But Sugar admitted that the move seemed inevitable. ‘Remember that Gary Lineker wrote an article within one month of the season starting in which he said Klinsmann would be leaving. He said Jürgen was being scouted by AC Milan and Bayern. I was angry with Gary at the time. But he was right and I got it wrong. I thought Klinsmann was a loyal guy and would stay for two years.’
Sugar was particularly angry that Jürgen had said that he was leaving in part because no money was available to strengthen the Tottenham team, and that key players had been allowed to leave. Not true, insisted Sugar. ‘There was a board meeting back in May and it is minuted, that we told our manager Gerry Francis that he had £7 million to spend. And, that was before we knew that Nicky Barmby was going. We fought day and night to keep Nicky Barmby.
‘In fact, we signed him on a new four-year contract. I did that personally. But he just wanted to go. Everybody knows the reason why he wanted to live back up North. Every single penny of the Barmby money, plus more, is available for our manager to sign new players. Gerry’s no mug. He specifically told me never to disclose how much we have to spend. He says it puts us in a bad position with people jacking up the price because they know how much we’ve got. But there is money sitting there waiting for the manager to spend it.’
Angry words, indeed, but there was worse to come. Sugar’s interview on the subject on BBC’s Match of the Day programme has become an iconic moment in football broadcasting history. ‘Here’s the last shirt he wore at the Leeds match,’ said Sugar, showing the shirt to the camera. ‘Look what he’s written on there – “To Alan with a very special thank you.” I’m bloody sure it’s very special because I’m the bloomin’ mug who relaunched his career. I wouldn’t wash my car with this shirt now.
‘You can give it to one of your viewers if you like, or auction it and give the money to some charity. Obviously an appropriate charity if we can. Something like a charity to get people to tell the truth in future or something like that.’
The more subdued club manager Gerry Francis added forlornly, ‘Jürgen is irreplaceable.’
Maybe so, but Francis soon stabilised the club, and a great run at the end of the 1995/96 season saw them come within a whisker of European qualification.
However, the following season began badly for the club, with key players suffering from numerous injuries to and the team struggling at the wrong end of the Premiership table. Come November, Tottenham were languishing in 16th place of the 20-club Premier League, just one point off the relegation zone. Francis quit, citing ‘personal pride’ as the reason for his decision. ‘Our results this season have not been good enough for me and certainly not good enough for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club,’ he said at a news conference. ‘You’re judged by results and obviously the results weren’t good enough.’
Sugar, appearing at Francis’s side, said he had urged the manager to stay and blamed pressure from the media for forcing him out: ‘Once again, I’m swallowing my principles in being forced to agree to do something which I know was not in the best interest of the club,’ Sugar said. ‘The credentials of the man are no different than when he first came here when everybody was singing his praises.’
Once again, it was time for a new manager, the fourth of Sugar’s reign to date. The man he chose was not well known in English footballing circles, although the same was true of Arsène Wenger when he arrived in England the previous year, and he was now performing miracles at arch rivals Arsenal. So, had Sugar found Tottenham their own foreign genius? In a word, no.
When new boss Christian Gross was unveiled, it was clear that English football had a new character in its midst. At the press conference, he excitedly waved a London Underground train ticket at the cameras. ‘I wanted to know the way the fans will come to White Hart Lane,’ he said, to widespread amusement. ‘I needed to show that I am one of them. This is a big, big job, a big, big challenge. I hope this is the ticket to my dream.’ Sitting alongside a nodding Sugar, Gross added, ‘I have to stop the fall. That means good team spirit, discipline inside and outside the team, and bringing in a new system.’
The smartly dressed Gross was clearly a disciplinarian. ‘I was a team player,’ he asserted. ‘Teamwork was very important. For me there must be that spirit. If you have discipline, you are powerful. Players have to be disciplined.’
It had been a theatrical performance from the new manager, leaving most observers bemused at best, and one can only imagine what went through the players’ minds.
However, even greater drama was about to unfold in north London, and nobody could have predicted the new twist in the plot. Football-supporting viewers of GMTV were no doubt aghast when Alan Sugar appeared on screen one morning in 1997 to announce that he had resigned none other than Jürgen Klinsmann. During the interview with presenter Eamonn Holmes, a well-known Manchester United supporter, Sugar was asked about Spurs’ visit to Old Trafford on 10 January. Sugar replied, ‘I guess you expect you’re going to get a few goals past us.’ He then dropped the bombshell: ‘But we’ve got Jürgen coming back. He’s on a plane, he’ll be landing in about half an hour’s time and, subject to passing a quick medical this morning down at the local hospital in the city, we’ve got a press conference at 12.30. He’s back to help us out for the rest of the season.’
Stunned doesn’t begin to describe to the reaction of the football world. After a disappointing six months in Sampdoria, Klinsmann was back at White Hart Lane, thanks to the man who had publicly lambasted him when he quit.
However, it seemed Klinsmann was too busy smiling as ever to have any interest in raking over old ground: ‘I feel now that I can give them a hand. I’ll do all that I can for the team. I feel coming back here is a wonderful challenge. It’s a bit like coming home. I’m very happy about it.’
It was an amazing shot in the arm for struggling Spurs, and the ultimate Christmas present for the Tottenham players and fans, who welcomed their hero back with open arms. As one senior player told the Evening Standard, ‘If Jürgen was just sitting in the stands it would lift the whole place.’
Sugar, too, seemed keen to let bygones be bygones, telling reporters, ‘I think we had better push everything in the past behind us. He has seen we are in trouble and the opportunity has come up for him to help us out for a few months – and we have grabbed it.’
Once more, he had pulled a rabbit out of the hat. As Simon Greenberg concluded in the Evening Standard, ‘It is to Sugar’s credit though that he has allowed the reality of relegation to overcome his pride and for former feuds to be consigned to the scrapheap. With the decision to bring Klinsmann back, they will both take the accolades for saving Spurs’ season.’
The German did indeed save the club’s season, but, once more, come the end of the campaign, he was to leave the club under a cloud, although, this time, it was not as a result of a falling-out with Sugar, but with the manager Christian Gross. The German announced his plan to depart before the campaign was over.
Klinsmann said that he had been encouraged to take on a quasi-coach role within the dressing room, and that the manager had been less than enthusiastic about the advice he offered. ‘When I came over, one thing Alan Sugar asked me for was my input and that is what I have done, telling Gross and the players what we should change and what we should do better,’ he said. ‘I have put a lot of energy doing that but I have had no feedback. I have reached the point where I have to stop in order to concentrate on my own game.’
Unsurprisingly, iron man Gross was not overjoyed to be offered advice by one of his players. He retorted, ‘I told Klinsmann that I am the man who makes the decisions. I am the man who decides where the players will play.’ It seemed matters had come to a head after a match against Bolton Wanderers, as Gross confirmed: ‘It is true that there was a row between Jürgen Klinsmann and myself after our win over Bolton. He was the only player not happy with what was a vital result and this was simply because he did not agree with where I had decided to play certain players and, in pa
rticular, David Ginola. I could not understand his reaction.’
Klinsmann bit back: ‘Christian and I have totally different opinions about things and about handling things. But I just don’t want any more of this stuff going on because we have enough problems with the relegation battle. At the end of the day, he is the manager and I respect that even if I do have different ideas. I have tried to give my input but it reached a certain point last week when our ideas differed. I will give my best until the end of the season and then we will go different directions.’
Gross had the final word. ‘I have the greatest respect for what Jürgen has done in a long and successful international career,’ said the Swiss head coach, ‘but he is still a squad member and has to accept my decisions about who I play and where I play them.’
Tottenham survived the season with their place in the Premiership intact, but Klinsmann was once more on his way.
From one player who left, to another who never joined – and a moment that left a bitter taste in the mouth of Sugar, and of Tottenham’s proud fans. The club had spent the best part of a year trying to tempt French midfield star Emmanuel Petit to sign for them. Having treated him to dinner on his private yacht, Sugar believed he had his man, and, after later showing the ponytailed Petit round the stadium, he lent him money for his taxi fare. An hour later, Sugar’s mobile phone rang. It was Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein calling from his Totteridge home. ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve got here,’ boasted Dein. ‘Emmanuel Petit. We’ve just signed him.’
A fuming Sugar raged, ‘I wouldn’t mind so much, but I paid for his bloody taxi.’
Ah, well, you win some, you lose some. Petit confirmed this story in a newspaper column. ‘Let me say, for the record, that it is all true, but that it gives me no pleasure to see Tottenham struggling after two disappointing results. I know there is a great rivalry between the two sets of supporters, but I was not born with that sense of antagonism.’
There is, indeed, no shortage of antagonism between Tottenham and Arsenal fans, so this story naturally became a legend in footballing circles, and became the subject of much banter between fans of the two north London clubs. Arsenal fan Piers Morgan – then editor of the Daily Mirror, for which Sugar was to write a column – certainly took every chance he could to rib Sugar about it. ‘I used to tease Sir Alan mercilessly about this when I was his boss and he always reacted extremely badly,’ said Morgan.
Petit went on to be part of the Arsenal side that won the double in 1988, compounding the misery of the Tottenham folk. However, when he left the club three years later, Petit put the boot in on his former employers, calling them – ironically enough – ‘apprentices’.
Another high-profile Arsenal signing that left Sugar somewhat red-faced was that of Dutch master Dennis Bergkamp. When Bergkamp signed for Arsenal in 1995, it seemed Sugar was still very much smarting from the first departure by Jürgen Klinsmann. He slammed Bergkamp’s signing as ‘cosmetic marketing’ by Arsenal, and described foreign players such as Bergkamp somewhat bizarrely as ‘Carlos Kickaballs’ who would not prove a success. Eleven years later, laden with League and Cup-winning medals, Bergkamp left Arsenal, showing that Sugar had certainly been wide of the target on this occasion. Arsenal fans had the last laugh, although, to be fair to Sugar, plenty of other onlookers had been sceptical of the Dutchman when he first arrived in England, with Massimo Moratti, president of Inter Milan, saying, ‘Arsenal will be lucky if Bergkamp scores ten goals this season.’
However, by this time, the two north London clubs had become the source of a far more spectacular story. Sugar was about to make one of his most audacious moves as Tottenham manager – and one he was in time to regret bitterly. Never before had the two rival clubs witnessed the like of what was about to happen. Scottish football legend George Graham is synonymous with Arsenal’s history of success. As a player, he was a key part of the Gunners’ side that won the 1971 double, and he returned to the club years later as manager, to guide them to a period of success that had not been seen since Herbert Chapman’s legendary 1930s glory days. He won two League Championships, an FA Cup and League Cup, as well as conquering Europe with the 1994 Cup Winners’ Cup victory over Italians Parma. During this period of sustained success for Arsenal, Graham had been the architect of numerous victories over Tottenham, as the Gunners utterly outclassed their rivals. Understandably, then, he was far from a popular figure among the White Hart Lane faithful.
So imagine their shock when they found out that their bitter enemy had been appointed manager of their club!
That was the incredible situation facing them in the autumn of 1998. At the press conference that saw Graham unveiled to a shocked public, Sugar was forthright in defending his move. Sitting alongside a tanned Graham, Sugar said, ‘If you work for IBM or the Ford Motor Company, you would go for the best in the field, someone who has been successful. George is one of, if not the top manager in English football. Why has he come to Tottenham? Results, that’s the end of it.’
It was a good sales pitch from a good salesman, and Graham’s stock in English football was high at this time. However, Sugar knew that, thanks to the Scotsman’s Arsenal associations, it would take a lot more than this to sell him to many of the White Hart Lane faithful. This was a courageous appointment indeed.
Giving the manager his unequivocal backing, Sugar asserted, ‘The single most important man at a football club is the manager. Maybe we will start a trend here, but it should have happened a long time ago. We must never sit on the edge of our seats again wondering whether we will be relegated. If George is not successful, we should have to examine the reasons why. We will have to see if the place is doomed, I’m jinxed, or that we might have to get an exorcist in – or even [one-time England manager Glenn Hoddle’s faith healer] Eileen Drewery. But the fact is we have not performed for the fans at all. We have not given them anything to cheer about. Some managers come in and wave chequebooks about and others get spontaneous results. George is consistently a winner and, in any walk of life, you have got to get those kind of people around you.’
It seemed Sugar had been taken aback by some of the flak that he taken from football fans during his short time in the game. He is no wimp, but, nonetheless, the ferocity of the abuse had stunned him and, for the first time, the prospect of quitting entered his vocabulary. ‘I have passed my sell-by date in the eyes of the fans, but it’s time to get this club in shape and performing well, give it the status it deserves. But there is a limit to the thickness of a rhino’s skin and I won’t put up with the abuse from the fans. It’s just not worth it. However, I am in no frame of mind to think about selling out, it’s as simple as that. But I like to work in an environment where there is a goal at the end of the rainbow or that your efforts are appreciated. The fans are part of our team here, and in appointing George I believe the board have made an excellent choice.
‘Anything I do, in any companies that I own, you work as a team, and your efforts are appreciated. Having been branded cynical and a cold person who has no knowledge of football, or interest in the heritage and tradition of the club, you spend seven years trying to convince people it’s not the case and in the end you go with the flow.’
Graham was similarly clear about what lay ahead. ‘I just want people to be patient,’ he told reporters. ‘I have always been a manager involved in a building process wherever I have managed, like Millwall and Arsenal. Millwall fell to the bottom of the table before I got them promotion, and Arsenal could do no better than seventh before I got them success.’
And success was exactly what Graham brought to Tottenham when he won the club their first trophy for eight years in the shape of the Worthington Cup. Facing the combative Leicester City in the final on 22 March 1999, Tottenham were heroes on the day. They played with just ten men for nearly half the game after seeing their defender Justin Edinburgh sent off. However, a poacher’s goal from Dane Allan Nielsen was enough to win the day for them.
This was t
he club’s first trophy under the Sugar reign, and he was delighted; he didn’t even complain when captain Sol Campbell soaked him in champagne in the dressing room after the final whistle. There was acclaim from all quarters. David Pleat, director of football at Spurs, was gracious enough to praise the chairman, amid the celebrations. ‘Now it’s time for Alan to sit back and enjoy it. The chairman has gained experience from the first few years. Early on he had a few problems not of his making, as there was no one on the board with a football background.
‘Very often mediocre players were signed. Very often cover was needed for injuries and sometimes players were bought on a whim simply as cover when they weren’t really up to it. Now there is confidence in the management and I’m there to provide information and keep the chairman in touch. He is a hands-on chairman, and rightly so. He should be aware of everything that happens at his football club.’
As indeed he was, and Sugar would also have been well aware that Tottenham’s value on the stock market was back up close to £90 million and rising. He soon launched a new £5 million private jet, called the GSpur, which was decked out in club colours. These were optimistic times at White Hart Lane. Could Spurs build on their Worthington Cup triumph to win one of the big trophies?
To do that, Graham would need more transfer funds, which he duly received. Sergei Rebrov had won eight League titles and four cups in nine years with Dynamo Kiev, scoring at a rate of almost a goal every game throughout his career, including 28 goals in 60 games in Europe. Winning 36 caps with Ukraine, Rebrov formed a deadly partnership with Andrei Shevchenko and even turned down a move to join his old partner at AC Milan in favour of a switch to White Hart Lane. But he didn’t come cheap: his £11 million fee smashed the Tottenham transfer record. It had proved a painstaking process to sign Rebrov, and Sugar had bravely held out against the £12 million asking price.
Sir Alan Sugar Page 11
