People's History of Tottenham Hotspur

Book excerpt: A People's History of Tottenham Hotspur is the story of how fans helped create the identity of a world-famous club and tells a story from a perspective rarely acknowledged. Drawing on social history, contemporary press reports and first-hand interviews with the fans themselves, authors Martin Cloake and Alan Fisher trace the club's development from being the team of the suburbs and the rising south, through the glory years and the arrival of mass, popular culture, and into the modern era of the game. It is not a tale of trophies won and lost, of players bought and sold. Instead, it is the story of how one of the game's oldest and most famous teams was formed and established by its fans and how its identity was created by them. It evaluates how the fans' relationship with the club has evolved, as the game has changed: from those bygone days, when a club was at the heart of a local community, to the modern era, where the world's leading football clubs have to compete as multinational 'brands', appealing to fans on a global scale, stretching much further and wider than the north London footprint than the club's founders would have ever imagined.