The Godfather of Greenery

Chapter 352 Target: Tottenham!
Britain is indeed a very humorous country, at least the media here is like this.

When they want to dig and humiliate a person, a football club, they tend to be endlessly creative, exemplified by their cynicism of the Husky.

However, recently, the British media have begun to mock a football club.

Last night I met a beautiful wild girl, she said to me: "You humiliate me, humiliate me as much as you want."

So, I bought a Tottenham jersey for her today!
A little boy went to social assistance and told the people there that he was homeless.

"Don't you have parents?" the social worker asked him.

"No, they hit me," said the little boy.

"What about your grandparents?" the social worker asked again.

"No, they fight harder!"

The social worker was helpless, "Okay, tell me, where do you want to live?"

"Tottenham!" The little boy seemed to be prepared and answered confidently, "No one there can beat anyone!"

City council rejected Tottenham Hotspur's plan to build a new stadium in Northumberland Park. The performance is a bit too much!"

BBC TV special reports, “Tesco is pulling UK staple OXO cans from shelves, word has it, after complaints from consumers say he is now a laughing stock because of the Tottenham Hotspur color casing .”

"After getting the news, the OXO can company urgently held a special meeting and decided to modify the packaging of the can shell. From now on, the color of the shell of the OXO can will become the color of Arsenal!"

I believe that after reading the above jokes, everyone can realize that they are talking about the North London team Tottenham Hotspur.

This team was once a well-known and powerful faction in England's top league, and even had the opportunity to be linked with giants. It was once regarded as the representative banner of England's artistic football, especially in the late 80s and early 90s. Lane Stadium is just like its name, playing romantic and poetic football, and once occupied the third place in the league.

At that time, people were full of hope for his return to the top.

Many people say that it is a miracle that Kaiserslautern won the championship with a newly promoted horse. If it is a miracle to win the top league championship with a newly promoted horse, then this miracle was created by Tottenham Hotspur 50 years ago.

In the 49/50 season, Tottenham Hotspur returned to League One as the champion of League Two. In the 50/51 season, they overwhelmed the Red Devils Manchester United at the time and won the miracle of being promoted to win the championship. Not only that, the main team at the time Coach Rowe also invented a set of passing and running tactics, which have now spread all over the world, and almost all teams' tactics are based on this.

But after experiencing the peak, Tottenham Hotspur quickly sank.

For a long time, Tottenham's impression in English football is that they dare to be the first to eat crabs, such as going public.

The listing of Tottenham Hotspur can be traced back to the 80s a long time ago. At that time, the Football Association had rigid regulations on the team. Managers could only get 5% of the club's profits as personal bonuses and were not allowed to receive wages. After the club closed down , the property shall not be sold, but shall be given to other local football clubs.

But at that time Erwin Schole, a real estate agent from Monte Carlo in Las Vegas, took a fancy to Tottenham. He successfully became the new owner of Tottenham in 1982 by privately acquiring the club’s internal bonds. With a huge debt of more than 100 million pounds, he boldly chose to transform the club into a joint-stock company, and successfully applied for listing in 1983.

Eight years after Tottenham went public, that is, in 8, Manchester United followed suit.

At that time, there was a saying in English football. Schole said to the club's head coach Birkinshaw, "From now on, you will be an ordinary employee of Tottenham Co., Ltd." The night before the final, he announced his resignation and left Tottenham Hotspur.

Scholer made a lot of grievances at Tottenham. Among them, what made the fans most angry was that he demolished the famous West Stand. Coupled with the team's poor performance in the following years, the fans' dissatisfaction with him was getting higher and higher. .

At this time, Tottenham ushered in an even worse combination. The new chairman was Alan Schug, a German businessman dealing in electronic products, and Alan Schug’s partner was Venables, a well-known British coach at the time. , The two partnered to buy Tottenham from Erwin Scholer, but Sugar paid for money, Venables took the white wolf with empty hands, and invested in technology.

If anyone familiar with Venables is very clear, his deeds in English football are full of a series of unknown scandals and farces, and his coaching career has always been accompanied by black gold and controversy.

Alan Sugar, who was born on the street, and Venables, who thought of Alan Sugar as a fat sheep and Tottenham as a tool for making money, the combination of the two laid the tragedy from the beginning, and finally comforted Greg bought Venables' stake and told him to fuck off, but Sugar himself was in a bind.

That is to say, in this case, in the late 90s, the ENIC consortium appeared in front of Alan Sugar, bought a part of Tottenham’s shares in his hands, and successfully increased his shareholding in Tottenham to 29 %.

This is a very interesting number, because the British regulations require that all trading stocks on the market must be forcibly acquired when it reaches 30%, and this consortium also owns Glasgow Rangers in Scotland, Vicenza in Italy, Basel in Switzerland, Shares in many football clubs such as AEK Athens in Greece, Slavia Prague in the Czech Republic, and even because AEK Athens and Basel entered the UEFA Champions League group stage at the same time, Glasgow Rangers and Slavia Prague entered the League Cup at the same time, and then was UEFA is watching.

As soon as the European Court of Justice ruling came out, although the teams that ENIC held shares continued to participate in the competition, it caused ENIC’s stock price to plummet by 40%, making the company’s desire to continue expanding its stake in Tottenham had to temporarily pause.

It was not until the last few years that ENIC gradually expanded its shareholding in Tottenham, and currently holds 54% of Tottenham's shares.

But don’t expect Joe Lewis and Danny Levy to really want to run Tottenham Hotspur. The former started as a scalper and has always regarded football as a business. The purpose of holding so many clubs It's just to make money, and Danny Levy is a fan of Tottenham, but he is also a stockbroker, and he also came to Tottenham for business purposes.

So, for them, Tottenham Hotspur is not for sale, the key is to see how you bid.

In fact, even if Tottenham performed well this season, after Levi came to power, he changed the head coach every year. Not only the fans were dissatisfied, but even the shareholders were also very dissatisfied with this, but they were the number one shareholder. There is no way to get them.

Although at the football level, ENIC and Levi's performance is not satisfactory, but in terms of club management, the financial situation of this team is still quite good, because they are among all the teams in the Premier League, almost can be said to be very good. Rare club with no debt, financial health.

This is undoubtedly in line with Ye Qiu's taste, because he is not willing to spend so much money to pay off the debt after buying a football club with a lot of money. Isn't this a winner?

Of course, it doesn't mean that after the acquisition of Tottenham Hotspur, Ye Qiu can rest easy.

Tottenham's White Hart Lane Stadium is old, and it is far behind the pace of the times in terms of capacity, facilities, and even operation. On the agenda, this requires a lot of investment.

Of course, don't look at the current Tottenham lineup is not bad, but in fact, if Tottenham want to win the Champions League, at least they need to strengthen the team's strength, which requires transfer funds.

So, the 4 million euros Ye Qiu had on hand seemed like a lot, but in reality it was very nervous to apportion them.

Because of this, after returning to London from the United States, Ye Qiu kept a low profile on purpose. First, he secretly contacted ENIC and used Eliza and her contacts to contact Joe Lewis and Danny Levi. , to discuss the possibility of acquisition.

After contacting and investigating for more than a month, Ye Qiu obtained the real information and clues of Tottenham Hotspur, and at the same time, gradually conducted in-depth negotiations with ENIC, and finally got the consent of the other party to sit down and talk. After that, Ye Qiu led Eliza all the way to Tottenham District.

The traffic around the White Hart Lane Stadium is not very convenient, but the residential areas in the surrounding areas are densely populated and the population is very dense, and the people living in the surrounding areas are basically middle class.

This has to say some allusions from Tottenham fans.

As we all know, Tottenham Hotspur has always had the idea of ​​a Jewish team, and the past few chairman and owners, including the current Joe Lewis and Danny Levy, are Jewish, so many people define Tottenham For the Jewish team, there are even many Tottenham fans who will play Jewish slogans in the stadium.

But this argument is not very convincing.

According to the official statement of the British government, there are 25 Jews in the UK, and only about 3% of them are Tottenham fans. That is to say, even if all these fans come, there are only a few thousand people.

In fact, the area where Tottenham Hotspur used to be located was regarded as a rich area in London. Many wealthy Jews lived in this area. They supported the development of the team, so many Jews entered the management of Tottenham Hotspur. But then, with the changes in the London area, they have left the Tottenham area.

That's why so many people say that the real Tottenham fans should be in Kensington and Chelsea, that's where the rich live now, and Tottenham is now a middle-class area.

Of course, there are still some wealthy areas, but not many.

As for the fact that Tottenham’s boss is a Jew, this is indeed true, but if someone does a serious statistics, it is not difficult to find that, in fact, there are many Jews in the Premier League football, and Abramovich is also a Jew. , and some other club shareholders, many of whom are Jewish.

This is a very typical phenomenon, because Jews tend to be good at business and relatively rich, so even if you are in London, it is not uncommon to meet Jews in high society all over Europe.

In the past few years, many Tottenham fans have even shouted [YIDARMY] in the stands, which used to mean the Jewish army, but later, with the poor management of the Jewish boss, it has gradually changed to anti-Semitic meaning, because The term YID is widely regarded as a pejorative term for Jews.

The anti-Semitism here is not racism, but resistance to the Jewish boss, which is the same as other fans shouting XX to get out. This explanation has also been accepted by the FA.

Ye Qiu drove north from downtown London, and all he saw along the way were old British-style houses facing the street. On both sides of the road were their parking lots, and there was a road in the middle for two cars. The road where the cars meet.

This is a typical middle-class residential area in the UK, and the surrounding area is also the most densely populated middle-class area in London. From the north of downtown London to the area of ​​Tottenham, there are almost densely populated middle-class residential areas. You can see it from the cars on both sides of the road.

Arsenal's new stadium is located in the middle of White Hart Lane and downtown London. Their attendance rate is high. A very important reason is that the middle class living here is dense and can afford Arsenal's ticket prices. , If you are in the poorer east and south, sorry, you can't even afford the tickets, so why watch the game?

There are many reasons why Ye Qiu chose Tottenham Hotspur. First of all, the team he wanted had to be in a big city. London would be the best. If not, it would have to be Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham Such a big city, especially Birmingham's two teams, Birmingham and Aston Villa, were once in his consideration.

As for the other teams in London, they have either already been bought by someone, or they are heavily in debt, or they have simply offered sky-high prices without sincerity. All these make Ye Qiu discouraged, and Eliza also feels that staying in London can make a big difference. Especially considering the London Olympics in 2012, this is undoubtedly a good opportunity for all London teams.

And after several symbolic contacts, ENIC actually does not reject the sale of the club's shares, because for them, running Tottenham Hotspur is really a headache for them, even if it is Levi, who is in charge of the Heat. Up to now, one head coach has been fired a year, and the team's performance has hardly made much progress. This season has performed well, but the goal is to qualify for the UEFA Cup.

The middle and lower reaches of the team are like this, with fluctuating results, just like Everton, which won the fourth place last season and entered the European Champions Cup, but this team has fought on two fronts this season, and the result is that the results in the Premier League But it plummeted, and fell directly to the 14th place in the league. Whether it can return to the forefront is still hard to say.

It can be seen that European competitions are not necessarily a good thing for small and medium-sized teams, because this will have very strict requirements on your team lineup. You must have a two-line combat lineup to be able to cope with so many games. With a huge lineup, there will be more expenditures, greater salary pressure, and club finances will easily go wrong.

Even for a healthy team like Tottenham Hotspur, the financial problems are still very obvious and the pressure is great, so they can't afford to buy stars, or even keep them.

Instead of this, wouldn't it be better to take advantage of someone to take over and sell the club at a high price to make a fortune?
Ye Qiu's appearance really surprised Joe Lewis and Danny Levy, because Ye Qiu was still coaching Chelsea a year ago, but just one year later, he wanted to swallow Tottenham Hotspur This Premier League team really surprised and admired them.

However, it is obvious that they prefer to adopt a cooperative situation, and the two sides maintain an appropriate share allocation. Ye Qiu is in charge of Tottenham Hotspur as the team's head coach, and also has the right to transfer the team, while Joe Lewis And Danny Levi's ENIC company is engaged in business planning behind the scenes.

Everyone knows that Ye Qiu's coaching ability is outstanding. If he comes to coach Tottenham Hotspur, the team's strength will rise steadily, and there may be a chance to enter the Champions League qualification zone. By then, the club's value will increase. If it climbs up, the shares held in the hands will also be greatly increased.

But Ye Qiu had just jumped out of the wolf's den, so how could he suddenly sneak into the tiger's den?
From the very beginning of the contact between the two parties, Ye Qiu clearly rejected ENIC's proposal, saying that he only wanted an acquisition and did not want to cooperate. If ENIC can accept Ye Qiu's acquisition terms, they can negotiate, but if they want to continue to cooperate If they refuse to buy, then Ye Qiu will look for other teams.

Joe Lewis doesn't like football. One of the important reasons he bought Tottenham at the beginning was that several of his good friends were engaged in football, such as the two major Irish shareholders of Manchester United. Manchester United's shares were sold to the Glazer family, and Tottenham were in an embarrassing situation, so Joe Lewis had long thought of quitting.

Although Danny Levy is a Tottenham fan, his shareholding in ENIC is very low. The real decision maker is Joe Lewis, so when Joe Lewis decided to negotiate with Ye Qiu, Danny Levy also Can only choose to accept.

Hence, Ye Qiu took Elisa to White Hart Lane.

Joe Lewis rushed back to London from the United States in person and sat at the White Hart Lane Stadium. Danny Levi went downstairs to welcome Ye Qiu and Eliza after Ye Qiu arrived at the White Hart Lane Stadium. The administrative office on the second floor of the White Hart Lane Stadium closed the door for negotiations.

From the negotiating lineup arranged by ENIC, both Ye Qiu and Elisa could feel the importance they attached to this negotiation, and indeed saw their willingness to sell the shares of Tottenham, so the two sides did not exchange unnecessary pleasantries. And polite, directly to the topic.

But what Ye Qiu didn't expect was that Levi directly called out an astonishingly sky-high price from the very beginning of the negotiation.

4 million euros!
(End of this chapter)