Special Relationship

Long time reader, seldom poster, yada yada yada...

Anyway, in all the debate over this Bale nonsense, the apparent U-turn by "we'll pay whatever it takes - £80m, £100m...£120m..." Perez I've had a thought on the saga which I don't think I've seen anyone else suggest, so I thought I'd put it to the board...

Rewind 12 months to when our 'shpeshalll' agreement was revealed with the announcement:

“The partnership agreement will see the clubs working together in respect of players, coaching, best practices and commercial relationships."

The thing I want to consider here is that last bit - 'commercial relationship'. We all know Levy has been trying to build Spurs in to a global brand as it's one of the few ways we can increase our revenue streams until we get a new stadium sorted. As other fans regularly report back to us, Asia is awash with Liverpool, Man U and Arsenal replica shirts...but very rarely a Spurs one... you can even see it in our own fair city - there's a booth by Trafalgar square that sells dodgy knock-off kits to tourist visiting London, who perhaps want a cheap souvenir of one of our capital's many illustrious clubs - Arsenal, Chelsea....Manchester City....Barcelona (pride of London, they are) - but not a Spurs shirt to be seen.

We signed Bonjani when we tried to break Africa...we STILL have Bonjani (?!?)...back in '02 we tried to buy Chinese starlet Quai Gon Jin, (but it the visa clerk at the immigration office turned to the dark side) and last year we signed a new sponsorship deal with a relatively unknown brand on these shores (certainly not one associated with 'soccer') to supply our kit and get more of a presence in the states

ANYWAY

Fast forward back to 2013 and you can see perhaps it's finally starting to work - Spurs to seem to be one of the more popular ‘EPL’ teams across the pond, I gather, at least from Warren Barton on my dodgy Fox Sports stream in my bedroom...

And Gareth Bale, in his lovely lilywhite kit is the poster boy for BT Sport and there's a ruddy big poster of him in Time Square. Now, as 'Arry was all too fond of telling us, Gareth's a lovely lad, top family bloke, and would prefer to go see his ma in Cardiff than get papped outside a nightclub with a page three model or scrapping with the bouncer (Jermaine, Ledley, I'm looking at you!) - hardly a guy who's going to grab headlines and break in to the top 10 shirt sales worldwide (as someone pointed out previously) through Beckham or Ronaldo-esque self-publicity. You can look at some like maybe Kaka and say he did, and he was a quiet, God fearing sort of chap...but Kaka was playing for the powehouses of AC Milan and Brazil at the time. Gareth plays for...Wales - about as likely to get seen on the world stage as Bonjani is of getting an actual game with the Spurs first XI

All which, in an, I admit, longwinded way, gets me to my point - as part of our developing commercial practice, and this is only a theory, I don't necessarily believe it to be the case and I'll admit I may be clutching at straws, but is it at all possible that Levy got on the phone to Madrid at the start of the summer and said something along the lines of "Mr Perez, you know how you still owe us a shed load for that rat we flogged you last year? And you know how we're supposed to have a 'commercial relationship'? Well we've got this lad that's just been playing reeeeeally quite good for the last 4 months…now - bear with me, I know it might sound daft, BUT,...what if you were to come out and spend three months telling the world he's worth more than the GDP of a small country and get him on the back page of every paper around the world for a while...in the meantime, we we’ll just keep quiet and get along with our business. You don’t even need to fax an ACTUAL bid, or even pay for an international phone call. After those three months you're quite welcome to turn around and say 'nah, only joking'. You do this for me, Mr Perez, and I'll knock a couple of hundred quid from all that money you owe us, because we’ll more than make up for it in the shed-load of our classy new shirts we’ll sell around the world to gullible folks who don’t actually support a ‘team’ but a ‘star’. And because, you know, we have a 'special' commercial relationship and all"

Perez: “I’m listening…"

Levy: “….and then…next year…we…. loan… you….Bonjani Khumalo …"

Perez: *click*

Levy: Hello? Hello?!