CityVP Manjit

5 years ago · 5 min. reading time · 0 ·

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What Tyson Fury Can Teach Tottenham

What Tyson Fury Can Teach Tottenham

WIRY
TYSON FURY
CAN TEACH
TOTTENHAM

CityVP Manjit

With all pundits considering the present Tottenham team to be superior in talent to Arsenal, Saturday saw another coming down to Earth for all Tottenham fans as Arsenal blasted Spurs away with a 4-2 win.  The excuse given was that recent triumphs in the Champions League last Wednesday beating Inter Milan 1-0 and a comprehensive 3-1 victory over Chelsea on the weekend before tired out the Tottenham players.  The reality was that Arsenal had more conviction than Spurs and a greater mentality to win.

On the same day later in the early morning of Sunday (British Time) and Saturday midnight (Eastern Time) Britain's controversial boxer Tyson Fury climbed into the ring with what looked like an improbable come back having been out of the fight game for over two years and coming down 10 stone from his prior 400lb weight to a more leaner 250lb for the fight and in also battling depression and suicidal thoughts in that same given period.  Fury also projected an anarchist personality and was not acknowledged by the British public for his World Title fight win against Vladimir Klitschko.

All that changed on Saturday night after a Rocky Balboa like performance where even a Rocky script would not have Sylvester Stallone knocked out cold with a fearsome combination from Deontay Wilder and then emerge 10 seconds later to dominate the fight again while he left everyone watching gasping in disbelief that he revived, got back up, convinced the referee to let him continue with only 90 seconds of the fight left and then nearly knocking down Wilder who managed to hold Fury.  By the time the bell sounded Fury had lost that round 10-8 and that was significant because the awful ringsided judges handed out a draw decision - when Fury had clearly won far more rounds that Wilder and simply had to avoid being knocked out in the last round to win.  Fury was gracious with the result, publicly he said he kept calm about the result so his new growing base of fans would not riot but more likely that it sets up a much bigger money showdown with either Wilder or Anthony Joshua - the fighter who has already caught the Brits' collective attention and who is a World Title holder holding the other three major belts.

Meanwhile earlier in the day, Tottenham players had lost their composer after equalizing and getting into a unnecessary brawl with some Arsenal substitutes on the touchline.  It brought back memories of the brawl Tottenham players had with Chelsea players when Chelsea managed to get under their skin.  Here comes the first lesson that Tyson Fury has mastered, he has great skill in getting into the head of his opponents - and he retains incredible composure during the fight, even after taking two knockdowns that were entirely preventable - but Fury goaded Wilder to knock him down.  Not that getting knocked down injured Fury's ego - rather contrary, Fury has demonstrated great resilience from getting up and winning his fights after having been knocked down a couple of times in earlier fights.  This is the second lesson Fury can provide the Tottenham team - that ability to maintain resilience and therefore maintain an unbeaten record.  It is Arsenal who are currently maintaining their unbeaten record to the last 19 competitive games.  In contrast Spurs have now lost four times in the same period.

Fury demonstrated in his press conference his ability to change perceptions - he went instantly from one of the most reviled figures in British boxing to an overnight people's champion or hero.  Here Fury has a third lesson for Tottenham, that one can change historic perceptions and live up to the billing and not simply as hype.  Fury walked the talk and showed unbelievable mental strength despite the fact that he has been subject to mental illness - and he even declared that his determination not to be counted out in the fight was to show those who suffer mental afflictions that it is possible to overcome what one might feel is impossible to overcome.  Tottenham players on Saturday did manage to claw back to  a 2-1 lead by half-time but Arsenal has not held a lead in any of their games at half-time, but they went on to remain unbeaten in their present run of form. 

While no one was singing Tyson Fury's praises before the fight, Tottenham have won a lot of praise for the quality of their squad but just as they look like turning the corner and to embrace a champions mentality, they show their weak underbelly with performances like the one against Arsenal.  There is one other factor that Tottenham has not overcome.  They keep a tight lid on their wage policy. It is a policy that apparently does not apply to the Tottenham chairman's own remuneration.  With top players like Christian Erikson, Mousa Dembele and Toby Alderweireld all holding out for better contracts, Spurs did not play Alderweireld and instead chose youngster Juan Foyth. It was a terrible mistake but also indicative of their policy as a club that is run more as a financial company than as a football powerhouse.  It is a policy that so far has proven to be penny wise and pound foolish - after all, if Spurs think of themselves as great at deals, then how did they sign an open ended contact for their stadium build rather than a fixed price contract - and now Spurs find themselves several hundred million pounds over budget.  That budgeting problem will need to come from player sales, but if Spurs sell players they most definitely lose their much sought after manager - who can walk into the Real Madrid job right now - no problem.

What Tyson Fury showed last Saturday was an equal nous for a head for business.  He has only fought for the World Title twice.  Winning the first and he should have been given the win on Saturday.  Spurs on the other hand may indeed need to sell their three best players to bring in the millions that balance their stadium cost overrun.  There is another way for Spurs to balance their books or at least for the current ownership, which is to sell the club to either a country or to a major global organization, and Facebook would be a good suitor if that is possible.  The possibility that someone will acquire the club for $2 Billion pounds is not at all out of the question.  It will overnight solve Tottenham's current financial dilemma.  Meanwhile Tyson Fury is giving a large part of his purse for his Wilder fight to charity, which supports his new brand as the emerging "people's champion".  It remains to be seen whether Tyson Fury has done away with his "Donald Trump tweet-like" persona and it does look like he has accepted that the bad boy past is not useful to him moving forward.  Spurs as a club can learn from Tyson Fury's intent of being a people's champion.   Of all the six top clubs in England, Spurs do possess the potential to be more well-loved as people's second team, or more to the point to new fans who are still children today, to become the new and stronger fan base for tomorrow.

While Tyson Fury has fought his long personal fight and demons and seems to have overcome them, Spurs still have moments that remind us of the team we have all labeled them as being - which are perennial under-performers.  They need to learn from Tyson Fury and adopt his winning mentality if they even seek to be a top club or a champion again.  In Pochettino they have a coach that has done an incredible job on a very tight budget, but the club has also shown it does have money to invest in projects it favours such as the stadium build and the NFL partnership - but it remains a financial company in spirit rather than the people's champion, and on Saturday Tyson Fury showed exactly how to become that.


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Comments

CityVP Manjit

5 years ago #1

#1
Winning is a choice but it is not the only choice, and for a professional footballer that choice having chosen this professional path meaning that a winning mentality is a major part of that choice. Professional sport is the exhibition of excellence. If these footballers and soccer professionals don't embrace a winning mentality then there is a choice for them to exit the professional world of soccer and instead embrace soccer as an amateur sport. In the realm of amateur sport winning becomes a choice again - but not for the professional athlete or the Olympian who has expectations of making money from their amateur success - and unfortunately the Olympics as it is today as a billion dollar enterprise does represent embracing a winning mentality even if its founder values were dedicated to the amateur status. Such dedication however harbours an unseemly truth that a significant underpinning why the Olympics embraced amateur sports competitors is because rich people could afford to be amateurs - in other words, the Olympics was not for amateurs originally but for the upper and richer classes - by having an amateur designation it ensured that people from lesser classes could not afford to attend. At least that is my read on why the Olympic movement finally embraced professionals or at least athletes who could market their success for significant financial returns. For the rest of us who are not professional sports people or amateurs with expectations of very lucrative endorsements, the winning mentality is not the only choice we can make, it is a choice among other choices as choosing not being competitive a.k.a. in this case a choice to live a collaborative existence.

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