I awoke Saturday feeling great excitement while trying to ignore an equally great trepidation. That morning, my beloved Tottenham Hotspur were playing their most heated match of the year, the North London derby against their arch-rivals Arsenal. This specific iteration of the derby was arguably the biggest league match between the two teams since the advent of the Premier League. Tottenham started the day in second place in the league, three points behind surprise league-leaders Leicester City. Arsenal sat in third place, three points further behind. No one seems to believe that tiny Leicester can possibly hold on to win the league, so pundits have started saying that this Tottenham team, playing the best football seen from a Spurs side since perhaps the '60s, with the youngest squad in the Premier League, allowing the fewest goals, and holding the best goal differential--these are not the sort of descriptors normally given to Spurs, by the way--should be considered favorites to win the League.
Everyone picking Spurs as favorites to win the Prem clearly hasn't really watched a whole lot of Spurs over the years, and so they're failing to take into account a very important detail. I have, and I know better.
You see, Spurs are cursed.
Here's one example: Spurs went into the final game of the 05-06 season up a point against Arsenal for the final Champions League spot, only to have literally half their squad get violently sick the night before with what was initially reported as food poisoning. They lost their match, Arsenal won theirs, and Spurs ended up in the UEFA Cup.
(The illness turned out to have been caused by a particularly nasty virus, but still, it's fair to call that ridiculously bad luck.)
Here's another: The 2011-2012 Spurs side was in third place for most of the season, but then took a dreadful six points from a possible twenty-seven from late February until late April to fall to fourth--still usually good enough for Champions League football--and then got booted from qualification because stupid Chelsea, outside the top-four in the Premier League that year, won the Champions League. Need I even mention that the third-place team, only one point ahead in the table, was Arsenal?
Here's one more: When a player hasn't scored in a long, long time, a match against Spurs frequently puts an end to that streak. I've lost count of the number of times that an opponent has scored, after which the commentator says something along the lines of, "That's his first Premier League goal in 216 games!"
So when Saturday's pre-match commentary mentioned that Arsenal's Alexis Sanchez hadn't scored since October, a run of eleven straight games, his longest drought since he came to the Premier League, can you understand why my trepidation took on a hue of terror?
But let us not forget that I am a fan of Tottenham Hotspur in the purest sense of the word. Thus while I was desperately afraid, as experience would dictate, I was simultaneously stupidly optimistic, because love makes you stupid.
I watched the match through my fingers. Spurs had all the early possession, but you could clearly see their relative lack of experience. All they could do with their possession was take bad shots and made bad decisions. Everyone wanted to be the hero. Still, they were, for the first part of the game, clearly the better team. I prayed that they'd score and settle down a little.
Predictably, it was Arsenal who scored first. Aaron Ramsey took advantage of some poor defending and put Arsenal ahead in the 39th minute.
Arsenal carried their 1-0 lead into the second half. But then in the 55th minute, Francis Coquelin got a stupid yellow card--his second stupid yellow card--for a reckless, pointless foul on Harry Kane. Match referee Michael Oliver literally shrugged as he pulled the card out his pocket, like What choice do you leave me? And suddenly Spurs were up a man with 35 minutes left to play. And then Toby Alderweireld scored off a corner kick in the 60th minute, and Harry Kane scored a gorgeous goal in the 62nd, curling the ball in from the side of the box, and just like that, Spurs had a 2-1 lead.
And what happened next? Did Spurs, the better team, playing at home, up a goal and a man, with a style based on high pressure and ball possession, take over the game and calmly dispatch the weakened and demoralized Arsenal side? Did they quickly get another goal and put the game away?
Do I really need to answer that?
No, they did not. Instead, I had to watch the sad spectacle of Spurs trying to kill off the clock like there were four minutes left instead of thirty. I watched them waste time, cheaply give possession away, and defend desperately. Anyone who turned on the game during the last twenty-five or so minutes would have been hard pressed to believe that Arsenal were down a man--they had most of the possession and all of the thrust.
And of course--of course!--it was Alexis Sanchez who scored the equalizer in the 77th minute.
It had to be. This is Spurs, after all.
A rational person would tell you that there's no such thing as a curse, that this is the kind of weird confirmation bias that sports fans so regularly participate in. But being a sports fan has nothing to do with rationality. Really. Ask any true fan. If he's being honest, any true fan will tell you that rationality doesn't hold sway because in sports you are dealing with a realm of magic. It is because of the power of this magic that we watch grown adults run around playing what should be children's games, except in front of thousands of people for millions of dollars. We plan our days around watching. We sweat and we scream. Rational? Good god no. But once you have seen that there is magic in the world and it is on display on the sports field, its power can be too much to overcome.
So yes of course Alexis Sanchez scored the equalizer. Only a desperation tackle by Kevin Wimmer against Aaron Ramsey in the final minutes kept Spurs from losing the game outright. And thus Spurs squandered yet another chance. Of course they did. It had to be that way.
So now will I finally do the rational thing and pull my energy away from this fruitless endeavor? Will I watch only idly for the rest of the season instead of opening my heart and pouring myself into something over which I have no control? Of course not. This is not the realm of rationality. This is the realm of magic and of love, and in the face of such forces I am powerless.