TIME is relative. Time is precious. Time waits for no one. Time is a great healer. There is a time for everyone.
Similarly, as far as football managers and players go, each and every one of them has a time in life when they achieve success or even greatness of sorts.
Rafael Benitez was great as a manager at Valencia, Spain and later at Liverpool, England.
Since then, he has also been managing teams languishing in mid-table mediocrity or at the wrong end of the league table, fighting for scraps week-in, week-out.
Jose Mourinho’s time of greatness was at Porto, Portugal, Chelsea (his first stint) and Inter Milan, Italy.
So, it was small wonder that he got the boot at Manchester United and later at Tottenham Hotspur.
In life, when your time is up, it means your time is really up.
There is no way Mourinho could weave his magic wand anymore, no matter how hard he tried.
From a different perspective of time, the beauty of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is that, each time a prized asset is pried away by the money bags in world football, another great player comes to the fore to fill the void.
The song Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper says it all.
Just as Lucas Modric left, Dimitar Berbatov was there to showcase his skills.
When he moved on, Gareth Bale, out of obscurity, rose like a phoenix and soared to great heights.
Even when Bale went to Real Madrid, came the unlikeliest of heroes in the perennial loan star, Harry Kane.
Harry Kane is a complete player. He can play as a central striker or drop deep into midfield and spray defence splitting passes and crosses, like the great Glen Hoddle.
At the end of the day, if one’s heart is primarily elsewhere, whereby loyalty is only secondary, a diehard fan of Tottenham Hotspur had this to say: “Spurs will be the best team to support for someone who is up against the system. It teaches you patience, to savour the precious few moments of victory you get, it teaches you to be stoic in the face of seemingly endless failures.”
A life enduring passage of time in its own way.
The song A Time For Us by Andy Williams aptly sums it up.
Thiagarajan Mathiaparanam
Klang
