da bet esporte： Good to Great is supposedly the name of a self-help textbook read by David Moyes on a plane journey home from Athens after a Champions League last 16 tie away to Olympiacos.
da pinup bet： It was a dismal 2-0 defeat that night, but the lasting, laughable image to come from David Moyes’ tenure as Manchester United boss wasn’t the result but his choice of reading on the ride home. It didn’t matter that the book is recommended to all coaches on UEFA’s coaching pro-licence reading list, the image of a pathetic man who was in over his head seemed to stick. Especially as the players themselves reportedly mocked him for it.
But what didn’t work for David Moyes might well work for others. To go from good to great is exactly the advice that Tottenham need to heed ahead of their final FA Cup game at White Hart Lane tomorrow afternoon against Millwall. And for the rest of the season, too.
Whereas David Moyes took on a team who considered themselves already in the ‘great’ category – they were Manchester United, champions of England, one of the biggest clubs in the world, and they were mostly all chosen by arguably the greatest manager of all time – Tottenham can’t really lay claim to greatness just yet.
If you’re of a Spurs persuasion, though, you might not place your club quite within the very top bracket the greats of world football, but there certainly have been great Tottenham teams.
Bill Nicholson’s double winners spring instantly to mind, as do the 1981 FA Cup winners, just as the class of 1991 do, too. The pick of the crop of the decade in between also went on to great things. The difference between those generations and this one, of course, is a trophy haul.
Over the last few weeks, that thought has been shared widely. From Jamie Carragher in the Monday Night Football studio, to various pundits, fans and commentators on social media: if this quite clearly talented Spurs side is to rank as one of the club’s great teams, they’ll have to win a piece of silverware sooner rather than later.
United themselves have won two trophies in the last few months. Arsenal have won two FA Cups, as well. Both of those sides are – at the most generous reading – just as good as Spurs are this season, certainly no better.
You look, though, to Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal and point to over a decade without a league title, and for nearly a decade without a trophy of any kind until the 2014 FA Cup. And yet the club – if not its players, perhaps – would have characterised themselves as great. And that has to do with the successes they had in the early part of their manager’s reign.
Spurs will not bridge the gap between themselves and the likes of Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barcelona and the other greats of European football just by winning a few competitions, and certainly not just by winning this year’s FA Cup. But what they can do it establish themselves as a great Tottenham side and take it from there.
Because when you look back at this team of Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen and Hugo Lloris all playing together under Mauricio Pochettino, you need more than one great game to look back on as a memory: you need a trophy for all the memories to gravitate towards.
But it’s more than that, too.
When a player pulls on the Manchester United shirt, they instantly feel like they’re part of a club that wins. The club has won so many trophies that it doesn’t matter if the player has never won a medal before, they should feel part of something ‘great’, not just ‘good’. And that’s why Moyes’ book was such a laughing stock.
At Tottenham that book couldn’t yet be a laughing stock. But instead of settling for Champions League qualification in the league, crashing out of Europe in Arsenal territory, and a decent cup run, Spurs need to be aiming for more than that. Otherwise a Tottenham manager will never look out of place reading a self-help book on the plane back home from an embarrassing defeat to a European minnow.
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