Thursday we went to see the FA youth cup quarterfinal. Tottenham played Arsenal at home, and it only cost £3 for the ticket, so why not. Youth here means U18, but you would be surprised to see how good the football is. I’d compare it to the lower teams in the Norwegian Tippeliga. That’s why an impressive 19,084 attended the game. Unfortunately Tottenham lost the game 1-3 after being up 1-0.
Wednesday was matchday, and we were both nervous and very excited! Unfortunately, Tottenham tend to lose fairly often, so coming all the way to London to see a game is risky business. But, read on…
We left for London around 2PM, taking the underground from Debden to Holborn. At Holborn we changed to the Piccadilly line, which we took to Wood Green. There we took a bus to White Hart Lane. We later found out that it’s simpler and faster to change at Liverpool Street and take the railroad to White Hart Lane.
At White Hart Lane we first visited the Spurs Shop. I bought the home shirt and got the away shirt for free! Edward bought some training equipment. The funny thing was that Edward asked the shop staff for “knickers”. This would sound alright in Norway, but it turns out that this means ladies underwear in England…
After shopping, we went to Bricklayers, one of the best supporter pubs. Here we met quite a few Norwegians also travelling to see the game. After a beer (or five), it was finally game time.
Our seats were in row 3 at East lower. We sat almost at the corner flag, at Tottenham’s attacking end in the first half. The game started with chances for both teams, and as my brother said, all chances seem a lot bigger when you see them live compared to on the telly. To our surprise and great joy, Tottenham scored the first goal!!! From a corner by Luka Modric, Robbie Keane put the ball in the net, making his first goal after his return. What a great start, but more was coming!! Just a few minutes later, Pavlyuchenko made it 2-0! Me and my brother could hardly believe what we were seeing. Our friend Petter later told us “you picked the right matchday”, and we sure did… Before the first half was over, Aaron Lennon made it 3-0 after a great pass from Robbie Keane.
The second half had less action, but Tottenham defended well and even got a 4th goal scored by Aaron Lennon. After the game we had a Spurs beefburger and then went back to Bricklayers to have a few more beer before heading home.
You might wonder why I called this post “Yid army”. It turns out that some time ago the Arsenal fans started calling the Spurs fans “yiddos” or “yids”, because quite a few Spurs fans are jewish (yid is a slang jewish ethnonym). This was of course meant as an insult, but the spurs fans started calling themselves “Yid army”, defusing some of the insult’s power. So before, during and after the game, Spurs fans (including us) shouted Yid army!!