Lucky Number 13

As we await the match up on Sunday of a Tottenham team on the threshold of doing something great and a formerly great team trying to find their way back to their former glory, there is a personal touch that makes this soccer rivalry relatable to me.  When I was about 8 years old and that would be around 1969, I was asked by the other boys in our school playground which side I was on.  The choices where the Blue team (Tottenham) or the Red Team (Manchester United) - it goes without saying that I said "BLUE".  Yet now as I look back I do remember that blue was not actually my favourite colour at junior school, it was red and I can remember how losing my favourite red t-shirt a few years later made me unhappy, but that was a few more years down the road.

On Sunday the worst possible result will be draw.  Not a good barometer for Tottenham and question mark about whether the Manchester United team enthusiasm for their new caretaker manager is real or not.  Back in the day in the 60's that was actually the height and heyday for this particular rivalry, but successive games since have often yielded tremendously entertaining games, and that is for good reason because both United and Tottenham are known for their culture of playing brilliant and attractive football.  It is only United who have added ruthless winning to that recipe and there were many a year when Tottenham turned out to be the team playing United when another League Championship title was being confirmed, strangely the same pattern has happened with the other read team, with Tottenham's rivals Arsenal.

A spectacular United win will mean that for the first time in years (and after three top name managers joined and got fired) United will have found the Sir Alex Ferguson magic of old - and Ferguson's right hand man has been appointed assistant manager to the caretaker manager, as have two other United player legends creating in effect a four man managerial team.  Interestingly despite having recovered from a stroke, Sir Alex Ferguson gave a team talk in the past few days to the United team.  That talk has been dubbed by Britains Sun Newspaper as the "The King's Speech"

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/8142132/alex-ferguson-ole-gunnar-solskjaer-man-utd/

Why Ferguson may have been compelled to give this talk to the present United team may well be due to his instincts as a legendary manager, recognizing that something that was lost in the United culture has been rekindled with the return of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as United caretaker manager.  Solksjaer is an absolute United legend whether he succeeds in his new role, fails or even does so well that he is appointed United's next manager (which is not expected to happen).  It is hard to imagine Solskjaer topping scoring the winning goal in the 1999 European Cup Final that even Sir Alex Ferguson during injury time thought he had lost and was beyond his expectations that United would score not one but two goals in the dying embers of injury time.  That goal also secured United's incredible feet of The Treble, winning the League Championship, the FA Cup and the European Cup in the same season :