King: My Autobiography by Ledley King & Mat Snow

Author:Ledley King & Mat Snow [King, Ledley & Snow, Mat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sports & Outdoors, Biography & Autobiography, Non-Fiction, Soccer, Football
Amazon: B00CUE0I0Q
Publisher: Quercus Books
Published: 2013-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

A CAPTAIN IN STORMY WATERS

For two years, from the time of Glenn Hoddle’s departure, there was a lot of change at Tottenham. During David Pleat’s caretakership, behind the scenes the club completely rethought the structure of football management to something more along the lines you saw at the time on the Continent, where the functions of the manager were split between different people.

After the 2004 Euros, which had been cut short for me by my personal emergency, Jacques Santini’s name was being touted at Tottenham as manager. That sounded OK to me. He’d been coach of France, a great side with top players and big names, so to recruit him as coach showed that Tottenham had real ambition. I was relieved that back in June I’d had a decent game against France, which gave me a head start over some of the other players who Santini didn’t know at all.

It was a whirlwind time. There were other new people around, but obviously Santini was the big appointment, coming from the France national team to take the Tottenham job. At this stage we players felt we had a good squad but were up for something new. The new challenge was a foreign manager. When Santini came in, he changed quite a bit in training. He was very technical in his approach, walking us through the shape of the team and how it might change over the course of the game. That approach was just what we needed. We needed guidance on tactics. We’d never had that kind of help before, and I think that had held us back. We were a talented bunch of players who should have done better but until that point hadn’t the game plan.

With neither Santini nor his assistant Dominique Cuperly speaking great English, at the start of their time at Spurs a lot of preparation on the pitch got lost in translation, so we had to work hard to understand what was being demonstrated. A key lesson was what to do when we didn’t have the ball. That is a very underrated part of the game. Santini encouraged us to get our opponents, when they were in possession, to channel the ball in a certain direction with our positioning and body shapes. He also explained where the ball needed to be before we should start pressing.

That kind of instruction made things a lot easier. Beforehand, we didn’t really know whether to press or not when we didn’t have the ball, and that indecision would lead to hesitation, breakdown in formation and an awful lot of energy-wasting chasing the ball. As players we react to given situations, and one thing will trigger another. If we all know what we’re doing and what our teammates will do, it makes things a lot easier.

By then I was the longest-serving Tottenham player, and Santini gave me the captaincy. It was a big deal for me. I felt like I was growing up and maturing.

I was lucky enough to have a great role model as Tottenham captain – Jamie Redknapp.

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