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One Step from Glory: Tottenham's 2018/19 Champions League
The tale of Tottenham Hotspur's extraordinary run to the 2019 Champions League Final in Madrid. Authors Alex Fynn and Martin Cloake examine how Spurs confounded all predictions to enjoy their most successful ever CL campaign—and what it means for the future. They explain why a certain style of football and competing in Europe are central to the club's identity, and look at how manager Mauricio Pochettino drew on these traditions to create a very modern success story. Using match reports from national newspapers to provide the narrative thread, Fynn and Cloake draw on their backgrounds in football business and politics to explain why this campaign so fired the imagination—in a season with no signings, played mostly without a home stadium. With a rich cast of characters, insight from leading football figures and locations ranging from Eindhoven to Madrid via Barcelona and Dortmund—and one emotional night in Amsterdam—One Step from Glory tells the story of a football odyssey.
224 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 22, 2019
Full review available on Cartilage Free Captain.
Tottenham Hotspur has had many “glory, glory nights” in European competition over the decades, but the 2018-19 season will be one that will live in the memories of Spurs fans for time immemorial. Tottenham’s improbable run from near elimination in the group stages all the way to the Champions League final in Madrid captured the imagination of the footballing world like few other campaigns have: it was a magical series of matches that included a draw against Barcelona at the Nou Camp, a VAR-assisted aggregate win over a Manchester City side that would go on to win the treble, and last but not certainly least Lucas Moura’s “Miracle of Amsterdam” goal against Ajax that sent them to Madrid.
While the final itself was by almost every metric a let-down (except to Liverpool supporters), the journey was the stuff that dreams are made of. This incredible Champions League campaign has now been chronicled in text by Martin Cloake and Alex Fynn in their new book One Step from Glory: The Story of Tottenham Hotspur’s Champions League Campaign 2018/19, released on Wednesday, September 17.
Many Tottenham fans are familiar with Cloake, a noted author of several books on Spurs’ history and co-chair of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporter’s Trust — his last book, A People’s History of Tottenham Hotspur, was reviewed on Cartilage Free Captain in 2016. Fynn is a former advertising executive who has advised the Football Association on marketing issues for football clubs, and has written on both Spurs and Arsenal, including his book Arsénal: the Making of a Modern Superclub (Vision Sports Pub., 2016). Together, they have compiled a match-by-match accounting of Spurs’ Champions League campaign, starting with the opening match against Internazionale in Milan and culminating with the final at the Wanda Metropolitano.
The opening chapters, which detail Tottenham's history in European competition, are important context, setting the stage for the arrival of Argentine manager Mauricio Pochettino from Southampton in 2014, and his transformation of the team into regular competitors in Europe. Pochettino gets his own chapter, detailing how he went about trying to change the culture at the club, his focus on developing young talent from within Tottenham’s academy, and catching lightning in a bottle in the emergence of Harry Kane, Dele Alli, and the youthful core of Spurs’ first team.
All that is prelude to the start of the 2018-19 Champions League season, which is naturally and chronologically detailed, with each match having its own chapter. The chapters, from the group stage all the way to the final, use post-match reports from English newspapers The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, and The Independent as framing devices. These reports serve as blow-by-blow reports on what happened during the game, but also provide context from the football journalists who were in attendance to report on what was happening. The book ends with two chapters which put the entire run into a broader context.
The irony of a book about the 2018-19 Champions League run is that it almost feels TOO recent. With the final taking place just three and a half months prior to the release of the book, the memories of that magical run are still fresh in the minds of the supporters. While there’s value to getting everything down while the memories are still fresh, One Step from Glory sometimes feels like you’re reading the newspaper.
That said, Cloake and Fynn wisely augment the reports at the beginning and end of each chapter with additional information. These often take the form of insights into fan opinion preceding each match, or anecdotes and stories taken from supporters who attended the matches. These are insightful and interesting additions to the nuts-and-bolts of the match action. It was interesting to get close accounts of fan mistreatment at the hands of Nou Camp security in Barcelona, for example, which wasn’t necessarily reported in the media, or anecdotes of interactions with visiting, rambunctious Dutch fans while Ajax was in town.
As much as the present sometimes intrudes as one reads the book in September of 2019, One Step from Glory is a book that is written for the future. Time passes, memory fades. As the years go by, some of the details currently seared into the brains of Tottenham supporters, whether they were in the stadia or watching along at home or in the pub, will begin to slip away. That is the value of a book such as this. One suspects that, while already a very good read, as a Spurs supporter this book will be even more enjoyable to re-read in ensuing years and decades.
For fans who will come to One Step from Glory years down the road it is a fine summary of one of the most exciting seasons in Tottenham’s history. It should be among the recommended texts for future Spurs fans who want a better understanding of the club’s history during the Pochettino era.
But for fans that were there, it is an indelible vessel for nostalgia. This book is a ship in a bottle, a fly trapped in amber, a collection of memories. It’s a means of reliving, even for a moment, that feeling you had when the third Lucas Moura goal went in the back of the net in Amsterdam, or the resigned frustration that fell like a wave after just 26 seconds in Madrid.
This is a book that Spurs fans will want to own for themselves, to keep on the coffee table for when their football agnostic friends or United-loving grandchildren stop by, or on the bookshelf close to eye level. It’s a paperback that for true Spurs fans will eventually end up dog-eared and frayed from being picked up and leafed through in order to relive those special “glory, glory nights” of 2018-19. It’s a trip back in time, and there’s value in that kind of nostalgic recollection. I have no doubt that it will be a book that will be appreciated even more with the passage of years.
Tottenham Hotspur has had many “glory, glory nights” in European competition over the decades, but the 2018-19 season will be one that will live in the memories of Spurs fans for time immemorial. Tottenham’s improbable run from near elimination in the group stages all the way to the Champions League final in Madrid captured the imagination of the footballing world like few other campaigns have: it was a magical series of matches that included a draw against Barcelona at the Nou Camp, a VAR-assisted aggregate win over a Manchester City side that would go on to win the treble, and last but not certainly least Lucas Moura’s “Miracle of Amsterdam” goal against Ajax that sent them to Madrid.
While the final itself was by almost every metric a let-down (except to Liverpool supporters), the journey was the stuff that dreams are made of. This incredible Champions League campaign has now been chronicled in text by Martin Cloake and Alex Fynn in their new book One Step from Glory: The Story of Tottenham Hotspur’s Champions League Campaign 2018/19, released on Wednesday, September 17.
Many Tottenham fans are familiar with Cloake, a noted author of several books on Spurs’ history and co-chair of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporter’s Trust — his last book, A People’s History of Tottenham Hotspur, was reviewed on Cartilage Free Captain in 2016. Fynn is a former advertising executive who has advised the Football Association on marketing issues for football clubs, and has written on both Spurs and Arsenal, including his book Arsénal: the Making of a Modern Superclub (Vision Sports Pub., 2016). Together, they have compiled a match-by-match accounting of Spurs’ Champions League campaign, starting with the opening match against Internazionale in Milan and culminating with the final at the Wanda Metropolitano.
The opening chapters, which detail Tottenham's history in European competition, are important context, setting the stage for the arrival of Argentine manager Mauricio Pochettino from Southampton in 2014, and his transformation of the team into regular competitors in Europe. Pochettino gets his own chapter, detailing how he went about trying to change the culture at the club, his focus on developing young talent from within Tottenham’s academy, and catching lightning in a bottle in the emergence of Harry Kane, Dele Alli, and the youthful core of Spurs’ first team.
All that is prelude to the start of the 2018-19 Champions League season, which is naturally and chronologically detailed, with each match having its own chapter. The chapters, from the group stage all the way to the final, use post-match reports from English newspapers The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, and The Independent as framing devices. These reports serve as blow-by-blow reports on what happened during the game, but also provide context from the football journalists who were in attendance to report on what was happening. The book ends with two chapters which put the entire run into a broader context.
The irony of a book about the 2018-19 Champions League run is that it almost feels TOO recent. With the final taking place just three and a half months prior to the release of the book, the memories of that magical run are still fresh in the minds of the supporters. While there’s value to getting everything down while the memories are still fresh, One Step from Glory sometimes feels like you’re reading the newspaper.
That said, Cloake and Fynn wisely augment the reports at the beginning and end of each chapter with additional information. These often take the form of insights into fan opinion preceding each match, or anecdotes and stories taken from supporters who attended the matches. These are insightful and interesting additions to the nuts-and-bolts of the match action. It was interesting to get close accounts of fan mistreatment at the hands of Nou Camp security in Barcelona, for example, which wasn’t necessarily reported in the media, or anecdotes of interactions with visiting, rambunctious Dutch fans while Ajax was in town.
As much as the present sometimes intrudes as one reads the book in September of 2019, One Step from Glory is a book that is written for the future. Time passes, memory fades. As the years go by, some of the details currently seared into the brains of Tottenham supporters, whether they were in the stadia or watching along at home or in the pub, will begin to slip away. That is the value of a book such as this. One suspects that, while already a very good read, as a Spurs supporter this book will be even more enjoyable to re-read in ensuing years and decades.
For fans who will come to One Step from Glory years down the road it is a fine summary of one of the most exciting seasons in Tottenham’s history. It should be among the recommended texts for future Spurs fans who want a better understanding of the club’s history during the Pochettino era.
But for fans that were there, it is an indelible vessel for nostalgia. This book is a ship in a bottle, a fly trapped in amber, a collection of memories. It’s a means of reliving, even for a moment, that feeling you had when the third Lucas Moura goal went in the back of the net in Amsterdam, or the resigned frustration that fell like a wave after just 26 seconds in Madrid.
This is a book that Spurs fans will want to own for themselves, to keep on the coffee table for when their football agnostic friends or United-loving grandchildren stop by, or on the bookshelf close to eye level. It’s a paperback that for true Spurs fans will eventually end up dog-eared and frayed from being picked up and leafed through in order to relive those special “glory, glory nights” of 2018-19. It’s a trip back in time, and there’s value in that kind of nostalgic recollection. I have no doubt that it will be a book that will be appreciated even more with the passage of years.
October 12, 2023
Much like Politics, when writing about current football almost as soon as the ink has dried on the page it feels out of date. This book written only 4 years ago feels it could have been written decades ago, with it's focus on Pochettino 'his unique bond to the club and fans and how he understands the history of the club'... yeah, that didn't age well did it? Just a cursory look at the cover and only Son remains of that crop of players and staff, the club has moved on and so much has happened in between. But is it, in itself a decent insight into that magical run to the Champions League final? Honestly, no. A more cynical man than me may even venture this was a rushed out cash-in. It has a brief opening charting the history of Spurs in Europe. The meat of the book is then mostly newspaper articles detailing the matches of the campaign bookmarked by one or two paragraphs that offer little more. The concluding chapters ramble on a bit about where next for Spurs but are the level of a fanzine or blog.
In short, a very easy and quick read, but not one I'd recommend.
2.5 Stars.
In short, a very easy and quick read, but not one I'd recommend.
2.5 Stars.
June 13, 2024
It was nice to relive such a great run as a tottenham fan but equally can't help but feel that certain aspects have aged poorly like poch's special relationship with the spurs fans...
Probably a 3.5 but I'll round up
Probably a 3.5 but I'll round up
January 24, 2023
Easy read
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews