When Les Ferdinand scored to put
Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 up against
Manchester United 21 years ago today, he barely cracked a smile. As his lobbed effort looped over Peter Schmeichel and into the net, a thought occurred to him: ‘Have I just scored the goal that will deliver
Woolwich the title?’
“I was just thinking, ‘This could go down in history as the worst move of my career’,” he tells
The Athletic as he breaks into laughter. “It was definitely running through my mind. I remember scoring that goal and there being quite a subdued reaction. That then prompted my celebrations to be quite subdued. I wasn’t one to go crazy anyway.”
Ferdinand, a boyhood Tottenham fan, is reflecting on the bizarre situation that the team found themselves in on the final day of the 1998-99 season. They had nothing to play for themselves but getting a result at Old Trafford could potentially mean them playing the role of kingmaker for their bitter north London rivals Woolwich. United went into the game with a one-point lead, so a Spurs draw or win coupled with an Woolwich victory at home to
Aston Villa would deliver Arsene Wenger’s side their second consecutive
Premier League title.
The situation made for a fraught build-up to the two games, which were played simultaneously on May 16, 1999.
The fact former Woolwich player and manager George Graham was in charge of Tottenham only added to the intrigue.
Woolwich defender Martin Keown was so worried that Spurs would be going through the motions in Manchester that he got in touch with Graham’s assistant Stewart Houston, who was also ex-Woolwich, to make sure they would put in maximum effort. “Martin Keown asked me this week whether we would really be trying and I told him I was amazed he had even asked,” Houston said. “There’s professional pride in this.”
Paranoia was everywhere in north London, though.
Earlier in the month, after a home 3-1 defeat to Woolwich, a post-match conspiracy theory did the rounds among fans at the now-closed White Hart pub next to Spurs’ ground that Graham had secretly wanted the old enemy to win the game because he hoped they could go on and claim the title.
But despite previously managing Woolwich to the title twice himself, Graham’s focus was on winning matches for current employers Tottenham — as he reiterated ahead of the United game a fortnight later. “There’s nobody who wants to win any game more than I do,” Graham said. “I even hate losing a friendly match. We’ll be going to Old Trafford to try to win — whatever that means to anybody else.”
Though he did add jokingly: “Of course we are going to take the Old Trafford game seriously… we will be naming Jose Dominguez as our substitute goalkeeper.” Dominguez was a 5ft 4in winger.
The Tottenham players were similarly focused on getting a win over
Alex Ferguson’s treble chasers. “(The Woolwich situation) wasn’t something we talked about at all in the dressing room,” Ferdinand says. “There isn’t a player I know whose mentality is to go out and lose a game. You want to win every game, so there was no talk in the dressing room beforehand that, ‘Oh, Woolwich might win the title if we win today’.”
Ramon Vega, a Spurs defender at the time adds: “Beating United, one of the greatest teams in Europe at the time would have been a great achievement in itself. I don’t think any of our players were thinking that if we won, Woolwich would win the title.”
For many Tottenham supporters, however, it was a different story. “I remember heading up to the game and thinking I would definitely prefer to lose the game and deny Woolwich the title than win,” says Ross Hammond, a Spurs fan for more than 30 years. “That was definitely the prevailing mood of the supporters who travelled up that day.”
Meanwhile, down at Highbury, the Woolwich players tried to ignore the speculation that Spurs would have their flip-flops on against United. “There was a lot of build-up in the media and you can see now that it’s easy to big these things up,” says Lee Dixon, Woolwich’s right-back at the time. “But I don’t remember us thinking that Tottenham wouldn’t try very hard, we were just focusing on beating Villa.”
Once the game at Old Trafford kicked-off, it was clear Spurs were not going to roll over. United started strongly, but in the 24th minute Ferdinand beat Ronny Johnsen to Steffen Iversen’s flick-on and lifted a looping shot with the outside of his right boot over Schmeichel’s head. Ferdinand was putting in maximum effort, but he was aware of the ramifications of what he had just done.
“From my perspective, my season had been really interrupted by injuries and because of that I’d been in and out the team,” he says of a campaign where he ended up with five goals from 24 league appearances. “And then I remember scoring the goal and thinking this would sum up my season and my time at Tottenham so far — I could score the goal that wins the title for Woolwich!”
Despite their feelings pre-match, most Tottenham fans instinctively celebrated the goal, while at Highbury the Woolwich supporters did likewise as news of it reached them. “I was told later that my name was being sung at Highbury,” Ferdinand remembers.
“You can’t avoid the scoreline when it starts going around the ground. We were aware that Tottenham had gone 1-0 up,” says Dixon. “But you just focus on your job and what’s in your control.”
In the end, any fears Spurs fans had about delivering the title to Woolwich proved to be unfounded. United scored twice through David Beckham and Andy Cole either side of half-time to win the game 2-1 and make Woolwich’s 1-0 win over Aston Villa — United were already ahead by the time Nwankwo Kanu scored — irrelevant. “That was the least bothered I’ve ever been by a defeat,” says Hammond. “As far as losing goes, that was the best way to do it.”
In reality, for all the talk pre-match of how seriously Spurs would take the game, the likelihood was always that even at their best Tottenham, who finished just 11th that season despite
having player of the year David Ginola in their ranks, would struggle against a side whose following two games would see them lift the
FA Cup and European Cup.
Afterwards, Ferdinand could reflect on his first goal since just after Christmas and be consoled by the fact that although Spurs had lost, he had not done the unthinkable.
“It would have made a tough year go from bad to worse if Woolwich had won the title,” he says.
“I was an armchair Spurs fan growing up — I wasn’t allowed to go to games, but one of my cousins told me I had to support a London club, and they were the glamour team so I went with them.
He pauses for a moment, and adds: “If I’d delivered Woolwich the title…”
