England Gets a Look at Itself, and Isn’t Sure It Likes What It Sees.
It’s been said that England is the world’s great unknown – what has rarely been seen before is revealed. This is no exaggeration. If the Premier League hadn’t been expanded to 32 teams in 2011, I’d still be wondering just what the hell happened. How has the old league stopped running so smoothly? I thought I’d already seen the future, but then it happened again in 2012 with the Premier League again expanded to 32 teams – it was the start of another unknown and I didn’t know who to believe.
But then I did see Tottenham and saw something I hadn’t seen before. Something that was new but was very familiar. I was on the train to London with my wife and I was looking through a new book about Tottenham Hotspur at the time. I didn’t know then that in the first season after the club’s move into their new stadium the new players would be in every season. They were brought in by Tottenham with a view to helping them win their next title. They were the Spurs of the future. I didn’t know then that they’d win their first Premier League title in their first season with new players and I wasn’t ready to see them win their first title at a new stadium. But I was on board by the end of the season, by the end of the first two seasons when they became the dominant force in English football. I didn’t know then that they’d win the league in 2013, or that they’d win the league in 2014 and then become the most successful club in English football in 2015. Not only did I know, I was excited by it.
England seems to have been a different animal to the rest of Europe for much of our history. We had a successful team in the early 1990s but then we went into decline. We have never been a big name in European football but we’ve always had a European presence. We were always a top-three nation in Europe and from time to time we would be a top