In the culture wars besetting our daily discourse there are battles over ideas and attitudes, facts and their ‘alternatives’, language and its use. As we know to our cost, it can be coarse.
Two elements – nostalgia and irony – participate regularly in this 24-hour rolling, trolling debate and, in the shape of Graeme Souness at Stamford Bridge last Sunday, they came together like a confrontational handshake.
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, that’s for sure. There was a time when you could look back sentimentally and not be branded some kind of reactionary Yorkshireman pining for Fred Trueman at the Kirkstall Lane End. Maybe it changed when deluded governments made nostalgia quasi-policy.
In football yesterday never goes away. Read old newspaper columnists from the 1920s and they are missing players from the 1890s. They don’t much care for the behaviour of some ‘modern’ players and supporters. Way back when, Souness could have been one of them.
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Souness is seen as the embodiment of today’s pundit – experienced, knowledgeable, opinionated and argumentative. His is a weighty voice in the game’s talking culture.
Due to his youthful appearance, it is possible to forget he is 69 and signed his first professional forms in 1968. Senior players Souness trained with then, such as Alan Gilzean, were born in the 1930s.
That training occurred at Tottenham Hotspur. Souness’s early years at White Hart Lane are frequently overlooked because he did not break through to the first team at a time of one substitute, and also because his glorious years with Liverpool from 1978 overshadowed his formative days.
As he strode around England and Europe winning 12 major trophies in six seasons at Anfield – Tottenham won three in that period – Souness rightly felt his 1972 decision to leave Spurs was justified. He moved to Middlesbrough, signed by Jack Charlton, then to Liverpool. He was an immense footballer in a very male environment.
But that’s the past.
Last Sunday, Souness was working in his 2022 role for Sky TV. He was at Stamford Bridge watching his first club, Spurs. Chelsea twice led, were twice pegged back – Harry Kane made it 2-2 in minute 90+6 – and the final whistle brought a tense tangle between the two managers, Thomas Tuchel and Antonio Conte. Both were shown red cards by referee Anthony Taylor.
Immediately smiling people lined up to say: That’s entertainment. “Proper”, to use a Sounessism.
Referring to Taylor’s relaxed interpretation of the laws – only three players were booked – Souness enthused about its throwback nature. Its aggression – legal and illegal – reminded him of when he used to play. In a nostalgic moment, he called it “a man’s game”.
And when Souness played, it was a man’s game. When he was at Spurs, women’s football was banned by England’s Football Association and had been since 1921. All the years Souness played, women’s football remained invisible.
This does not excuse his terminology last weekend. After the summer women’s football has just experienced in England, it was jarring and excluding. His language matters and it would be good for him to acknowledge that in a studio soon.
A word Souness could have used was “physical”. Taylor’s lenient refereeing enabled a level of physicality not seen often in men’s football of late, nor in women’s football. In fact one of the many pleasures of this summer’s Euros was the absence of fouling, the lack of gamesmanship. Do women want to play like men?
Yet when England took the ball into the corner in the last few minutes of the final against Germany, they were praised for their “game management”. It’s a tiresome phrase; it’s a long way from Danny Blanchflower.
But then so was Souness. The presence of both at Spurs in the 1960s shows there are different kinds of footballing men. Toxic masculinity is such a common phrase, other forms are obscured. There are better kinds.
Today, culturally, irony comes with a sneer. So Souness was mocked last Sunday. But an actual irony is that Spurs 2022 were being praised for the type of competitive sporting masculinity that Souness represented as a player and which Tottenham are deemed to have lacked for decades.
The ‘Spursy’ epithet itself is used to sum up Tottenham’s absence of ‘minerals’. Similarly: “Lads, it’s Tottenham,” as Roy Keane revealed Alex Ferguson had said in a three-word pre-match team talk, is an example of Spurs’ perceived inherent physical and psychological fragility.
It can be argued had Tottenham retained Souness, or signed Ferguson or Keane, the word ‘Spursy’ would not exist.
This previous identity is why Conte is receiving credit. It is said he is adding hitherto unseen grit and determination to Tottenham. He is signing tough men, like Ivan Perisic, altering the team’s character and reputation.
Conte is 53 and has seen a bit. In 1985-86, just 16, he made his debut for Lecce. When Sampdoria went to Lecce that season, the scorer of their opening goal was Graeme Souness.
Conte saw Souness in the flesh and rubbed up against Keane. Return to arguably Keane’s finest hour – for Manchester United in Turin in 1999 – and the Juventus midfield contained Zinedine Zidane, Didier Deschamps, Edgar Davids and Conte. Formidable. Keane’s performance provoked Ferguson to say: “I felt it was an honour to be associated with such a player.”
Is this nostalgia? Or historic examples to learn from?
Today Tottenham host Wolves and can go top of the Premier League, albeit temporarily. They were top after three games last season, too, when Nuno Espirito Santo was new in town. Nuno, though, was one of those managers the club had a grip of, whereas now it feels as if Conte has a grip of Spurs.
If it’s not too Fred Trueman, this has happened before. Downstairs on a wall in Tottenham’s palace of a training ground is a quote from the club’s greatest manager, Bill Nicholson, about the quality he needs in a new signing. It ends: “He must never be satisfied with his last performance, and he must hate losing”.
Conte will see it every day. It’s not very ‘Spursy’.
Nicholson came from Yorkshire. He was blunt and sharp. His Tottenham team won the double in 1960-61 with captain-poet Blanchflower stressing the importance of glory over pragmatism. But as Nicholson knew, the reason Blanchflower could be lyrical was the 1959 signing of Dave Mackay. Mackay was a Scotsman so hard, Souness and Keane would walk away.
Mackay’s football masculinity was revered. It freed Blanchflower, it changed Tottenham. Possibly ironically in the noise of last Sunday, Conte’s management may be doing the same.
