{"id":550968,"date":"2026-07-30T08:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T08:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/550968\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T08:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T08:41:10","slug":"tottenham-fans-deserved-better-from-auckland-visit-simon-kay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/550968\/","title":{"rendered":"Tottenham fans deserved better from Auckland visit – Simon Kay"},"content":{"rendered":"

These kind of pre-season games invariably involve young unknowns, but not usually this many, this early for this long. Tottenham\u2019s first substitutions came in the 62nd minute<\/a>, when the five most recognisable names on the bench were introduced: Richarlison, Ben Davies, Conor Gallagher, Mathys Tel and $200 million signing Mateus Fernandes.<\/p>\n

The other five substitutes in Tottenham\u2019s 2-0 win over A-League champions Auckland FC<\/a> were all 20 or younger and yet to make their senior competitive debuts for the club. <\/p>\n

Not part of the matchday squad were 10 players expected to feature prominently this season, including $230m club record signing Sandro Tonali and the four who featured at the World Cup.<\/p>\n

What was the point of bringing the latter quartet to New Zealand? Given they were knocked out of the World Cup just three weeks before Tottenham left London, they would have been better off meeting their teammates in Australia after three or four days\u2019 additional rest while saving themselves six hours of flying.<\/p>\n

The handful of Kiwi Spurs fans in Sydney this week would surely have appreciated a heads-up that the club would potentially be playing in Auckland before they spent thousands booking trips across the Tasman.<\/p>\n

But they at least saw a notably stronger side for Tottenham\u2019s penalty shootout win over Sydney FC on Wednesday night, and it\u2019s a safe bet that the starting 11 will be stronger again for Saturday\u2019s match against Chelsea at the Olympic Stadium.<\/p>\n

Did the people who signed away central and local government funding for Tottenham\u2019s visit realise the Auckland game would be so bereft of stars?<\/p>\n

If another Premier League club puts its hand out, a visit in an odd-numbered year would be advisable so it doesn\u2019t clash with the World Cup or Euros, and\/or it should be a post-season rather than pre-season trip.<\/p>\n

Tottenham last appeared in Australia two years ago in a post-season match against Newcastle United in front of a crowd of 72,000 at the MCG. Of their teams that played the last round of the 2023-24 Premier League season, Spurs started nine and Newcastle eight in Melbourne just 40 hours later. <\/p>\n

The record crowd that braved the rain at Eden Park<\/a> on Sunday should have seen more of Tottenham\u2019s big-name players and deserved to be treated better than a warm-up to the Australian leg of the tour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These kind of pre-season games invariably involve young unknowns, but not usually this many, this early for this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[51,9442,18836,15441,177436,8142,9517,71,168548,2882,111,139,69,8143,17146,234385,6037,213,31120,8229,156508,23505,9863,3608],"class_list":["post-550968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-auckland","tag-better","tag-club","tag-crowd","tag-deserved","tag-eden","tag-fans","tag-from","tag-kay","tag-love","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-park","tag-questions","tag-rainy","tag-simon","tag-sports","tag-spurs","tag-they","tag-tottenham","tag-treated","tag-visit","tag-were"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}