STADIUM
This stadium deserves better critics
Another week, another pundit standing pitchside at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, mumbling something about "lovely facilities" before cutting back to a studio discussion about literally anywhere else. I've had enough of the faint praise. This building is not "nice." It is the best stadium in world football and I am now fully convinced someone is paying good money to make sure nobody says so on television.
Think about what's actually here. A retractable pitch. A dedicated NFL surface underneath it. The longest bar in Europe. A single-tier stand that turns the away end into what away fans themselves admit is one of the loudest corners in the country. You could not design a more complete home for a football club, and somehow it gets covered like a mildly impressive extension someone built on their house.
Compare that to grounds that get talked about with this hushed, reverent tone every single week, bowls with a running track memory still baked into the architecture, away sections you need a telescope for. Nobody's rushing to call those "iconic" on a random Tuesday. But say one polite sentence about our stadium and pundits act like they've been forced to compliment a rival's homework, then glance nervously off camera before the cut to commercial break.
I don't know who is telling the football media to talk about this building like it's a nice retail park and not a genuine modern wonder, but somebody is. You do not get an entire industry landing on the same small word, week after week, for seven years, by accident. I am asking why the only stadium in this country built properly, funded properly, and run without doing anything daft to the finances is also the one stadium the entire industry has quietly agreed to describe as "nice." Draw your own conclusions, I've drawn mine.
Results this season have been what they've been. Nobody's pretending otherwise, De Zerbi's got a squad still finding its shape and it's been a rough watch some weeks. But even on the flattest matchday, you walk out of that ground and it still feels like the best version of what going to football should be. That part isn't up for debate, whatever the table says, and whatever certain people would very much prefer the neutral public believed instead.
So here's my honest ask to the football media, and to whoever is quietly briefing them beforehand. Say it properly. Not "impressive," not "state of the art," just the plain truth, that this is the best stadium in the country and it isn't especially close. Job's a good one whenever someone finally admits it, and I fully expect to be vindicated by history, even if not by a single working pundit currently employed in this country.
Right, that's me for today. Come on you Spurs.