Today’s edition of FlightKL18 finds me six days away from the realization of a dream—to see my beloved Tottenham Hotspur English football/soccer team capture a bit of Cup Glory at Sunday’s final of the League Cup against favored Chelsea at London’s reconstructed Wembley Stadium.
A Chelsea-Tottenham matchup is mouthwatering on a number of levels. First, there’s a form of dyslexic Semitism permeating the contest. Tottenham’s supporters call ourselves The Yid Army, and Chelsea’s support has long had an element of anti-Jewishness to it, which hasn’t completely abated despite the club’s acquisition of a Jewish Russian billionaire oligarch named Roman Abramovich who has turned the club into a full-time job. Abramovich’s replacement of popular Portuguese manager Jose Mourinho with former Israeli National Team Coach Avraham Grant did him no favors with the neo-Nazi element of his club’s support.
Despite Chelsea’s considerable on-field success in the Abramovich era, where the club stockpiled the world’s most expensive players to rot on the bench while winning titles and performing competitively in the prestigious European Champion League, Spurs supporters consider Chelsea an upstart and parvenu unworthy of proper scorn. A recent chant by 3000 visiting Chelsea supporters of “We Hate Tottenham!” provoked an instinctive reply by the 33,000 Tottenham faithful at the club’s White Hart Lane ground. The reply: “We hate ARSENAL! We hate ARSENAL!” showing that the club’s true rival, the Hated Arsenal Scum, held that position without challenge or threat from the Chelsea posers.
On the base of sheer surplus talent, Chelsea enters the match heavy favorites even if fielding an all-substitute team. But Tottenham has some wind at its back, most notably the previous-round demolition of the Hated Arsenal Scum 5-1, and the adrenaline of a cup final makes outcomes unpredictable. I’ll be at an English or Irish pub in The Hague with my 1999 Spurs Away jersey—from the year we last hoisted this particular cup.
PS: The motto of Tottenham Hotspur is “Audere est Facere”—To dare is to do. Kind of fits me, eh?
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