‘Arry’s secret: no speeches on tactics and an empty clipboard
Spurs star Rafael Van Der Vaart has lifted the lid on the extent of Harry Redknapp’s tactical nous. And apparently there is not a great deal of it.
The Dutchman said: “Harry is a very special man, that’s why I already feel at home at Spurs. It feels like I’m back on the street.
“There are no long and boring speeches about tactics, like I was used to at Real Madrid.There is a clipboard in our dressing room but Harry doesn’t write anything on it!
“It’s very relaxed. The gaffer gives us the line-up 20 minutes before we go out to do our warm-up. And the only words he speaks to me are ‘You play left or right, work hard, have fun and show the fans your best’.
“Then the defenders get an instruction about who to mark at corners and free-kicks – and that’s it.”
And you thought there was a big secret to Premier League management! The real surprise is that the only members of the Spurs team to get special instructions are the defence, and they’re still hopeless.
But Redknapp can’t be mad with VdV over his revelations. He has already gone public over his lack of belief in tactics in his column for The Sun earlier this year.
He wrote: “Whether it is 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3, the numbers game is not the beautiful game in my opinion. It’s 10 per cent about the formation and 90 per cent about the players. If you have the best ones and they do their jobs, then they can pretty much play any way you want them to.”
At least everyone’s singing from the same blank clipboard.
