It ended under a rainbow. Glenn Hoddle, one of 49 Tottenham greats brought onto the pitch on 14 May 2017 to bid farewell to White Hart Lane, “the world-famous home of the Spurs”, raised an umbrella to the sky at the wash of colour which had appeared over the soon-to-be demolished East Stand.
Stood on the upper terrace of the old Shelf Side, my abiding memory of the Lane’s final match is not Victor Wanyama soaring above the Manchester United, or the relief when it was Harry Kane – “one of our own” – who fittingly, poked in the last ever Spurs goal at the ground. It came long after the final whistle, when a man in his 70s in the seat next to me spontaneously burst into tears.
It was a day most Spurs supporters never wanted to come, but when it did it was as much about the future as 118 years of history.
“Every time I think of that day, I feel nothing but happiness,” former Tottenham midfielder Micky Hazard tells i. “Sadness too because we’d left my place of worship, the place I’d played out my career, but the day was done with such class, such pride and dignity. I get goosebumps and lumps in my throat every time I think about it and it will live forever in my memory.
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“The older generation will always revere White Hart Lane, but it’s important to remember with time, changes get made. White Hart Lane had seen great glories, but it was time to move on to take us to a new level. And never forget that while we worshipped White Hart Lane, the youngsters of today in 60, 70 years will equally worship the new stadium because that will have created its own memories, its own glories.”
On Thursday night, as Antonio Conte’s Spurs delivered one of the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium’s great nights with a north London derby mauling of Arsenal, he was proven right.
The atmosphere passed the 100-decibel mark, according to the warnings popping up on Apple watches dotted around the ground.
The songs were familiar too. On the other hand, the Lane’s finale saw so many generations of supporters converging on the ground one last time that the chants became beautifully random, from “we’ve got Dele Alli” to “we’ll take more care of you [Steve] Archibald”.
After the game, those players of old and new came together near the centre circle to share stories and to be presented to the fans from the tunnel to say goodbye. “I was very honoured and humbled to be part of the ceremony,” Dimitar Berbatov, who spent two years in Spurs colours between 2006-2008, tells i.
“Everything was special when I was playing there, goals, assists – we had some crazy games. And we did entertain.”
Berbatov believes it was a day to “celebrate the end of something special, and the beginning of something new, the new stadium which is unbelievable”.
“For myself, that was the first stadium I was able to showcase what I could do in England,” he says. “So it holds a special place in my heart.”
Most who were there on the day had some unique connection to the club and in one of the many strange contradictions about Spurs in recent years, it was Jose Mourinho – within two-and-a-half years, he would be appointed their manager – who sat in the United dugout.
Looking back then, on the five-year anniversary of the day the bulldozers moved in, there is a strange sense of how far Spurs have come in that time. There are questions remaining over whether they truly seized that moment in time, and whether they might have gone further still.
In the half a decade that has passed since, they have nonetheless reached a Champions League final, an FA Cup semi-final and League Cup final (though losing all three) and briefly established a footing at Europe’s top table, to which they are well placed to return under Conte.
That is one of the great comforts in reminiscing about the Lane. The great Mauricio Pochettino sides who graced it in its final years didn’t win a trophy, yet they delivered some of the club’s most cherished memories. That is why for Hazard, who won both the Uefa Cup (with the final played at the Lane in 1984) and the FA Cup (in 1982), the ground’s closing ceremony was still “the greatest football moment in my life”.
Despite the rain, he says, “it was impossible to feel even a chill that day, because it was the warmest, most caring, giving day that I’d ever experienced other than the birth of my children and my grandchildren”.
It marked both “the closing of an incredible past” and “the opening of an incredible future”.
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