James Maddison ready to exploit "little window" to follow Spurs tradition
The idea of a footballer being the missing piece in the puzzle at their new club can be a big burden, but James Maddison doesn’t see it that way.
Maddison completed a £60m move from Leicester to Tottenham early in the transfer window, marking the end of an on-off saga which has spanned several years and several clubs. Spurs looked at the England international before his 2018 move to the King Power Stadium, while links persisted more than once before this summer, and now it’s a chance to make up for lost time.
Spurs, too, may feel they are doing something long overdue. The north London club have a rich history of attack-minded midfielders, with Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli writing their names into club folklore of late, but Eriksen’s exit and Dele’s on-field decline left a gap. One which Maddison, a man who “just saw myself playing at Tottenham”, is confident he can fill.
There have been positives in recent seasons, not least the Champions League qualification secured under Antonio Conte, but there’s been plenty of pain too. One common thread has been the lack of Maddison-type quality specifically, with plenty of new arrivals - from Tanguy N’Dombele to Giovani Lo Celso, Steven Bergwijn to Jack Clarke - failing to provide the kind of creativity the new arrival is confident of delivering.
Does he consider himself an ideal fit for his new club? “I definitely do,” Maddison says, speaking at TNT Sports' start of season event in London. “In the summer when I was speaking to my agent about moving clubs and you come to a place where you need to make decisions and where you want to go and what you think fits best, I could actually see myself playing for Spurs.
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“There’s a little window for me at Tottenham Hotspur, a creative player that they’ve always had, maybe not had in recent years. I could definitely see myself, when making the decision, playing for Tottenham in that kit in that stadium and being the creative player I know I can be.”
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James Maddison is preparing to make his competitive Tottenham debut (C1 Media)It might not be a direct help that he’s close to his predecessors in the role, but it doesn’t hurt either. He name-checks Dele as one of his friends from the England set-up, even if his first senior cap came after pipping his compatriot to a place in the squad, while Eriksen - someone who Maddison admired while finding his feet in the game - helped disprove the ‘never meet your heroes’ maxim.
“Christian was a brilliant player,” the England international says. “I used to watch Christian when I was a little bit younger, making my way in the game and he was at the top of his game in the Premier League.
“As my career developed and he was still at Tottenham, playing against him, swapping shirts with him, telling him what I thought of him as a player, him being such a nice guy in response to that. He was definitely someone I looked at, especially when I was in that teenage phase of watching players in my position at the top of their game.”
So, was Spurs always the end goal? Not quite (it “kind of doesn't work like that,” he admits) but it’s a nice situation for Maddison to find himself in, especially after learning - amid previous interest - that chairman Daniel Levy is a fan.
He’s also keen to play down any suggestions his new team-mates might have been engaged in any tapping-up efforts - there will be no ‘Agent Dier’ conversations, thank you very much - but his compatriots haven’t needed ulterior motives to give him a sense of the club he’s joining.
“There's this thing in the media where you see this whole thing of 'agent' players, tapping up and all that, but players are very respectful towards each other, even on England duty,” he says. “It's not a case of players going round trying to tap people up to go to their club.
“But listen, Tottenham's a brilliant football club, anyone can see that from the outside. I've been in the Premier League for five years with Leicester, so I know exactly what type of club Tottenham is and how big a club it is. So I didn't need much reassuring on those fronts, to be honest.
“Obviously the Tottenham lads, and the Tottenham lads in the past who have played. I'm very friendly with Dele, Harry's in the England squad, people like Kieran Trippier have been here, I'm close with Kyle Walker-Peters who's been at Tottenham, and they've always all spoke highly of the club and the people and the staff at the club, which is important. So it all makes it easier for me.”
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Maddison has joined England team-mate Harry Kane at Spurs (PA)In some ways, it feels like a tough time for Maddison to be rocking up at a club like Tottenham. There’s no European football available after last season’s eighth place finish, prompting Harry Kane's move to Bayern Munich, while new manager Ange Postecoglou was - depending on who you ask - far from the first choice to take over.
This is a club that has found its best moments by climbing out of the mire, though. Record scorer Kane got his breakthrough after a tough 2013-14 campaign prompted Spurs to put Tim Sherwood in interim charge, and the rest was history. Maddison, too, arrives off the back of a painful relegation with Leicester which was only softened by an opportunity to play and win with England in June and “refresh some good feelings”.
He knows some things are out of his power, with Kane's fate one of them. However, conversations with Postecoglou helped solidify the belief he’s always had that he could see himself in that white shirt of Tottenham.
New manager Ange Postecoglou had a part to play in the move (Getty Images)Postecoglou, like Maddison himself, arrives with a reputation for attacking football. His Celtic team scored 114 league goals last season en route to the Scottish Premiership title, and this - along with the conversations between manager and player - seem to have made an already tempting decision to join Spurs even more straightforward.
“The club has obviously had some big name managers and the type of football I imagine Spurs fans want to see has been a little bit lacking,” he says. “But the quality is there to be an attacking team. The players are there to do it and the manager made no hesitation on the way he wants to play and the way he explained it to me, and I fully believed it.
“A lot of managers will say how they want to play, and they want it to be attacking and free flowing … but sometimes you can kind of tell it’s not how they typically set up. But with Ange, with the gaffer, it was very clear that was how he wanted to play. It made my decision a lot easier.”
Maddison is ready to help Spurs bounce back after a tough season (Katie Chan/Action Plus/REX/Shutterstock)Spurs kick their season off against Brentford, a team against whom Maddison scored twice in the 2021-22 season. Both were memorable goals, too: a breakaway winner at the Brentford Community Stadium and a free-kick at the King Power Stadium which, dare we say it, had a whiff of Eriksen about it.
That was in the past, though. Maddison has a new home now, and he’s treating the change of scenery like anyone else would.
“I can't wait to get going and I've got that feeling and buzz of starting somewhere new,” he says. “Not just in football, any job, if you go to a new place you have that buzz to try and show people that you're top level at what you do and what you bring. I've got that excitement and hunger at the minute and hopefully I'll slot in nicely.”
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