Tottenham new stadium: Familiar surroundings ease Spurs’ transition into new home

Moving home is meant to be disorientating. Exchanging the familiar for the unfamiliar always has an affect. It takes time to adjust to new surroundings, the smells, the light, the little distances. And of course this is as true in football as it is in real life.

Almost every team that moves into a new ground finds exactly this. Manchester City did. Arsenal did. West Ham United did, and Arsene Wenger said back then it would take “two years” to feel comfortable and familiar in a new home. But what if Tottenham Hotspur can manage to somehow avoid that? Because the circumstances of their move, and the distinct feel of the new ground, might well make for a faster, smoother transition, a more instant click, that no-one else has got. How long does it take to feel like home?

That was one of the questions at the new White Hart Lane on Wednesday night. It certainly felt new, all gleaming outside panels, invasively bright hoardings, upwards pouring beer. It was not quite perfect, with reported lengthy queues on public transport before and after, and at the concourse bars at half-time.

But was it so wrenchingly unfamiliar? It felt, for want a better word, Spursy: it kept the club next to this strip of A-road, it kept the tightness of the old ground if not its shape, and it kept the old noise in rather than letting it escape.

And so when the game began, it made you wonder if it would really take that long for the crowd to find their voices here, or for the players to find their way about the pitch. It might have looked like something from out of the future, or from the Bundesliga, but it sounded like what it was: a Spurs home game played in Tottenham.

Not everyone is this lucky. The story of Arsenal’s move to the Emirates is well known by now: a far-sighted investment, an architectural marvel, but an instant dissolution of everything that made Highbury so powerful. It is not the reason why Arsenal have not won the title since they moved there, but it is part of the story.

When West Ham abandoned Upton Park to move to the London Stadium it was even more wrenching. They found their new home even worse equipped for maintaining the interest and enthusiasm of the crowd. Say what you like about the Emirates’ atmosphere, but at least it was built with football in mind.

In December 2016, four months after West Ham’s move to the London Stadium, Arsenal showed up and played with a comfortable swagger few visitors mustered at Upton Park the previous season. They won 5-1 and afterwards Wenger spoke from experience how long it takes for a new ground to feel like home.

“It takes you over a year, two years, I think, to really feel at home, because you have to create a history.” Wenger said. “At Upton Park, fans sit next to each other. You remember that five years ago, we beat Man City here, or Arsenal. And now [at the London Stadium], there is no history. They have to recreate something where people share the experiences, and the players feel completely the confidence that they are playing at home and not on a neutral ground. It takes two years.”

No-one could dispute Wenger’s expertise on this matter, but what if Spurs have found a way to speed this up? Because it did not feel last night as if it would take Spurs two years “create a history” at the new White Hart Lane. Maybe that was just the rush that comes with the immediate novelty of the new ground. Maybe soon enough we will be talking about the bedding-in period, the long slow adjustment, and the need to be patient to take everything on board.

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But that is not how Mauricio Pochettino sounded, giving his first post-match press conference in the luxurious new media auditorium. Full of pride at a day the club has worked for years towards, he said the positive energy of the crowd pushed his players on. That it was already starting to feel like home. No adjustment necessary.

“The excitement, the motivation, the atmosphere, and the energy that the fans related to us made everything possible,” Pochettino said. “The performance was good, that was the second day in the stadium for us, for the players, but I think we start to feel that it is home, we start to feel that this is going to be so important a place for the future.”

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The real test of this will come against Manchester City in the Champions League next week, against Brighton and Crystal Palace in the league. Spurs need to keep winning here for a top four finish, and given how they have been playing since Christmas, they need a shot in the arm. This could be just that. But however it affects Spurs, Pochettino said that he would not want to be an away team stepping into the unknown any time soon.

“For sure for opponents it is going to be difficult,” he said. “As manager of Tottenham, or if I am playing for Tottenham, you adapt so quick and so fast in that atmosphere, it was amazing. Impossible not to be affected by your fans, by the energy and the emotion. To be there, and run and shoot and save and tackle. If you are not motivated to play in that kind of atmosphere then something wrong happened in your head. For sure, it is going to be tough for opponents.”