- Feb 8, 2007
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I love that video. It's my favourite BMJ moment, with the squaring up to Wenger a close second.
I hated that game so much. It was disgraceful how the club treated him in the endWas a real low point for the club that night. Was probably the closest I got to wanting Levy completely gone.
Behind a paywall, so can't read the whole thing. Ah well. Love BMJ anyway.
Thank you so much, Khilari! Really kind of you.[The Telegraph]
Martin Jol exclusive interview: I love Tottenham - it will always be my club
Martin Jol still owns a house next to Tottenham Hotspur’s old training ground in Chigwell. He doesn’t really know why, but he cannot cut the ties with the club he started supporting as an eight-year-old and managed for three years.
Now aged 63, Jol has moved back to Holland but it is clear which team he will be supporting when Tottenham face Ajax, a club he also managed, in the semi-finals of the Champions League.
“I was always a Tottenham fan since I was eight with my brother, I had the shirt of Jimmy Greaves from the sixties,” said Jol. “When I was manager, we lived in Chigwell and I was the only one who was left there in the end. Everybody else moved to Enfield, but I stuck with Chigwell. I’ve still got my house there, I don’t know why but I can’t bring myself to sell it. If I have a week off or my little girl has her holidays, we still visit. It’s nice.”
Jol managed Spurs between 2004 and 2007, and speaks with genuine affection for the club he guided to consecutive fifth-placed Premier League finishes at a time when they had been used to bouncing around in mid-table.
“You know I will never say anything negative about Spurs,” he explained. “It was like a rose garden and you never spit in your own garden.”
Jol knows only too well how important a Champions League semi-final will be to Tottenham and chairman Daniel Levy. The club were in crisis when Jacques Santini quit after just 13 games, but Jol steered Spurs to the brink of European qualification before taking them into the Uefa Cup twice in succession in 2006 and 2007.
He was rewarded with a Porsche 911 by Levy, which he secretly sold, but was also fully aware that the Champions League was the Holy Grail.
“Daniel and his vice-chairman Paul Kemsley were obsessed with the Champions League,” said Jol. “Paul told me ‘if you play in Europe, I will give you a BMW’, so when we were in the Uefa Cup I was waiting for it and I think I got a watch from his driver instead. It was a nice watch, but I gave it to my nephew and I never asked about the BMW.
“Paul never turned up with the BMW, but maybe a year later when we qualified for Europe again, Daniel gave me a Porsche 911. That was nice, but the thing was I already had the same Porsche, so secretly I sold it a couple of months later. It didn’t come with any of the papers, so I had to make an excuse to ask for them so I could sell it!”
The closest Jol got to achieving Levy’s dream was in 2006, when Tottenham had spent the majority of the season in the top four, but slipped to fifth on the final day thanks to a defeat against West Ham United after a number of players had fallen ill with food-poisoning.
Asked for his version of events of what was dubbed lasagne-gate, Jol said: “On the morning of the game, at 4.30am, the doctor phoned me and said ‘we’ve got a problem, the players are ill’.
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“It was obvious something went off. People were going to the doctor and all sorts, it was very strange, but I don’t want to blame anything like that. It was never easy to go to West Ham, so I don’t want to look for an excuse. I can remember Michael Carrick was ill and he still played, but it’s too long ago to worry about. We were the best of the rest at the time and that was good.”
It was during half-time of a Uefa Cup defeat to Getafe that news of Jol’s sacking spread around White Hart Lane, but the former West Bromwich Albion midfielder holds no grudge over his exit.
He speaks warmly of Levy and accepted an apology from former club secretary John Alexander, who had been pictured with Kemsley and Juande Ramos a few months before the Spaniard replaced Jol.
Martin Jol on Spurs' former Ajax trio
Jol on Vertonghen...
Like Christian, he is so cool, almost cold. He doesn’t feel any pressure. He was a left-back and a midfielder, but I made him a centre-back and he was so good next to Toby Alderweireld.
Jol on Alderweireld...
I put him in the team as a regular and he and Vertonghen played together. Toby was 20 and Jan was 21. We only conceded four goals at home all season.
Jol on Eriksen...
David Silva is an unbelievable player, but Manchester City are still Manchester City when he is out. Tottenham are different when Christian isn’t playing, which is why I believe he is the best midfielder of his type in England.
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I get the Pochetino sacking but Jol I did not get it at the time and I still don't get for me its Rowe Nicholson Burkenshaw Jol Poch as the best managers in my time . Redknapp would have made the list but his efforts to get the England job soured things big time for me .
That man without doubt put us on an upward curve to the extent that I fancied our chances whoever we played whilst also playing good to watch attacking football .