If many a football club is accused of living in the past, Tottenham may have taken that a stage further by going for the distant past. Not content with being named after Harry Hotspur, the 15th-century warlord, they will be ruled by a Tudor. Admittedly, the choice of Igor Tudor as interim manager probably stems less from any suggestion he is related to Henry or Elizabeth and more from the possibility he can occupy the throne until the king over the water, Mauricio Pochettino, returns in the summer.
But the choice of Tudor also reflects a 21st-century trend. Tottenham managers tend to be the opposite of their predecessor. And if Thomas Frank reeked too much of Brentford by the end, a coach who had come from perhaps the smallest club in the Premier League, who many felt struggled to talk like a Tottenham manager, enter a man whose last job was at Italy’s national obsession, Juventus, who experienced the pressure of the biggest crowds in France, at Marseille, and who, two years ago, was parachuted into Lazio, scarcely a low-pressure environment.
