My Seventy Years of Spurs by Norman Giller

Author:Norman Giller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

OSVALDO ARDILES

Cry for Me, Argentina

Born: Córdoba, Argentina, 3 August 1952

Appointed: 19 June 1993

Sacked: 1 November 1994

Games managed: 65

Won: 20

Drawn: 17

Lost: 28

Goals scored: 91

Goals conceded: 100

Win percentage: 30.76

OSVALDO ARDILES, known and loved by everybody at the Lane as Ossie, was next to take the manager’s baton. Despite all the goodwill that came showering down on him, he found it as difficult a challenge as climbing the Andes with a monkey on his back.

He arrived back at Tottenham in the summer of 1993 with another Lane legend in tow as his assistant manager, the one and only Steve Perryman. They were Spurs through and through, but despite boldness in the transfer market and a positive approach on the pitch they just could not produce the results to satisfy the demands of Sugar and the shareholders. They lost more games than they won and scored fewer goals than they conceded. A recipe for a crisis. Even big Pat Jennings as goalkeeping coach could not save then.

The intellectual Ardiles could have been a lawyer, but decided instead to put his superior brain to work in the game of football. If you didn’t see him play, you missed a treat. He was all smoothness and skill, slippery as an eel and so accurate with his passes that you felt he could have placed the ball through the eye of a needle. Back in Argentina he was known as ‘Python’ because of his snake-like dribbling, and he won 52 caps for his country, including playing a major role in the national team’s 1978 World Cup triumph.

But for all his intelligence and deep understanding of football theory, he has never been able to make an impressive impact as a manager. It has not been for the want of trying. Before taking on the Spurs challenge, he was in charge at Swindon, Newcastle and West Brom, and after being unmercifully booted out at the Lane he tried his luck in Mexico, Japan, Croatia, Syria, Jerusalem, back home in his native Argentina and in Paraguay. He is Airmiles Ardiles.

Ossie is interesting to listen to on his football philosophy; that could have come out of the Arthur Rowe/ Bill Nicholson manuals:

My principles as a manager are the same as I had as a player when I was fortunate to be a member of the 1978 World Cup-winning team under that fine coach César Luis Menotti. I shared his belief in possession football. You must have the ball to win a match. If you do not let the opposition have it they cannot hurt you.

The team I admired most when I was a young boy falling in love with the game and also the team I most feared when playing was Brazil. They played the way I always tried to play and tried to get my teams to play as manager; controlling the ball and keeping it. Be positive. That is my motto.

Ossie and Steve ‘Skip’ Perryman took that positive attitude with them into their bid to steer Tottenham into a position of power.

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