Martin Jol is waiting at the main door of the Nordbank Arena. I know what is
coming. “Heey, ma maaan!” is his greeting, best Tony Van Soprano style. It’s
good to see the big guy. English football misses a friend.
Yards away is a piece of public art, a dugout flanked by concrete footballs
that visitors pass en route from the car park. The message seems
unmistakeable. Hamburger Sport-Verein (SV Hamburg to Brits who remember
Kevin Keegan playing there) is a place built around its team and coaching
staff. A manager’s club. Could the same be said of Jol’s previous employer?
It is almost 12 months since Jol was dismissed by Tottenham despite
consecutive top five finishes, Spurs’ best league performance in 25 years.
Now he is creating more history, leading Hamburg to the top of the
Bundesliga for the first time this century, and yet for all the happiness
and pride his new job brings, a cockerel still crows in a corner of his
heart. The Germans came up with the word “schadenfreude”, but that is not
Jol’s feeling as he keeps an eye on Spurs’ travails. He simply wants better
for a club of which, after all, he is a supporter: “I’ve got a habit of
putting all my, it’s called, leidenschaft - passion - into something. At
Hamburg, because I spoke German and it’s a nice club, I’ve been able to
develop that feeling. At Spurs I had it from the first day. I’ve always been
in love with that club.
“Even after I was sacked I still got a great feeling from Spurs fans and
hopefully I’ll get the same here. But the sort of connection I had with
Spurs fans . . . maybe you get that just once in your life.” Later, back at
Jol’s, the first thing he does is go to the lounge and flick through his
satellite channels to find Sky Sports News. Spurs stay in his thoughts. He
is not a bitter person, enabling him to forgive Daniel Levy, the chairman
who knifed him, and keep his counsel regarding Damien Comolli, the director
of football behind the coup to replace him with Juande Ramos. Despite Spurs’
scraped result versus Wisla Krakow, only Wall Street stock is falling faster
than that of Comolli, Levy and Ramos.
Jol does not question individuals but the club’s general direction. From when
he succeeded Jacques Santini in November 2004 until the end of the 2006-07
season, Tottenham progressed via a careful transfer policy focused on
recruiting English talent and Jol’s ability to improve those players. Only
£14m, net, was spent. Then Levy demanded an immediate leap into the top four
and there came a massive change of tack. With Comolli increasingly directing
recruitment, Jol’s last summer saw £40m splurged on Darren Bent, Younes
Kaboul, Kevin Boateng, Adel Taarabt and Gareth Bale. Ramos heralded an era
of expensive foreign arrivals. “If you work for an English club you need an
English identity and that worked for Spurs,” Jol says. “We were developing
young players and were in Europe every year, structurally. I’m not sure if
we were good enough to be in the top four. I’m almost 100% certain it was
impossible without signing some experienced players I wanted, although we
were in the top four for five months (in 2005-06) and I was proud because I
had six players in the England squad plus Robbie Keane, a player bred in
England. Now there is Corluka, Giovani, Gilberto, Modric, Pavlyuchenko . . .
and Spurs have a different philosophy.
“They’ve got players from abroad, internationals, good footballers, but
they’ve changed the team’s identity. Spending £18m on someone, £15m on
another. Could you imagine that before? It would have seemed ridiculous.
They are so desperate for success I almost . . . pray . . . I certainly
hopeon their behalf. Because if they are not successful it will be a
disaster.”
The Nordbank Arena is spotless, a perfect modern football theatre. Chosen to
host the 2010 Uefa Cup final, its average attendance of more than 55,000 is
Europe’s 10th highest. Bernd Hoffmann, the club’s sparky, young, Anglophile
chairman, explains why he went for Jol: “I wanted not a coach who was weak,
or another former player, but someone with a big personality and if you can
survive at Spurs and be successful, you can do it anywhere. Since we were
European champions 25 years ago, Bayern Munich have won 26 trophies. We’ve
won one. Winning something - anything - is the priority.” Jol smiles. “Big
personality? He said that? Then he could have also gone for Tommy Cooper . .
. ” Winning something “will not be easy” in a country where as well as
Bayern there is a top Werder Bremen side to contend with, a strong Schalke
and Bayer Leverkusen, and Wolfsburg and TSG Hof-fenheim are spending big
money.
“In one year we won’t go for really great things but if you give me two, maybe
more, there are a few little positions where I can improve the team. The
spirit’s good and if you’ve a philosophy and can stick to it you can be as
good as you want. Hamburg, I feel, are still one of the biggest clubs in
Europe. We can’t compete with the Man Citys and Chelseas because we’re a
real club who have to earn what we spend but our budget of 115m euros isn’t
bad.”
Jol lost seven players over the summer, including Rafael Van Der Vaart,
Vincent Kompany and Juan Pablo Sorin, and recruited four replacements,
Croatian striker Mladen Petric, Marcell Jansen, the Germany left-back, and
Brazilians Alex Silva and Thiago Neves. His net spend was €4m. In Hamburg’s
opening league game – Bayern away – they roared back from 0-2 to draw 2-2.
Buccaneering comebacks have become Hamburg’s theme. Leverkusen and Arminia
Bielefeld were also given two-goal starts but were beaten 3-2 and 4-2. Top
after defeating Borussia Mönchengladbach last week, they can reclaim the
position by drawing with Energie Cottbus today. Jol has also piloted his
team safely into the Uefa Cup group stages and last 16 of the German Cup.
He was offered a €5m tax-free salary to coach in Ukraine, invited to manage
Aus-tralia and Iran, and approached by clubs in England, Russia and Holland
but, postSpurs, was determined to wait for “the right job” – and appears to
have found it. Nicole, his bright and hospitable wife, found a historic
former merchant’s villa, cosy yet big enough to display many of the
paintings and sculptures in her husband’s art collection. The Jols’ new home
is 10 minutes from the Nordbank Arena and close to the international school
which Marit, their young daughter, attends.
A house guest is Cornelis, Jol’s older brother. A German language professor
and qualified coach, he was Jol’s No 2 at ADO Den Haag and now assists him
at Hamburg. Zeljko Petrovic, one of his former players, is first team coach
and skills coach is Ricardo Moniz, once of Spurs. “I was allowed to bring my
own people and it was a big thing for the club because it’s a bigger staff
than they’re used to, and I’m not a cheap guy, but they’ve backed me. If the
Germans do something they do it 100%. I came in May and the gym was great
but not perfect so I told them. I returned a month later and they’d changed
everything.
“When they wanted me they did little things. They gave me two seats on the
plane when I flew over and we had a meeting, me, the chairman, and the board
at the house of the sporting director, Diet-mar Beiersdorfer. His wife kept
cooking us food. I had a house within weeks. I remember my first two months
in England, it was a nightmare. I went from one hotel to another with my
family. But Nicole and Marit are amazing, they support me and adapt.”
Having played in Germany, he already loved the country’s football mania (“the
only place similar to England”) and “you get better value in the transfer
market. £5m to buy another Bundesliga player is the same as £15m in the
Premier League”. Downsides? “In England there’s a camera-derie between
managers. I saw Mark Hughes when Manchester City came here preseason and
felt a great affection for him. In Germany there’s not a manager’s room,
there’s not even a bottle of wine. We go to our own players’ lounge. So Mark
came and said ‘where’s the wine?’ I said, ’Sorry . . .’ and ordered a big
keg of beer. It was the hottest day of my life and Mark kept his suit on.
‘It’s my image,’ he told me. He’s a cool mother.
“Training is different, it’s always in public. We post on the internet details
of all our sessions and there can be 1,000 fans watching – and the press.
You can’t keep secrets from opposing teams in Germany.”
He retains a house in Chigwell, five minutes from Spurs’ training ground. When
he left he said he felt one day he’d be back and wants to work in England
again, but that won’t be any time soon. “Of course I think I should have
stayed [at Spurs] but I had four years and that’s a blessing.
“Glenn Hoddle, Spurs’ best ever player along with Jimmy Greaves, was gone in
two years. If it happens to Hoddle of course it can happen to me. There were
one or two people - and I’ve never had this in my life – that when I left
Spurs I felt ‘I’ll never talk to them again’ but after a couple of months
you get rid even of that feeling. I’m glad I took a break and cleared my
head because it was hard. I knew Comolli was trying to get Ramos in the
summer, even when we had just finished fifth.”
Levy’s football director/head coach system is blamed for Spurs’ plight
but Jol makes an observation that may surprise people. “It’s a good
structure. Here, Beiersdorfer is such a nice bloke. Honest. I need that.
People who support me, give me a push and say ‘come on’. At Spurs I had that
. . . when things were going well.
“If you work with a football director who’s your choice, or you’re his choice,
the system functions. When Frank [Arnesen] was at Spurs it was perfect. In
business you do tests, interviews, assessments: football’s the only industry
where you hire someone, a player, only by looking at them. With a football
director and coach at least there are two people sharing their knowledge.
It’s designed to provide stability. But if one coach leaves and the next one
is changing 10 or 12 players, what’s the value of having the structure?”
Tottenham and Martin Jol. Divorce in haste, repent at leisure, to vary an old
saying.
Making comedy out of Spurs’ tragedy
- A man jumps into a pool of sharks, swims around then climbs out. ‘How’d you
do that?’ says a boy. ‘Look at my T-shirt,’ he replies. It reads ‘Spurs for
fourth’. Even the sharks won’t swallow that
- The local council refuse Spurs permission to build a new ground on
Northumber-land Park. A council official says, ‘A fun fair once a year is
one thing but a permanent circus is out of the question’
- Ramos walks into Burger King and orders two Whoppers. The man at the counter
says, ‘OK, you’ll break into the top four and win the Cup’
- A Spurs fan tries to hang himself, wearing Tottenham kit. The police arrive
just in time, remove the kit and dress him in suspenders. The man asks why.
The police reply, ‘To avoid embarrassing your family’
