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Harry Redknapp stays true to the simple pleasure of the game as Tottenham surge ahead
Under a pale autumn sun, Harry Redknapp seems at first glance a study in ebullience, crackling with Cockney charm and restless to start his round of golf.
Nostalgia: Harry Redknapp admits to being wearied by the relentless demands of top-class football and looks back to the good old days Photo: Rii Schroer
By Oliver Brown
He joshes easily with staff at Berkshire’s De Vere Wokefield Park hotel, explaining how wife Sandra has converted him to yoga to help ward off sciatica. But for the first time in the career of this remarkable man, and quite prodigiously dedicated manager, there is a hint of fatigue; a rare reminder that he is 64 years old. ’Arry, hardiest perennial in the English game, is beginning to tire.
In the course of a fascinating hour’s conversation, spanning everything from David Beckham to his memories of school coaching sessions in Canning Town, Redknapp confesses to a creeping exhaustion. All those dawn drives from his Sandbanks ranch, on the Dorset coast, to Tottenham's Chigwell training complex are finally wearing thin. “It’s not the passion, but I have found myself this year getting a bit more tired,” he says. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t. It’s just getting older. Some days it has knocked me a little bit for six.
“It’s hard. I’ve found myself on some days leaving home at three in the morning. Then I’m outside the training ground at five, but they don’t open up until seven. I’m just sitting there, listening to the radio. It does take a toll on you. I’ve found I’ve stayed up in London more. I used to drive up and down each day: probably six hours’ driving. But I still have the same enthusiasm. I love going in and working with good players. I love the way they shift the ball about in training. I’d find it harder now to go and work with inferior players. These lads are great to watch.”
For all his more fatalistic remarks, which encompass the avarice of agents and the disconnect between Premier League clubs and their communities, Redknapp remains smitten with the game’s simple pleasures.
It would explain why, ahead of Tottenham’s long road trip to Newcastle on Sunday, he plans to take in QPR’s match against Blackburn the afternoon before, just to drink in the Loftus Road atmosphere. Not for him, then, the notion of a ground with a running track. In a week of the collapse of West Ham’s bid to occupy the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, the old traditionalist is implacably opposed to his own club filling the void.
“A stadium with an athletics track around is a killer. I love being in an atmosphere like the one we create at White Hart Lane, or that we used to have with West Ham at the Boleyn Ground. You’ll never get that with a track, you’re sitting so far away. I think those days are finished. I can’t see the West Ham supporters enjoying it, either.”
Redknapp is acutely mindful of the fans’ perspective, seeking to sustain the optimism engendered in N17 by last season’s Champions League run.
The arrival in February of David Beckham gave Tottenham a palpable shot of adrenalin, even if he was restricted to a training role, and the manager does not rule out chances of a return once the 36 year-old is out of contract at Los Angeles Galaxy next month.
“I was so impressed with David as a person, as a player. He was fantastic to have around the club, a class act. For any young player looking at him, he’s a great role model. There was no attitude to him, no ‘side’.
“The problem I’d have is that David would want to play regularly, and I couldn’t guarantee him that at this stage. It’s difficult: I have Aaron Lennon coming back, Rafael van der Vaart playing off the right. I have lots of options. I could play Gareth Bale on one side and Luka Modric on the other. Sandro is also looking like he could end up a top player. Then there’s Scott Parker. So to bring David in and not play him would be a problem.”
These luxuries of choice are all a far cry from the grisly defeats with which Tottenham’s campaign began: a 3-0 humbling at Old Trafford, followed by a 5-1 filleting at home by Manchester City, hardly promised a sequence of four straight wins that culminated in their restorative triumph over Arsenal.
The initial central midfield pairing of Niko Kranjcar and Jake Livermore had looked alarmingly green but, thanks in part to Tom Huddlestone’s recovery from an ankle operation, they have — for the third season in a row of Redknapp’s tenure — the confidence of legitimate Champions League contenders.
Just call him ’Arry the Alchemist. Even if, in more reflective moments, he laments the direction in which his life’s calling is heading. He scorns the rise of the agents — “they phone the chairman rather than the manager, and tell the players that they’re superstars” — but seems most perturbed by the impression that his players inhabit a different world.
“Once you were part of the people. And I think that has gone. I’m not sure whether it will come back. The players don’t associate with the punters any more. They don’t give enough time to the people who pay their wages.
“When I was at West Ham we all used to go to schools in the afternoon and coach kids. For me that was the best: five afternoons at a school in Canning Town, me and Frank Lampard Snr. Trevor Brooking used to coach at St Bonaventure’s. We all got £2.50 for three hours’ work and it was fantastic.
Now players mix in their own circles. They’re a bit like politicians. They don’t connect with the man on the street.”
For his part, he insists that he feels loved. “I know we have done a good job. I went out last night to a dinner for the Air Ambulance. They were all Tottenham fans there, and they absolutely love what’s happening. They love the fact that there’s not much between ourselves and Arsenal.”
The only danger in this mutual love affair is that Redknapp is still the favourite to succeed Fabio Capello when the Italian steps down as England head coach after Euro 2012. His position, though is unwavering: flattered in principle, sanguine in practice.
“It would be a difficult one for someone to turn down, especially for an Englishman. But I enjoy the Premier League, and managing week to week. I like being involved every day. That’s what keeps me going.”
Under a pale autumn sun, Harry Redknapp seems at first glance a study in ebullience, crackling with Cockney charm and restless to start his round of golf.
Nostalgia: Harry Redknapp admits to being wearied by the relentless demands of top-class football and looks back to the good old days Photo: Rii Schroer
By Oliver Brown
He joshes easily with staff at Berkshire’s De Vere Wokefield Park hotel, explaining how wife Sandra has converted him to yoga to help ward off sciatica. But for the first time in the career of this remarkable man, and quite prodigiously dedicated manager, there is a hint of fatigue; a rare reminder that he is 64 years old. ’Arry, hardiest perennial in the English game, is beginning to tire.
In the course of a fascinating hour’s conversation, spanning everything from David Beckham to his memories of school coaching sessions in Canning Town, Redknapp confesses to a creeping exhaustion. All those dawn drives from his Sandbanks ranch, on the Dorset coast, to Tottenham's Chigwell training complex are finally wearing thin. “It’s not the passion, but I have found myself this year getting a bit more tired,” he says. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t. It’s just getting older. Some days it has knocked me a little bit for six.
“It’s hard. I’ve found myself on some days leaving home at three in the morning. Then I’m outside the training ground at five, but they don’t open up until seven. I’m just sitting there, listening to the radio. It does take a toll on you. I’ve found I’ve stayed up in London more. I used to drive up and down each day: probably six hours’ driving. But I still have the same enthusiasm. I love going in and working with good players. I love the way they shift the ball about in training. I’d find it harder now to go and work with inferior players. These lads are great to watch.”
For all his more fatalistic remarks, which encompass the avarice of agents and the disconnect between Premier League clubs and their communities, Redknapp remains smitten with the game’s simple pleasures.
It would explain why, ahead of Tottenham’s long road trip to Newcastle on Sunday, he plans to take in QPR’s match against Blackburn the afternoon before, just to drink in the Loftus Road atmosphere. Not for him, then, the notion of a ground with a running track. In a week of the collapse of West Ham’s bid to occupy the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, the old traditionalist is implacably opposed to his own club filling the void.
“A stadium with an athletics track around is a killer. I love being in an atmosphere like the one we create at White Hart Lane, or that we used to have with West Ham at the Boleyn Ground. You’ll never get that with a track, you’re sitting so far away. I think those days are finished. I can’t see the West Ham supporters enjoying it, either.”
Redknapp is acutely mindful of the fans’ perspective, seeking to sustain the optimism engendered in N17 by last season’s Champions League run.
The arrival in February of David Beckham gave Tottenham a palpable shot of adrenalin, even if he was restricted to a training role, and the manager does not rule out chances of a return once the 36 year-old is out of contract at Los Angeles Galaxy next month.
“I was so impressed with David as a person, as a player. He was fantastic to have around the club, a class act. For any young player looking at him, he’s a great role model. There was no attitude to him, no ‘side’.
“The problem I’d have is that David would want to play regularly, and I couldn’t guarantee him that at this stage. It’s difficult: I have Aaron Lennon coming back, Rafael van der Vaart playing off the right. I have lots of options. I could play Gareth Bale on one side and Luka Modric on the other. Sandro is also looking like he could end up a top player. Then there’s Scott Parker. So to bring David in and not play him would be a problem.”
These luxuries of choice are all a far cry from the grisly defeats with which Tottenham’s campaign began: a 3-0 humbling at Old Trafford, followed by a 5-1 filleting at home by Manchester City, hardly promised a sequence of four straight wins that culminated in their restorative triumph over Arsenal.
The initial central midfield pairing of Niko Kranjcar and Jake Livermore had looked alarmingly green but, thanks in part to Tom Huddlestone’s recovery from an ankle operation, they have — for the third season in a row of Redknapp’s tenure — the confidence of legitimate Champions League contenders.
Just call him ’Arry the Alchemist. Even if, in more reflective moments, he laments the direction in which his life’s calling is heading. He scorns the rise of the agents — “they phone the chairman rather than the manager, and tell the players that they’re superstars” — but seems most perturbed by the impression that his players inhabit a different world.
“Once you were part of the people. And I think that has gone. I’m not sure whether it will come back. The players don’t associate with the punters any more. They don’t give enough time to the people who pay their wages.
“When I was at West Ham we all used to go to schools in the afternoon and coach kids. For me that was the best: five afternoons at a school in Canning Town, me and Frank Lampard Snr. Trevor Brooking used to coach at St Bonaventure’s. We all got £2.50 for three hours’ work and it was fantastic.
Now players mix in their own circles. They’re a bit like politicians. They don’t connect with the man on the street.”
For his part, he insists that he feels loved. “I know we have done a good job. I went out last night to a dinner for the Air Ambulance. They were all Tottenham fans there, and they absolutely love what’s happening. They love the fact that there’s not much between ourselves and Arsenal.”
The only danger in this mutual love affair is that Redknapp is still the favourite to succeed Fabio Capello when the Italian steps down as England head coach after Euro 2012. His position, though is unwavering: flattered in principle, sanguine in practice.
“It would be a difficult one for someone to turn down, especially for an Englishman. But I enjoy the Premier League, and managing week to week. I like being involved every day. That’s what keeps me going.”
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