Dannyboy was talking abt today:
Pride after the fall
Deposed manager on how it went wrong at Spurs, his continued affection for the club - and chairman - and his hopes of remaining in England
Duncan Castles
Sunday November 4, 2007
The Observer
Martin Jol is a collector of fine art - and a commissioner. Broad smile across his robust features, Jol welcomes guests to his Chigwell home and draws their attention to a pair of modern canvases. On backgrounds of sunrise yellow and orange, enigmatic human figures interact with some familiar images. Worked into each painting are an upright cockerel and an old, leather-panelled football - the symbols of Tottenham Hotspur.
If the description suggests otherwise, there is a subtlety to the art; one that parallels Jol's feelings for the club that many believe were cack-handed in their sacking of him 10 days ago. From the moment of his promotion to 'head coach' in November 2004, the Dutchman talked of his love for Spurs: his English club, the one he had followed as a child, on a radio in The Hague. Three years leading them to their highest Premiership finishes and building a bond with their demandingly impassioned supporters, merely intensified those emotions.
A master of the one-liner, Jol jokes about that affinity. He is dressed in a burgundy shirt, similar in colour to Arsenal's centenary kit of two seasons ago. 'This is the first time I wear this colour, it's unbelievable,' says Jol. 'But that is what they put into you when you are at Spurs. If I would have £2billion I would buy Arsenal. And I'd make a big parking place from the Emirates and make a new stadium for Spurs. Or for another club, you know. That is a nice one!'
Far nicer, he clearly feels, than the manner in which Tottenham dispensed with the services of their most successful modern-era manager. At odds with key board members despite guiding the team to within a nauseous afternoon of Champions League football, Jol feels he was steadily undermined by his directors. They unsuccessfully approached Juande Ramos to replace him in August, failed again the following month but finally installed the Spanish coach last weekend.
Sitting back in a white sofa, taking a large draught of his wife's coffee with both painted paeans to Spurs in view, Jol is clearly not over that 10-week stint on managerial death row. He still looks jaded, a slight sadness to the eye and a marked hesitance to his words.
'I feel very tired, but maybe that's normal,' he says. 'I saw myself on television and thought "bloody hell". I looked at my picture compared to last season. It was maybe more than I realised... For example, Thursday I felt like I was beaten.'
That was the night of long knives. The Uefa Cup tie with Getafe, when word of Jol's demise spread round White Hart Lane, when the crowd repeatedly chanted his name and defamed chairman Daniel Levy's - aware of the Dutchman's fate before it had actually been communicated to him. The following days' papers reported that a disconsolate Jol had been fired before the game, or after. That his players knew before kick-off, or after. That he had called Levy every name under the sun.
'Everybody got it wrong about that night,' he says. 'They said I stayed on the bench, but I didn't go to the touchline because the German bugger of a fourth official wouldn't let me. Spurs fans were singing my name but they always sang my name, so at first I didn't think it was anything unusual. People say I was crying, but I swear to God I didn't know - it was probably a windy night. I was stressed but that was because I didn't want to lose, but maybe the players had an idea. Daniel was embarrassed and that made me feel better - he said he regretted how it had all come out. If he'd sat me down eight weeks ago and said we've got someone who can do better that would have been OK.'
While Jol did not expect the axe to fall on the night of a European tie, he knew the blade was raised, had heard that Spurs had sent an English teacher to Spain to work on Ramos's language skills. He paints a picture of a club that had got ahead of itself, which believed the natural consequence of consecutive fifth-place league finishes was a march into the top four and the revenues of the Champions League, yet refused to alter a business strategy of buying young, semi-formed talents on limited wages.
'If you are in a club like Southend for example and you achieve what you want you get a big celebration. In our club it is different - it is next target. There were conversations about me being more outspoken about Champions League ambitions, but I didn't want to put too much pressure on the younger players. Of course I wanted to be in the top four, but I would also one day want us to be champions. But is that realistic? Ambition needs to be measured by what you're working with.
'In a way I don't mind because it's a management style and Daniel is a manager. That is not a problem, the problem is that if, for example, we still had [former sporting director] Frank Arnesen, as a football man, he would have said to them it doesn't work like that, we need some time. David Moyes was fourth with Everton three seasons ago, next season he was fourteenth. Now he's got strong players, he's got his final sort of article, now he can stay in the top six. But for me, to stay in the top six would have been fantastic. A couple of years ago my target was to be structurally top six every season and we did that. Perhaps with the younger players we could achieve more but we'll never know.'
Levy pursued a policy of purchasing young, preferably English, players and building them into stars who could act as centrepoints for the team or be sold at significant profit. Michael Carrick, Michael Dawson, Jermaine Jenas, Tom Huddlestone, Darren Bent and Gareth Bale all arrived during his tenure as the balance sheet blossomed. Jol, whose team grew younger each season, respected the policy. He simply wanted a balance between profit-making development and reaching the top four. Tottenham confused short-term business aims with the long-term football objective of Champions League qualification.
If it did not help that Levy was also looking to sell the club to foreign suitors, Jol's working life became more difficult when his friend Arnesen resigned to join Chelsea in 2005. Yet he still achieved two fifth-place finishes as the Dane was replaced by Damien Comolli, an inexperienced ex-Arsenal scout almost two decades his junior.
Though Jol is reluctant to go into details, it is clear that his dealings with the Frenchman were fraught. 'It's been portrayed that I spent the money,' says Jol. 'I don't fix the fees and I don't even know what they earn, that's not our structure. Frank was more of a right-hand man and he would come in and say "why did you do this?" in a game. Frank was my friend so I would answer. I had nothing against Damien, we just didn't have that kind of relationship.'
Tottenham hired a headhunter to draw up a 50-strong list of potential replacements for Arnesen. Jol promoted the candidacy of a couple of Dutchmen, including Marcel Brands of AZ Alkmaar and Hans van der Zee, then of PSV Eindhoven, now chief scout at Ajax, and had no problems with the principle of working with a sporting director.
'It is a model that can work everywhere,' he says. 'But the director has to appoint the manager. Otherwise, if the manager is already there and knows all the ins and out, all the players, when somebody else comes in it's difficult. That's why I changed my contract [in 2006] and became manager so I would report to Daniel. And that's not ideal because it means the football director is then only a sort of super scout. Now Ramos is head coach and Damien is his boss, he's a proper football director again and maybe that will work better.'
There has been much talk of Jol suffering at the hands of vice-chairman Paul Kemsley and communications director Donna Cullen, he is surprisingly warm in his appraisal of Levy. 'If I had something with Daniel I'd tell him. Sometimes they don't like that, but I still worked in his structure because he's the best businessman ever.'
Jol has been less impressed with reports that he had fallen out with Dimitar Berbatov after the club prevented the forward signing for Manchester United in the summer. 'I loved Berbatov,' he counters. 'He was my player. Berba came to me after the first two defeats this season and said: "Boss I want to achieve something. I'm not worse than Eto'o or Rooney or Tevez." And he's right. But, I said to him, "You have to make the difference and win us prizes. You need to be more consistent in your play." Last year he scored 12 in the league and with his ability he could score 20.'
There is a similar reaction to claims that his team's frequent concession of late goals was because of sub-standard stamina training. 'The fitness coach of Ramos was there on Monday and said "No, they don't look fit". They'd played four games in 10 days, how can you see that after a game? You can see that probably in the next couple of weeks if there's no game. But we played 59 games last season and never lost the third game at the end of the week. What does that prove? I can tell you we were always fit. Though we weren't fit in that last match against West Ham!'
The day of Upton Park food poisoning that cost Spurs a top-four slot in 2006 is one regret; failing to defeat Arsenal another. Jol also wonders if he was outmanoeuvred by the club in their respective dealings with the media.
Though he followed club advice and avoided briefing journalists off the record, stories were often leaked to the press. When one regular Spurs reporter spent four hours doorstepping Jol the day after the sacking, the Dutchman only spoke on the record to get him to leave. It is telling that Jol did not know the journalist by name. 'Why do I have the reputation I've got? Because I'm the only one in the whole Premier League who never talked to a journalist. Maybe that is not a strength. Now, in hindsight, maybe I should have done it, but I still feel that I didn't come out of it bad.'
He also wants to continue managing in England. Jol has already fielded strong interest from a couple of clubs, including PSV Eindhoven, but elected instead to take a family holiday in Brazil. The Dutch federation has expressed an interest and the Football Association could do worse than add him to any shortlist to succeed Steve McClaren.
'International football is great,' says Jol. 'I'm 51, I'm not too young. You tell me I want to be in the Champions League. Of course it's an ambition or to be the champions of England. I still have ambitions in Holland, where I have won every title at all levels apart from the championship. I want to apply my philosophy, because I still feel in England you still play too rigid. I want my team to play and move, exploit the spaces which are created by movement. That's what Arsenal do, what the great Liverpool did and what I always wanted from us.
'I live here. I've been in my house in Essex three-and-a-half years. For me it would be easy to go back to Holland, but what more can you want? A year ago I got offered a job in Holland at a club who get 50,000 a week. That's more than Spurs, but it's not the same. I love the people here because they love their football. They have a crazy love for it but they also have a feeling for justice. Perhaps that's why they chanted my name during the Getafe game. I would work anywhere if the job was right but I love it here.'
And then there is the unfinished business at the Lane. 'I'm a fighter. I still have the feeling that you never know in the future,' he says. 'In football it's all about circumstances, opportunities.'
Don't expect those paintings to come down anytime soon.
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