LONDON - A London morning. Walk around Tottenham and London is both so near and yet so far. The city's heartbeat is a good half an hour's bus or tube ride away - the nearest stop is Seven Sisters on the Victoria Line - and is altogether very different. 'Glamourous' as they say in these parts. Tottenham is almost a town within Greater London, an area keen to affirm its own identity, as well as its needs. During the London Riots of summer 2011, the contrast and inequality between here and the richer areas of the capital could not have been more striking. Daniel Levy, the Spurs chairman, called for calm, offering the club's support to help the community.
Off licences, pubs, it's almost like a town on the city's outskirts when compared to Chelsea, happy residents of Fulham Road or Arsenal, who dominated their surrounding area when they still played at Highbury. And they're quick round here. Arsenal only took a year to move to the Emirates.
Downmarket areas in London have quickly been transformed over the last 20 years, with designer homes and trendy lofts popping up all over the place. London has a soul and those who 'get' her, learn to love her. Here in London you walk alongside people who have no links at all to your past, or your culture, not that you notice either way. Tottenham was once a Jewish quarter. Today, people here come from every race and ethnicity. It may not be particularly beautiful but you're reminded that this is London and how wounded you felt when the city was attacked on buses and the underground.
Because London is the centre of a world where you can forget where you came from and reinvent yourself. You grow to love the smell of curry and fried bacon. Tottenham too is London. White Hart Lane, on 748 High Road, is a corner of this city, a stadium built in 1898, with a great atmosphere and terrific support. Tucked in between rows of houses, the club bears the intrepid motto "Audere est facere" (To dare is to do) and a crowded pub just around the corner. Inter will need to be at their best to get past Tottenham and their newest idol, Gareth Bale.
We're expecting a full house. (SW)
