Super Thudd

Interview published in the Telegraph with our Thomas . . . . . .


Champions League: Tom Huddlestone anchors Tottenham's hopes
Tottenham's maiden Champions League campaign looked over before it had really begun. With half an hour played of their qualifying first leg they were 3-0 down to Young Boys in Bern and heading for humiliating, and costly, early exit. His team were panicking and Harry Redknapp needed an antidote to the relentless attacks. He sent on Tom Huddlestone and, almost instantly, order was restored.

"We are just relieved to still be in the Champions League after that game," Huddlestone said. "After the first 25 minutes it could have been four or five. All I came on to do was keep the ball and calm everybody down. Before that they seemed to be getting in with every attack and we weren't keeping hold of the ball. I don't think I did anything amazing, it was just keeping everything simple. Obviously they can't score when we've got the ball."

It was evidence of the growing influence a maturing Huddlestone is having on Spurs. They pulled two goals back on the night. Disaster averted. They destroyed Young Boys 4-0 back at White Hart Lane and were rewarded with an exciting, if unforgiving, group: the European and Italian champions Internazionale, the Dutch champions Twente and an impressive Werder Bremen team.


"We've got a tough group," Huddlestone said. "I watched both of Bremen's games against Sampdoria in the last round and they look a great team – they've got three or four outstanding players, even after losing their best one in Mesut Özil. Inter won it last year and Twente won the Dutch league, so it is going to be difficult."

European football should be the perfect context for Huddlestone's singular talents. Looking at him you think he's got the wrong sport: 6ft 3ins with huge upper-body strength, he looks like he should be playing Rugby League. Yet his strength is the incredible accuracy and variety of his passing off both feet, a talent that it will be fascinating to watch deployed in the more cerebral football of the Champions League.

"The pace is probably slower and teams are more organised,'' he said. ''They're not so up in your face as they are in the Premier League. The higher up you go, it gets more about intelligence and technique. Maybe in the English game you can get away with just being an athlete. The higher up you go, in international football and definitely in the Champions League, you need a bit more quality."

The quality of Huddlestone's game has improved remarkably over the last six months. It's sometimes easy to forget how young he still is: he has played 260 games but is not 24 until December. He has taken the momentum of his performances in Tottenham's impressive run-in to last season into this campaign and evolved from being a deep-lying quarter to being a more orthodox, energetic midfielder, forming a strong central partnership with Luka Modric.

"My stats have been better in games, both in terms of distance-covered and high-intensity distance," he explained. "I think before, managers might have only seen me as a player who holds in midfield and passes around but since the Redknapp's come in he's asked me to push on and get the ball higher up the field." Finding the best position for Huddlestone to maximise his talent has taken some time. He started as a winger in Nottingham Forest's youth set-up before becoming a striker. Thanks to a dramatic growth spurt he was six feet tall by the age of 11 but a year later was released by Forest for the preposterous reason of not being strong enough (these days, he always follows training with a specially tailored weights session, a good habit he picked up off Edgar Davids).

Taken on by Derby, he was converted into a centre-back and made his first-team debut at just 16, at the beginning of the 2003-04 season. He moved to Spurs two years later and had a spell on loan at Wolves, where Glenn Hoddle felt he was best deployed as a Beckenbauer-style libero.

Redknapp, though, wants him playing the box-to-box football of the player Huddlestone most admired as he was breaking into the game, Steven Gerrard.

That Huddlestone continues to reinvent himself is largely down to the work ethic instilled in him by his mother, Maxine. She refused to take him out of school before he finished his GCSEs, even though he was breaking into the Derby first team. He got three Bs and six Cs. Growing up in Sneinton in Nottingham, his grandfather, Frank, used to take him to watch his uncle play for semi-pro team Hucknall Rolls-Royce on the weekends, impressing upon him the need to refine the technical parts of his game.

"He used to stress how important it was for me to use my left foot. I think that's why I'm half-decent with both feet now. I've always practised different techniques and that gives you the confidence to do it in a game."

There are two parts of Huddlestone's game that coaches have sought to improve. Martin Jol worked hard to instil more aggression into his performances. Like Theo Walcott, he is placid and polite by nature but he has clearly improved his closing and he tackles with more of a snap than previously – something he says has been catalysed by Wilson Palacios' ruthlessness in training. The second part still needs work: goal-scoring. "I had a shot today that ended up on the hockey pitch across the road," he said.

Given his upsurge in form – Jamie Redknapp has said Huddlestone looks like "an English Xabi Alonso" – it was surprising to see him omitted from Fabio Capello's last two squads, for the Hungary friendly and for the Euro 2012 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Switzerland.

"It's been disappointing. More so in the friendly at the start of the season. Out of the seven players in the 30-man provisional squad who didn't go to the World Cup only three of us didn't get called up from that for the Hungary game. After that I wasn't really expecting it, to be honest.

I'm pessimistic usually. When you don't get your hopes up you don't get too upset. I've got three caps but I've not been involved in any competitive games yet. Before I retire I want to have played in a major championship for England.

"If I manage to stay in the Tottenham team and we have a decent run in the Champions League, then hopefully I should get in. There aren't many players who play in the Champions League that aren't in their national squads." There is no better forum to convince Capello of his candidacy than European football's elite competition.