What do Diego Maradona, Cristian Romero and Osvaldo ‘Ossie’ Ardiles have in common?
The answer, of course, is that they have all won the World Cup with Argentina AND pulled on the shirt of Tottenham Hotspur.
Since they were founded in September 1882, hundreds of players have represented Spurs, and they have had just under 50 permanent managers. Only 10 players — 11 if we cheekily include Maradona’s appearance in Ardiles’ testimonial (more on that later), and two of the managers hail from Argentina — but the bond runs much deeper than that.
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Ardiles and Ricky Villa helped Argentina win the 1978 World Cup on home soil and a few weeks later joined Tottenham, who had just been promoted to England’s top flight. Ardiles went on to make over 200 appearances, and later had a brief spell as the manager, while Villa scored the winning goal in the 1981 FA Cup final replay against Manchester City.
Mauricio Pochettino led Spurs to their first-ever Champions League final in 2019, and along the way they produced a dramatic comeback in the second leg of their semi-final against Ajax which will never be forgotten. Erik Lamela scored one of the greatest goals in the history of the Premier League when he produced a rabona in a north London derby in March 2021 that nutmegged Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey. Lamela’s strike won the Puskas Award, which is given out by FIFA, football’s global governing body, to the scorer of the best goal anywhere in the world each year.
OH MY 😲
Érik Lamela with the Rabona in the North London Derby…
📺 Watch on Sky Sports PL
📱 Follow #ARSTOT here: https://t.co/WiNr8izD6A
📲 Download the @SkySports app! pic.twitter.com/TxRY09HJ6k— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) March 14, 2021
Romero moved to Tottenham from Atalanta in August that year, initially on loan, and has since become an integral part of the starting XI. Last season, new head coach Ange Postecoglou promoted the centre-back to vice-captain.
Before Argentina’s Copa America semi-final against Canada on Tuesday (early Wednesday in the UK), which should feature Romero and club and country team-mate Giovani Lo Celso, The Athletic has taken a deeper look at the special relationship that exists between the South American country and Spurs…
The earliest sign of any connection comes in 1909, when the Tottenham first team embarked on a tour of South America and played games against local sides in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.
It took nearly 70 more years for the relationship to truly blossom though, and the catalyst was the arrivals of Ardiles and Villa. Ardiles started in Argentina’s 3-1 victory over the Netherlands in the 1978 World Cup final, while Villa made two appearances during that tournament. Within a few weeks of lifting the trophy in Buenos Aires, the pair joined Spurs after a joint-move to Sheffield United broke down.
Alan Fisher, who co-wrote A People’s History Of Tottenham with Martin Cloake, can remember reading about the “astonishing” deal in the newspaper. “There was no advance warning or any gossip about it,” Fisher, 68, tells The Athletic. “It didn’t seem possible. It felt like a magic trick conjured up from another universe. There were not many foreign players in the top flight back then, even from Europe. Keith Burkinshaw, the manager at the time, didn’t do a lot of press work. He just wanted to coach. He was looking embarrassed in the photo while Ossie and Ricky were smiling.
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“There was a full house at White Hart Lane. Spurs did a ticker-tape welcome mimicking the Argentinian crowd celebrations (at that home World Cup), except ours were made out of ripped-up copies of newspapers and it was getting stuck in your hair and mouth.”
Ardiles and Villa made their home debuts in a 4-1 loss to Aston Villa but quickly became fan favourites. Ardiles was a central midfielder signed from Huracan in Buenos Aires while Villa, who came from Racing Club in nearby Avellaneda, played on the wing. They were accustomed to playing in the sunshine back home and had to adapt to the temperamental British weather.
“They fitted the Tottenham tradition of playing exciting, daring, attacking football and that’s why they were welcomed so warmly,” Fisher says. “The White Hart Lane pitch was a gluepot (very muddy), but Ossie glided over it. He didn’t like free kicks. The ball being still offended him. He would get fouled, pick himself up, and pass and move. He understood where his team-mates were and he was a huge influence.
“He is one of the finest players I’ve seen and I’ve been going to games since 1967. It was a privilege to watch him.”
In 1981, Tottenham beat Wolverhampton Wanderers to book their place in the FA Cup final at Wembley. In the build-up to their meeting with Manchester City, Spurs-supporting popular UK musicians Chas & Dave recorded a track called Ossie’s Dream. Chas & Dave performed it on TV music show Top Of The Pops, with Ardiles and the rest of the squad singing along with them on stage.
Spurs drew 1-1 with City in the final on May 9, so a replay — those were the rules at that time — was scheduled back at the national stadium five days later. City were leading 2-1 with 20 minutes to go when Garth Crooks equalised, before Villa produced a stunning winner which would be voted the Wembley Goal of the Century in 2001.
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“It was a story of redemption, because (Villa) had been substituted in the first game and this proud man trudged around the greyhound track (which surrounded the pitch at the old Wembley),” Fisher says. “In the replay, Tony Galvin wins the ball on the left wing and gives it to Ricky. Spurs fans are screaming, ‘Don’t go on that dribble where you always get tackled’.
“He darts in and out and shoots. It was at our end, and I can see that ball bouncing underneath (goalkeeper) Joe Corrigan. It’s the best moment in 57 years of following Tottenham. I still get goosebumps talking about it. People went crazy. You could feel the stadium shaking. We ended up in Trafalgar Square afterwards and people were running into the fountains.”
What better way to start the day then reliving the @WembleyStadium Goal of the Century 😍
Ricky Villa weaved in and out of the clasps of the Manchester City defence before slotting it under the keeper to secure the FA Cup for @SpursOfficial 🏆 pic.twitter.com/JE38LvebVc
— Emirates FA Cup (@EmiratesFACup) February 2, 2022
Tottenham returned to the FA Cup final the following year but Ardiles and Villa did not play in that one.
On April 2, 1982, war broke out between Argentina and the UK over the Falklands, a group of islands in the South Atlantic that both nations claimed belonged to them. The next day, Ardiles started in a 2-0 win against Leicester City. “I remember hearing the terrible news about the Falklands on the radio and thinking this is going to be Ossie’s last game,” Fisher says.
The Falklands War lasted for 74 days, and around 1,000 people lost their lives.
Ardiles joined up with Argentina’s squad shortly after that win against Leicester in preparation for the World Cup in Spain that summer. He did not return to England for Spurs’ 1-0 victory over Queens Park Rangers in the FA Cup final, while Villa withdrew from the squad due to the ongoing conflict. Ardiles spent the following season on loan at Paris Saint-Germain, and though Villa played on for Spurs, he moved to the United States to play for Fort Lauderdale Strikers in 1983.
In an interview in 2011, Villa revealed he was criticised by sections of the Argentine media. “They said, ‘Ricky is happy in the enemy country’,” Villa told UK newspaper The Independent. “The stupid b*****ds. I was professional, I had a contract, and people (in England) treated me very well. Sometimes I was booed, but that was all. An English player in Buenos Aires at the same time could never have stayed. It was easy for me to stay here. But it was not difficult to decide to miss the final. I knew history would say whether I was right or not.”
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Ardiles returned for the 1983-84 season, when he helped Spurs lift the UEFA Cup. “There was no vindictiveness,” according to Fisher. “We were delighted to see him. He was one of our own.”
He was nearly joined by Mario Kempes, who was voted the best player at the 1978 World Cup, after the forward went on trial at Tottenham. A move failed to materialise and he joined Hercules in Spain.
Ardiles was rewarded with a testimonial in 1986. The midfielder managed to convince his international team-mate Maradona to take part in the game, against Inter Milan at White Hart Lane. Maradona had to borrow a pair of size six-and-a-half boots from Tottenham forward Clive Allen. The following month, Maradona led Argentina to glory at the World Cup in Mexico.
“It was an amazing spectacle to see Maradona in a Spurs shirt charging up the wing,” Fisher says. “I remember Maradona on one side of the penalty area lobbing the ball over to Glenn Hoddle, who knocked it straight back. Back then there was not a lot of coverage of foreign football, so to see Maradona in the flesh in our home ground was fantastic.”
Ardiles finished his playing career in England with Swindon Town in the early 1990s, and then became their manager. Next up came spells with two more English clubs, Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion, before a reunion with Spurs. They finished 15th in his only full season in charge and in October 1994 he was sacked.
His countryman Mauricio Taricco arrived from fellow English side Ipswich Town in 1998 and spent six years in north London before he moved across the city to West Ham United.
Fans had to wait nearly a decade for another Argentinian to rock up but that did not prevent Juan Pablo Enrique, who is a member of the Buenos Aires Tottenham Supporters Club, from falling in love with Spurs at that time.
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“I started watching them in 2004 when (Michael) Carrick played,” Enrique tells The Athletic. “It wasn’t easy to find Premier League games on TV back then, but every time I saw Spurs I really liked them. I had to watch them through different streams and download different applications.
“I was a Boca Juniors fan at that point and in 2006, I started college. I realised I needed to choose, and since then I have only supported Tottenham. I remember shouting on the balcony and nobody understanding why when they won the Carling Cup in 2008.”
After selling Gareth Bale to Real Madrid for a then world-record fee of £85million in the summer of 2013, Spurs reinvested some of that money in buying Erik Lamela from Roma. Within a year, Pochettino had been appointed head coach and by the end of his reign there were four Argentine players in the squad. Pochettino would host asados, traditional Argentine barbecues, at the training ground for first-team staff and players.
Enrique visited White Hart Lane, Spurs’ home stadium then, for the first time in 2016. “It was my dream to go where it all started,” he says. “It was a very expensive trip and I was saving for years to go. They played Southampton the day before my birthday. I went to the shop that day and who was signing books? Ricky Villa.
“I told him I didn’t have a ticket because you needed to be a member and I didn’t know how to become one. He tried to get me in by saying I was his security and helping him with translations. It didn’t work but when I left the shop an old man said, ‘Don’t worry, I will get you into the stadium and you don’t have to pay me until you’re through (the turnstiles)’.
“Even though we lost, I waited until Lamela came out and had a picture with him. I spoke to Pochettino when he was leaving too. I went back to the hotel and couldn’t eat — I was so full of happiness.”
Mattias Bocchicchio, who is a member of the same supporters’ group, started following them during Pochettino’s reign. Bocchicchio, 19, regularly watches Racing Club, his local side, but at the beginning of 2023 flew over to Europe to see Spurs with his father Leonardo. It was only a couple of months after Romero had helped Argentina beat France on penalties in the World Cup final in Qatar.
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“We travelled to Italy first, to watch AC Milan against Tottenham at San Siro,” Bocchicchio says. “Then we went to England and watched them play Chelsea, West Ham, Sheffield United, Wolves and Nottingham Forest. It was a dream.
“At the Nottingham Forest game, we were in the eighth or ninth row in the north stand and my father was close to the pitch at full time. There was another Argentinian near us who had the shirt of Romero’s childhood club. After the game, Romero interacted with him and my father. He gave his shirt to my father, and now it’s hanging in our house.”
The Buenos Aires Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Club was founded in 2020 by Ariel Fernandez and Mariano Tapia. It has more than 80 members, who regularly communicate in a WhatsApp group and meet up to watch the games. They have interviewed Lo Celso for their YouTube channel and participate in a five-a-side football tournament against fan groups of other English clubs, including Arsenal and Chelsea.
When Argentina hosted the Under-20s World Cup last year, Bocchicchio and Enrique met up to watch Tottenham midfielder Alfie Devine play in it for England. And in the October, a small group of the club’s members even had the opportunity to interview Villa.
“It was an incredible experience — like a movie,” Bocchicchio says. “He lives in the countryside around 150 kilometres (93 miles) away from Buenos Aires. He was in his house with his wife. They made an asado for us and we watched Tottenham beat Crystal Palace.”
Lo Celso’s future is unclear, but Romero is at the heart of Tottenham’s defence. He was guilty of making some rash challenges when he first arrived but has matured into a dependable leader. Along with Son Heung-min, Micky van de Ven and James Maddison, Romero is one of the key figures in Postecoglou’s revolution. He is carrying on the legacy of Ardiles and Villa.
“The legend of Tottenham has an Argentinian flag,” Enrique, 34, says. “Ardiles and Villa are always over there, even for the last game at White Hart Lane. Ardiles is an ambassador and Ricky travels a lot for the club too.
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“I went to London this year to watch the game against Manchester City. When I left Seven Sisters station, I walked with local fans all the way to the stadium. They were talking about how special it is for them to have Argentinian players. It brings something else and it’s in the culture. It’s not only something we feel.”
(Top photos: Getty Images)
