Defoe - From the Times

Defoe defiant
The Spurs striker is fed up with life on the bench and hopes today’s visit of Birmingham will change his fortunes

Joe Lovejoy
Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman, has told Jermain Defoe that if he signs a new contract it will “give the whole club a lift”, to which Defoe is entitled to reply: “Give me a game, and it will do the same for me.”

The England striker has started just one Premier League match this season and takes the view that rotation is all very well, as long as you get your turn. Newly recovered from flu, he approaches the visit of Birmingham this afternoon in hope, rather than expectation. Like Martin Jol before him, Juande Ramos appears to favour Dimitar Berbatov and Robbie Keane, and the new manager is unlikely to change that preference after the Uefa Cup victory over Aal-borg that stretched his unbeaten start to six matches. His declared priority is improvement in defence, not attack.

Defoe is not one to rock the boat, and says that he would have left Spurs before now if he was going to, but he does admit to a mounting sense of frustration. It is more than three years since he announced himself on the international stage in Poland with a smartly snaffled goal that put England’s World Cup qualifying campaign back on track after a disappointing draw with Austria.

The chirpy, chippy Eastender was cock-o-the-walk back in those days, scoring 23 times for club and country in 2004-5 to earn widespread acclaim as Robbie Fowler’s natural heir as the best English finisher in the game. Sven-Göran Eriksson, whose opinions we must all view in a rather different light these days, said at the time: “Jermain is a great talent. He is a player who will always score goals.”

Not true, unfortunately. Defoe hasn’t trained on. He managed a meagre nine goals in 2005-6, narrowly missing out on selection for the World Cup, and although he feasted again last season [20 goals, including two for England], it has been famine nearly all the way at international level. Twenty-six caps, the most recent on that fateful night when Croatia put Steve McClaren out of our misery, have brought a return of only three goals – and two of those were scored came against little Andorra. He hasn’t scored in the Premier League for six long months and, at 25, he accepts that it is high time he started making progress again. On taking over from Jol five weeks ago, Ramos had promised him that if he applied himself diligently in training, he would get his chance. Encouraged, he had worked hard, yet was quickly dropped after starting the new manager’s first league game, at Middlesbrough.

“Obviously it’s frustrating, because you want to play,” Defoe said. “I played in the Uefa Cup tie against Getafe [Jol’s farewell], scored and got man of the match, and then Clive Allen took charge for the next game [at home to Blackburn] and I was dropped. I didn’t like that. As a striker, you depend on rhythm and I felt that I’d played well. No player likes getting left out like that. I got back against Middlesbrough, started all over again, worked hard and got left out again. Now I’m waiting for another chance.” To his credit, he was not about to seek refuge in the popular theory that good English players, like him, were being held back by foreigners, such as Berbatov and Keane. “When I was 17, at West Ham, I had the benefit of playing with Paolo Di Canio, who taught me a lot,” he said. “Even before I got in the first team I was talking to him and learning.

“I was lucky enough to be at a good club, under a good manager [Harry Redknapp] who made sure that I got my opportunity at a young age. I came through then, and I have never looked back really, so I have no complaints on that score. For others, who don’t get that opportunity, I can see that it must be frustrating, to have to go down to a lower league and try to work their way up again.” Omission by Spurs under Jol cost him his place in the England squad for what had seemed like an eternity. Defoe said: “Steve McClaren told me, ‘I need to see you playing for your club. If you’re doing that, I’ll give you opportunities’. But then for ages I didn’t play for England. Steve was telling me that I looked really sharp in training, but he couldn’t pick me if I wasn’t in the Tottenham team. I know if I play, I will score goals. It’s just so frustrating waiting for the chance.”

He was looking to be given more opportunities under Ramos. “A lot has changed,” Defoe said. “All managers are different, and there’s always going to be changes when a new one comes in. You can see it in the way we’re playing – the way we attack and defend, particularly at set plays. The way the game is today, a lot of goals are scored from set pieces, and we do a lot more work on them in training.”

If Tottenham’s fortunes are on the mend, the opposite is true of England. “Not getting to Euro 2008 is a terrible situation,” Defoe said. “I spoke to Shaun [Wright-Phillips] the other day and said, ‘Shaun, this would have been our tournament’. To miss out is horrible. It has sunk in now. In the summer, I won’t be able to watch the finals. It’s going to be so weird, England not being there.

“I came off the pitch asking myself, ‘Could I have done more?’ Playing out there became a desperate situation, and when you’re desperate you all play different to normal. You can’t relax so you force things. Because we had Crouchy [Peter Crouch] up there, everybody was directing everything long to him. It became difficult not to do that.”

Defoe and David Beckham were sent on for the second half, in place of Gareth Barry and Wright-Phillips. Defoe said: “At half-time everybody was down, that’s only natural, no matter how experienced you are.

“Steve [McClaren] came in and, all credit to him, he was very positive. He said, ‘Listen, we’ll get through, just keep it going, keep doing the same things and believe in yourselves’. When he told me I was going on for the second half, I thought, ‘Right, this is your opportunity, you can do something special here’.

“He said to me and Becks, ‘Just try to make a difference’. I got us the penalty – it was a penalty, by the way – and as soon as the referee pointed to the spot I thought to myself, ‘We’re going to go through tonight’. Frank [Lampard] scored, then Crouchy got our second goal and the buzz from the crowd was just unbelievable. When they made it 3-2, that was when we needed to sort out the tactics. When we didn’t, I thought, ‘It’s not meant to be after all’. We lost it ages ago, not that night. Drawing at home to Macedonia, maybe.”

Spot on. His finishing used to be that accurate. It needs to be again.