Tottenham are committing Premier League blasphemy and winning anyway

Hello! Hello! It’s time for another edition of Tactically Naive, the weekly soccer column that isn’t afraid of exclamation points, and really likes what you’ve done with your hair.

What are we going to do with Tottenham, hey? What are we going to do with the frustrating little scamps? When are they going to start making any sense?

They could so easily be a total mess. Their new stadium is still a tangle of cranes and uncovered wiring, and their fans are all extremely and righteously annoyed about this. And the price hikes. And the dodgy advertising. Mauricio Pochettino has spent most of the season with a scowl on his face, and that Real Madrid job has opened up nicely.

More generally, they are sinners, and should be despised in their own circles. This summer they broke the first commandment of the Premier League: Thou Shalt Always Buy. For while this competition pretends to be a footballing investigation into the best team in England, it is actually an orgiastic carnival of consumption, a bacchanalia of business, an alliteration of avarice.

Buy, use, discard, and buy again. Keep the wheel turning. Keep the money moving. Jose Mourinho gets it. Everybody else gets it. Because they know that if they don’t spend, if they stop pedaling, they’ll be crushed under the weight of everybody else’s momentum.

Or not. By dint of such heretical notions as “using the squad they already have” and “coaching” — whatever the hell that is — Spurs appear to have so far escaped punishment for their blasphemy. Even Moussa Sissoko is playing well, in his own confusing fashion. Spurs are currently sitting just three points behind Liverpool (summer expenditure: lots) and five behind City (echoing, booming laughter). Most recently, this Saturday gone, they dismantled Chelsea (a decent wedge).

And so as we move into the long nights of winter, and as the fixture list starts to pile up, we have to wonder quite how long the gods of the Barclays will tolerate this kind of heresy. Spurs are out on the golf course in a suit of armour, as the lightning cracks and the thunder booms around them. Will they get the fear in January, and make a quiet offering of appeasement? Or will they try and ride their impiety all the way through to the summer, hoping to nick the cheapest of Champions League spots?

Look, City are winning this thing easily. We need to start making our own fun in the dust. Stick to it, Spurs. Infamy is yours for the taking. And Dele Alli will make a great anti-Pope.

The first part of this week’s column was supposed to be about the Copa Libertadores final, except … hoo buddy. We had a first leg. That happened, just about, despite a late intervention from the gods of rain, who knew what was coming.

We didn’t have a second leg. Things got weird, and kind of awful. The superclasico final was supposed to be a grand occasion, a chance for Argentinian football to show itself off to the world. And so it did, only not in accordance with the plan. One local expert, talking to Rory Smith in the New York Times, attributed the blame for the violence that forced the cancellation to:

a combination of factors: the climate of suspicion that pervades our game; the policies of prevention and control of violence that have always failed; and the culture around our football, which is violent, macho, forgetful and thinks only of success.

And so the game dangles, half-finished, open-ended, an argument left lingering in soured air. The consequences for Argentinian football and for the Copa Libertadores — about to move to a new, more globally-friendly format — remain to be seen. So to the question of when — and indeed, if — the game will be played: a decision is coming on Tuesday, assuming that doesn’t get postponed as well.

Presumably you have your own methods of coping, but when football gets depressing, Tactically Naive turns to trivia. And we’re lucky, because the answer to the question “What’s the longest time between the first and the second leg of a cup game?” is a thing of grand majesty.

You will of course be familiar with the Anglo-Scottish Challenge, a two-legged game between the winners of the English and Scottish FA Cups, first won by St. Mirren in 1959. Over time this competition mutated into the Anglo-Scottish Cup, a larger summer competition that ran for six seasons between 1975-76 and 1980-81. Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest picked it up in 1977, before moving onto bigger and better things; St. Mirren became the only Scots to win it in 1980.

Anyway, the competition disappeared in 1981, only to be revived in 1987 in its original, cup-winners-only form. By happy coincidence, this meant St. Mirren again, who clearly enjoy this kind of thing. The Saints headed south to play Coventry City, and although the home team took the lead after half an hour, the Scots left Highfield Road with a credible 1-1 draw.

That game was on December 22, 1987. The second leg was due to be held in March, but was in fact held … well, 30 years, 11 months, and 4 days later, we’re still waiting.

Perhaps it was the lack of interest, as only 5,000 or so people turned out to watch the game, which was apparently played at a friendly pace. Or perhaps it was a question of cash-flow: the competition found no sponsor, and so the game would have made a loss. Either way, the thing remains quietly un-concluded. Perhaps one day, the grandchildren of those involved can get together and finally settle things up.

Anyway, this kind of relaxed approach isn’t a luxury available to River and Boca. The Club World Cup starts on December 12, and there’s a South American spot to be taken. Somebody’s going to have to lose to Real Madrid in the final.