.
Around the “cashless” but costly Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, 28,987 Spurs fans who came up lucky in a ballot swooned over the luxury feel of a spaceship moored where the old White Hart Lane used to be. At half-time, Mauricio Pochettino called their new house “one of the best of the best in the world” and predicted a boost for his team’s Champions League hopes when “62,000” home fans confront Manchester City in the quarter-final first leg a fortnight tomorrow.
In the 17,500-seat South Stand, the largest single-tier vantage point in the UK, steeply-banked Tottenham supporters sang “J’neil Bennett, he’s one of our own” and faced up to a hefty responsibility. When Premier League games start here against Crystal Palace on Wednesday week, those South Standers are charged with providing the wall of noise.
Premier League stadium building is now an arms race and Tottenham’s 62,062-seat mansion is an escalation. So rapid are the consumer-experience upgrades and technological leaps that good new stadiums can quickly be made to seem, well, not dated exactly but certainly overtaken. Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium remains magnificent, but Tottenham’s new ground is a further architectural jump, with a microbrewery, separate NFL entrance and retractable grass playing surface so that gridiron and football can co-exist without turf wars. In London, Chelsea, who appear hemmed in by Stamford Bridge, will be the most envious of the capital’s clubs.
This Under-18 game between Spurs and Southampton (which finished 3-1) will be followed by a Legends match on Saturday in front of a larger, 45,000 audience and then the full enchilada of Crystal Palace’s visit. A sense of wonder vied with anxiety around access, stewarding and public transport.
The long completion delay has piled pressure on Spurs to make the unveiling a success but emotion will ease the way.
On the pitch, the stadium announcer began with a hearty “welcome home” and reported: “There are tears in people’s eyes.” Then it was Pochettino’s turn to play the prodigal. He said: “I think I got the same feeling when we left on the last day at White Hart Lane. We were crying. Now the first day for the new stadium here – again, we feel the same emotion. We are nearly crying because our dream came true.
“We need to say thank you first of all to Daniel Levy [the chairman], because in 2001 when he started to believe in that dream, he made it possible for everyone today to be here. Then all the board, and all the people that made it possible because there are a lot of people in the club who worked hard to make it reality.”
Pochettino, whose son Maurizio came on as a second-half substitute, thanked the supporters for their “patience” at Wembley and said: “It’s going to be amazing and have a massive impact for the team, for the players, for the club. We are in a very good place in the Premier League and we have a massive challenge in the Champions League, but with 62,000 here behind us, it will be fantastic to play. It’s our dream to be in the semi-final. Why not? When we start to feel this is our new home it’s going to be massive.”
‘It is going to be amazing and have a massive impact for the club’
Tottenham’s Under-18s will not forget in a hurry the day they christened the grass. Their captain, Armando Shashoua, said before kick-off: “The stadium is there for us and for future generations.” The new ground raises the stakes,
too, by being a multi-purpose venue with a high-end, consumerist feel. At a reported £1billion, with over-runs, it was bound to be fancy. Levy said in his programme notes: “The multipurpose design of our stadium will see it host a variety of sports,
concerts and events. Further developments will include a hotel, extreme sports facility, commercial and residential properties – to complement the stadium and the Tottenham Experience, which houses the club shop and, in future, museum and archive.”
Already the players’ facilities include “a restaurant with separate kitchen to prepare team food, pre-match players’ lounge, creche, family lounge, hydrotherapy pool and warm-up area”. At 65 metres, the Goal Line Bar in the South Stand is said to be “the longest bar in Europe”. The ethos is craft in your beer and craft on the pitch.
With 8,000 Premium seats, but no naming rights yet sold, highrollers can consume the work of “world-renowned chefs”, though one of the selling points for this test event was a “pie and a pint for £5”. In one of London’s less privileged boroughs, Spurs will tread a fine line between the upscale entertainment experience and staying connected to the community.
From the sky, the ground looks like a spacecraft that has deposited a business for billionaires in an area of economic struggle.
But the best news is that this feels like a real football ground, a cauldron: imposing and extravagant, yes, but still true to Tottenham Hotspur’s spirit and raison d’etre.