The England captain is coming from a team known for its ability to mess things up – that experience should change in his career with the German champions
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There is a profound force that has shaped German soccer for decades. Even before economic factors elevated Bayern to a position of unhealthy dominance over German soccer, they had “Bayern-dusel” – Bayern-luck. Again and again things would go their way just when they needed them to, a sense that manifested most obviously in the number of last-minute winners they always seemed to score.
English soccer has for years also been shaped by a weird force, the feeling that events would follow a certain course no matter the efforts of those on the pitch: that of “Spursiness”. Was there a comical or inept or, ideally, comically inept way for Tottenham to mess things up? Then it would happen, whether it meant the squad going down with food poisoning before a key game after (supposedly) eating a dodgy lasagne in 2006, laughable defending at a vital time or a collective failure of nerve. “This,” as Giorgio Chiellini put it succinctly after inspiring a Juventus heist away to Spurs in the Champions League in 2018, “is the history of the Tottenham.”
This is an extract from Soccer With Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look at the game in Europe. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
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