Happy birthday to Spurs legend and personal boyhood hero, Glenn Hoddle.
Glenn was born on 27 October 1957 in Hayes, Middlesex. Soon after, the family moved to Harlow, Essex. According to Glenn, he became a Spurs fan after attending a Spurs reserve match around 1968. He first came to the attention of Spurs when another Tottenham legend Martin Chivers and Ray Evans went to present prizes at a local school cup final and noticed the potential of the 11-year-old schoolboy, and on Chivers’ recommendation he was invited to train with the club at Tottenham’s practice ground in Cheshunt.
Hoddle joined the club as a junior when he was 12, and signed for the club as an apprentice on 17 April 1974. He successfully overcame knee problems in his early teens and collected eight England Youth caps, first of these on 18 March 1975 against Spain. He made his Spurs first-team debut as a 17-year-old substitute for Cyril Knowles against Norwich City on 30 August 1975, a game that ended 2–2. Hoddle was forced to wait until 21 February 1976 to start a First Division match and immediately announced his arrival with the winning goal, typically and a look at things to come, it was a spectacular strike past Stoke City and England goalkeeper Peter Shilton
Spurs Debut, announcing his arrival with spectacular strike
He flourished under the management of Keith Burkinshaw and despite the club’s relegation to the Second Division in 1976–77 after 27 seasons of First Division football, a Hoddle-inspired Spurs side won promotion to the top flight at the first attempt. As Tottenham’s transitional phase continued, Hoddle’s international career began on 15 December 1976 in an Under-21 friendly fixture against Wales. He would collect another eleven caps at that level, and play twice for the England ‘B’ team prior to announcing himself on the full international scene, again scoring a wonderful debut goal, on his full international debut against Bulgaria on 22 November 1979.
Full England Debut, again announcing his arrival with spectacular strike
The 1979–80 campaign heralded Glenn’s emergence as a real top-class player; at 22 years of age, he scored 19 goals in 41 league appearances and was awarded the PFA Young Player of the Year award at the end of the season. The following year 1981, he starred as we won the FA Cup for the sixth time, defeating Manchester City in a replay and then in 1982 he helped us retain the FA Cup, scoring in both the Final and Final replay.
Glenn’s involvement in the following three seasons was limited by a number of niggling injury problems (he started only 76 of a possible 126 league matches) but nevertheless, Glenn proved to be the architect behind the team’s 1984 UEFA Cup triumph despite missing the Final due to fitness concerns.
Glenn was to leave The Lane at the end of the 1987 season and just as he’d introduced himself with a stunning strike on his debut all those years earlier, he would also sign off his final league appearance at The Lane with a superb solo effort, dribbling the ball from halfway inside his own half, past the defence and round the Oxford goalkeeper. If this had been written in a script before hand, many would have said it was too far fetch!
Between 1975 and 1987, Glenn scored 110 goals in 490 first-team matches in all competitions, only four players (Steve Perryman, Pat Jennings, Gary Mabbutt and Cyril Knowles) have made more appearances in a Spurs shirt