The new Spurs stadium first comes into sight as you walk northwards along Tottenham High Road, past the outreach district HQ of the Christ Apostolic Church. From a mile away it is a silver cliff face above the distant rooftops. Then it disappears as the road bends a little and then comes back into view.
Several hundred steps later and it sits in a great glass and metal curve above you, dwarfing the old parade opposite. It is as though a spaceship from a benign civilization has put down beside the Abrepo Junction (African-Caribbean groceries), the Koyum Turkish restaurant and the White Hart Lane Jerk Centre. You can imagine the large, glazed curve of the West Stand door folding down and a 15ft tall other-worldly creature walking down the ramp to bring back a kebab sample for his ever-curious species to sample.
From the outside the new stadium, open yesterday for its first test event, is far bigger — far more sudden — than it appears in photographs. Visually it bears no relation at all to the squat, boxy, noisy, loved and obsolete old White Hart Lane. The entire experience of walking to it, entering it, exploring it, is like being upgraded from economy on a Monarch Air charter flight to business class on Cathay Pacific. You almost think: “Are they really letting me in here?”
If Spurs fans are honest, saying that they preferred the atmosphere of their old stadium was akin to citing the glorious achievements of Robbie Keane or David Ginola — consolations in a world of sporting underachievement. Every time I passed the new Emirates Stadium, perched above the main railway line running northeast out of London, it was wormwood. I might have snarked about how our bitter rivals Arsenal had not won much since building it, but I had to concede that, unlike our own place, it did at least belong to the 21st century.
The Emirates was the concrete symbol of the long-term eclipse of our team by theirs. You can say that your old, moth-eaten cardigan is comfortable but, when your rival walks in wearing a tuxedo, it is hard to feel smart.
The new Spurs stadium is beautiful from the outside. From the inside it is extraordinary. I sat for a while in the West Stand and the single-tier expanse of the South Stand, and the place is like an oval Grand Canyon with seats. Dark-blue, elegant, butt-shaped seats.
Its rake is steep, rising back from pitchside. Anything that creates distance between the spectator and the players, such as the walkways and the tunnels, has been shrunk. Even from the highest point there is none of that “pass my opera glasses, Fiona” feeling you get at Old Trafford, the Leazes End at Newcastle or the upper reaches of Wembley. The result is that just sitting there is exciting — somehow sheer and unthreatening, reminiscent of one of the more interesting Disney rides.
The place has famously been built for racket. Noise creators from the world of big concerts were brought into help optimise the aural atmosphere. In the South Stand 17,500 spectators (out of the 62,062 capacity) will sit and a few thousand will, if Premier League rules are changed, “safe stand”, protected by the rails that have been installed. Talking of safety, this was the first time I had ever seen paramedics on patrol through the stands carrying portable defibrillators.
The South Stand is the one that will hold and form the “white wall” of noise, and some of the old Laners were there practising their chants. When the Spurs under-18s took the lead against the youngsters from Southampton after 11 minutes the scorer, J’Neil Bennett, got the most rousing accolade of his career.
He took it in his stride. His goal had also been seen on the four gigantic screens in the corners of the ground. Above me the huge golden cockerel nodded approval at the first goal scored in the new stadium. I have a feeling that every game played here in the Premier or Champions League is going to feel like a cup final.
Football supporting is a sentimental business and the old centre spot of the defunct White Hart Lane is picked out in the internal concourse of the South Stand. I couldn’t find it because too many people were standing on it. There is also a wall of blown-up old programme covers and another of Spurs scarves from various far-flung supporters’ associations. We’re a family, we are.
Myself, I don’t go to football to eat and drink. That feels too American and in any case I once bought a cheese bagel at the old White Hart Lane and found on biting into it that it was empty. That seemed to sum up the footballing culinary experience to me — that and discovering that the slush underfoot when walking to my seat was really the remains of someone’s meat pie. I have also always worried that beer consumption by fellow fans would also end up being, one way or another, my problem.
But under the South Stand is a cornucopia of foods, almost reflecting the shops opposite. You can get decent pizza, chicken tikka, there are vegan burgers featuring beetroot and for those who prefer to die early, variations on the health-destroying traditional pie are still available.
There is a huge bar running the length of the stand, and one where they operate those weird new systems where your (plastic) beer cup fills from underneath — not so much pulling a pint as sucking it. The place has its own brewery. So if (God forbid) Arsenal are ahead at half-time, sorrow-drowning is easily achieved. Actually the new place is too beautiful to eat in. Looking at the pristine white concrete beneath the dark-blue seat, I finished my cheese and onion crisps and, for the first time, folded the packet and put it in my pocket.
Finally, the toilets. Gone are the old metal troughs in which you could see whether the man upstream from you was dehydrated. But why is it that even when the urinals are brand new, surrounded by gleaming tiles and never previously used, one in the row is always, always blocked?
Is this a good new stadium, then? No, not good. My instinct — truly — is that it is a great stadium. Sorry, Arsenal fans, but it just is.
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Pochettino: Our dream came true — we must cry
Mauricio Pochettino said that he felt like crying as he watched the first match to be played at Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium. The 62,062-seat arena, which was due to open last summer, held its first official test event before a proposed opening on April 3. The club’s under-18 side took on Southampton, winning 3-1.
“It is unbelievable, it is so difficult to explain in only a few words,” the Tottenham manager, 47, said. “We all feel the same, so excited. I got the same feeling when we left White Hart Lane on the last day, we were crying and now in the first day in the new stadium we feel the same emotion. We need to cry because our dream became true.”
J’Neil Bennett became the first scorer at the stadium, setting his side on the way to victory in front of nearly 30,000 fans with a curling effort from the left. Harvey White and Dilan Markanday also scored for Spurs while Kornelius Hansen became the first opposition player to do so.
This was the first of two test events required to receive the relevant safety certificates from Haringey council. Next Saturday, a Legends team take on Inter Milan. The first competitive game is due to be a Premier League match against Crystal Palace four days later.
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STADIUM BY NUMBERS
62,062 — Overall capacity
17,500 — Seats in the single-tier South Stand, which is the biggest single-tier stand in the UK, inspired by Borussia Dortmund’s 25,000-capacity Yellow Wall
10,000 — Pints that can be poured per minute thanks to “bottoms-up” technology. There is also a microbrewery in the southeast corner
325 — Size in square metres of two big screens in the South Stand, the largest in western Europe
65 — Length in metres of the Goal Line Bar, the longest bar in Europe
4.5-7.9 — Distance in metres from seats to the pitch. Some front-row seats at West Ham United’s London Stadium are 20 metres from the pitch
1 — First stadium in the world that does not accept cash
