The atmosphere is electric, the pitch an impossibly brilliant shade of green and Spurs, in all-white of course, are playing with that famous swashbuckling style, zipping the ball off the greasy surface with devastating precision and purpose.
Their quick-passing game rips open the usually immaculately drilled defence of their illustrious European opponents and, as the ball hits the back of the net, White Hart Lane erupts in a thunderous, jubilant roar which echoes with magical memories from 50 years of fantastic, floodlit European evenings – the glory glory nights!
European football has a special resonance at Tottenham Hotspur. The spirit of adventure, the romance of taking on the very best, matching their style and technique and, when it all goes to plan, blowing them away with skill, pace and passion, has always fitted in exactly with what Spurs are all about.
To dare is to do! In 1963 Spurs became the first British team ever to win a European trophy when they beat Atletico Madrid to lift the European Cup Winners’ Cup, and in total the club has won three trophies across more than 50 seasons of European campaigns. The Glory Glory Nights tells the story of every one of them – from the first competitive foray onto foreign fields when Bill Nick took the great Double side into the unknown of the European Cup to Bale, Modric, and van der Vaart marauding their way to the quarter-finals of the Champions League in the 2010/2011 season.
The complete and official story of Tottenham Hotspur in Europe, this beautifully put-together book is packed with spectacular photography, much of it previously unseen, match reports and statistics from every European game the club has ever played, plus first-hand memories and recollections from club legends like Danny Blanchflower, Jimmy Greaves, Steve Perryman, Martin Chivers, Ossie Ardiles and Gareth Bale.
On top of that there are new and highly illuminating conversations with some of the greats of the key decades in Spurs’ European history – Cliff Jones and Terry Dyson on the Sixties, Martin Chivers and Phil Beal on the Seventies, Micky Hazard and Paul Miller on the Eighties and Gareth Bale and Michael Dawson on the 2010 Champions League campaign. The Glory Glory Nights is a spectacular and fitting tribute to Spurs’ glorious European history – specially published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the club’s 1963 European Cup Winners’ Cup triumph.
Adam Powley is the author of over 20 books, several of them on Spurs. He co-authored The Boys from White Hart Lane,The Spurs Miscellany and We Are Tottenham with Martin Cloake. He is the author of When Football Was Football: Tottenham Hotspur and the award-nominated When Boxing Was Boxing.
He has written for a number of publications including The Times, Sunday Mirror, The Guardian, Four Four Two and When Saturday Comes.
