Tottenham's Journey: Finding Peace Amidst Jet Lag
Tottenham’s 11,400-mile slog to the other side of the world has left Roberto De Zerbi and his players blinking through jet lag, but buried inside the long-haul grind is a perk few of them get back home: peace and quiet.
It took Spurs more than 30 hours to crawl from Enfield to Auckland, New Zealand, with stops along the way. From there, they were back in the air, another three hours or so to Australia for games against Sydney FC and then Chelsea. On the map, Sydney sits just 24 miles from Enfield – the one in New South Wales, tucked outside the city, not the original in Greater London. The joke writes itself. The journey most certainly did not.
De Zerbi, still adjusting to life at Tottenham and now to a body clock turned upside down, did not pretend he was enjoying the time zones.
“Just work and sleep, trying to sleep, because I am suffering a lot from the jet lag,” he admitted. “No restaurant, no nothing. Just to prepare the guys to play in the best way we can, and try to sleep something more than three or four hours!”
This is the reality behind the glossy tour posters. Premier League clubs criss-cross the globe every summer, and the reasons are as blunt as they are obvious. The money is huge, with millions pouring in from promoters and sponsors. The marketing reach is even bigger, building fanbases in every corner of the world and planting flags for future generations of supporters.
There is also a nod to those who already live and breathe the club from afar. Supporters who might never afford the trip to north London suddenly find their team on their doorstep. The club comes to them. For one night, their stadium becomes White Hart Lane in miniature.
Coaches will privately tell you they would rather have a full pre-season locked away at the training ground, every drill controlled, every minute accounted for. Yet once the travel fog lifts, these tours can do something a training pitch in Enfield cannot. They lock a squad together. New signings mix in, cliques soften, and the work becomes sharper without the usual pull of home, family, and familiar distractions.
There is another, quieter benefit, and it belongs almost entirely to the players.
In certain parts of the world, the Premier League is omnipresent. In others, it is background noise to different obsessions. Sydney is one of those places. Tottenham have a strong Australian following – official supporters’ group OzSpurs can testify to that – but in a city of 5.6 million, football in the English sense still trails in the slipstream.
Rugby League rules huge swathes of the sporting landscape. Australian Rules Football dominates hearts and headlines. Ange Postecoglou’s arrival in north London shoved the name Tottenham Hotspur into Australian newspapers and onto TV bulletins, but walk down a random Sydney street and many would struggle to name a single Spurs player, let alone recognise one.
For De Zerbi and his squad, that anonymity is gold.
On Monday night, around 9.30pm, two of the club’s young midfielders, Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall, strolled through the crowds at Sydney Harbour. They moved among tourists near the Sydney Opera House, Spurs-branded white tracksuit tops and shorts making no attempt to hide who they were. The Australian winter air was mild, the harbour lights bouncing off the water. Nobody stopped them. No autograph hunters. No phones shoved in their faces.
They were just two more visitors taking in the view.
The next day, the pair headed out again, this time on bicycles, pedalling through the city like any other teenagers on a foreign adventure. Other players have been clocked in passing by the odd fan, as have members of the board and even the club’s owners, the Lewis family, but the usual frenzy simply isn’t there.
The staff have taken advantage as well. Members of De Zerbi’s coaching team have been seen wandering through Sydney’s botanical gardens, soaking in the winter sun. The head coach himself has been spotted walking the city streets, phone in hand, still carrying that slightly dazed, jet-lagged look of a man whose body thinks it is 4am in London.
This is the paradox of the modern footballer. Their lives are wrapped in privilege and pressure, every move scrutinised, every misstep amplified. They live in gated bubbles, driven from training grounds to stadiums to airports. A quiet coffee can become a social media storm. A walk through a shopping centre can turn into an impromptu signing session.
On this side of the world, for a few days at least, Tottenham’s players can slip the mask. They can stand in front of the Opera House and not become the attraction. They can cycle through a city that barely flinches at the sight of a Premier League logo.
For them, that might be the most valuable part of this 11,400-mile odyssey: a rare chance to feel what it’s like to be just another face in the crowd, breathing in a little fresh Australian air before the spotlight finds them again.
