KEITH BURKINSHAW SIPS TEA AND relaxes in the Oak Room, a few paces from the entrance to the directors’ box at White Hart Lane, the seats of learning that he rejected 22 years ago. Dismayed by the idea of Irving Scholar, the chairman at the time, to drag Tottenham Hotspur into the world of the plc, Burkinshaw glanced over his shoulder and remarked witheringly: “There used to be a football club over there.”
It was 1984, shortly after he had led Tottenham to victory in the Uefa Cup final, his third trophy in nine years in North London. Anderlecht had been dispatched 4-3 on penalties, after a 2-2 aggregate draw, and he walked. Today, although mellow and quietly reflective, his trenchant views have not changed. Scholar was ripping the soul from Spurs, he believed, and it was time to go.
Burkinshaw had seen the writing on the wall, anyway. “He wanted me out,” Burkinshaw said. “I was a powerful manager, I ran the club. I said to him, ‘Look, if you’ve got any sense you’ll let me keep on doing that because we’re winning things. You just sit in the background and take all the plaudits and Tottenham will prosper’. But he couldn’t do that. He had to have the power.
“He said he wanted to do what I had been doing, buying and selling players. He started talking to them about wages and that had been my job. I think I did well; we made profits. But he promised them this, that and whatever. It all went awry. I couldn’t stop at the club if he was wanting to do that.”
Burkinshaw, having turned down an approach from Benfica, went to coach in Bahrain. “I was absolutely sick about what happened,” he said. “I wasn’t bitter, but I had to get away from the mainstream of European football. I had to recuperate.”
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Now, at 71, he is assistant to Adrian Boothroyd at Watford; back in the top flight, the sage of Vicarage Road. As Tottenham embark on their first European campaign for seven years when they travel to Slavia Prague for the first leg of a Uefa Cup first-round tie on Thursday, comparisons will be drawn. For Glenn Hoddle, Ossie Ardiles, Micky Hazard and Steve Perryman read Michael Dawson, Ledley King, Robbie Keane and Jermain Defoe.
“Spurs have a fair side,” Burkinshaw said. “They could win the cup again. Of course, they have a chance. I like Dawson and King, when they’re fit, and Keane. He’s got a good football brain. And Defoe can be a bit special at times.
“But you can’t really compare them to my side. Players are now athletes. Every little detail is accounted for. In our day, we just didn’t know about how to achieve such levels.”
Martin Jol, the Tottenham head coach, gets the thumbs up, too. “He’s a sane, sensible bloke,” Burkinshaw says. “I like him as a person, as well. He’s done well.”
Yet a sense of what might have been lingers. Burkinshaw, tagged the “second-best ever Tottenham manager” behind Bill Nicholson, left White Hart Lane with dreams unfulfilled. “I do think that, if I’d stayed on, we’d have won more trophies. The club could still be like it is today without becoming a plc. I’m sure of that.”