My Sporting Life - David Ginola

[danielneeds]

Enjoy 90 minutres of Dav-eed chatting to Danny Kelly about his career. Such a gentleman, and to think of all the footballers with as much talent as he had in his little toe, who go around acting like arseholes, costs nothing to be respectful.

http://talksport.com/football/my-sporting-life-david-ginola-14021780082

 

[Gassin's finest]

Enjoy 90 minutres of Dav-eed chatting to Danny Kelly about his career. Such a gentleman, and to think of all the footballers with as much talent as he had in his little toe, who go around acting like arseholes, costs nothing to be respectful.

http://talksport.com/football/my-sporting-life-david-ginola-14021780082

Awesome... that's my Monday evening sorted out! Cannot wait to get home and watch this. Cheers mate

 

[TheSecretNonFootballer]

Hounded out of France because they blamed him specifically for not making the 94 world cup. Scandalous.

 

[EllenAlex]

Love this guy, true legend; loves Spurs to boot.

 

[spike472]

Not many footballers you can call gentlemen but you Mr Ginola are an exception.

 

[Hoddle_Ledge]

MP3 link to download it

http://utv.vo.llnwd.net/o16/talkSPORT/talkSPORT-20140217-1009.mp3

 

[michaelden]

I still lmao at his wanker gesture to the BT Sport prick WhatHisName?

 

[Bus-Conductor]

Ginola was a wonderfully entertaining footballer, but he was fundamentally a show pony who played for himself. Why else do you think he ended up playing for mid table clubs like us and Villa ?

 

[tttcowan]

Ginola was a wonderfully entertaining footballer, but he was fundamentally a show pony who played for himself. Why else do you think he ended up playing for mid table clubs like us and Villa ?

Wow

 

[stov]

Ginola was a wonderfully entertaining footballer, but he was fundamentally a show pony who played for himself. Why else do you think he ended up playing for mid table clubs like us and Villa ?

revisionist view of the one shining light of the spurs team in the late nineties.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

revisionist view of the one shining light of the spurs team in the late nineties.

No, was very much my view at the time. Why do you think we sold our "shining light" ?

 

[stov]

No, was very much my view at the time. Why do you think we sold our "shining light" ?

simple answer, george graham. he was also 33

 

[tttcowan]

Ginola was a wonderfully entertaining footballer, but he was fundamentally a show pony who played for himself. Why else do you think he ended up playing for mid table clubs like us and Villa ?

I say again... Just.... Wow.

 

[Flashspur]

Just heard the interview and it was great. A very nice man. He wants to be a manager but I reckon he is too nice for management.

AND BC I think you are wrong.

 

[tttcowan]

Just heard the interview and it was great. A very nice man. He wants to be a manager but I reckon he is too nice for management.

AND BC I think you are wrong.

Fans like BC do not deserve players like Ginola... Who was such a show poney he won PFA player of the year and FWA footballer of the year the same year United won the treble.

 

[BringBack_leGin]

Ginola was a wonderfully entertaining footballer, but he was fundamentally a show pony who played for himself. Why else do you think he ended up playing for mid table clubs like us and Villa ?

No, was very much my view at the time. Why do you think we sold our "shining light" ?

Sorry but that's poppy cock. If we had even one half decent striker in Ginola's time here (barring a few months of a knackered Klinsmann) he'd have made 20+ goals a season. The guy put in, even after he slowed a bit in his final seson, a dozen perfect crosses a game but he was aiming at Armstrong, Iversen and Ferdinand. Yes, he didn't do anything off the ball, but once he got the ball he busted a gut to make things happen, and he always showed for it, which is one of your biggest gripes (justifiably) against our current main wing outlet. Fact is, without Ginola (especially given Anderton's regular injuries), our midfield would have been made up from Sinton, Fox, Leaonhardson, Nielsen, Howells, Berti, Saib- enthralling. We'd have been relegated in Ginola's first season without him, and have finished far lower in either of the subsequent seasons. We'd have certainly not reached an FA Cup semi final or won the league cup either. There's a reason why he spent every match marked by several opposition players, whether we were playing Barnsley or Man Utd.

As for why he ended up at mid table clubs like us and Villa, why not? We were also a mid table club in the summer of 94 when we signed Jurgen Klinsmann fresh off scoring 5 goals (1 off the top 2 scorers Salenko and Stoichkov, equal to both Baggio and Romario) at the World Cup and was still considered one of the worlds top strikers. We are Spurs, we have a massive history and in the mid nineties (i.e. before the emergence of Chelsea and then City) we were probably only less attractive than Man Utd, Liverpool, and very arguably Arsenal (who were a bit of a mess in the few years approaching Wengers appointment with a bung taking manager being sacked, a drug taking star midfielder and a captain put in prison for drink driving). At that point in time we had won the most FA cups (at that point a huge competition, not the current devalued mess), and despite being a mid table club we had a whole host of players in the national side at the most recent international tournament (I think we had 4 or perhaps 5 players at Euro 96 with England).

It wasn't like it is now, where only the top clubs can have top players and the rest get by, because only the top clubs have enough money and they also use huge squads. It was a time where you saw Le Tissier happily seeing his career out at Southampton (would be unheard of now with the kind of money available elsewhere), where Shearer chose his boyhood club over Manchester Utd despite the far reducded chances of riches and success, and where a team like Middlesboro could sign current Brazilian and Italian internationals like Juninho and Ravanelli. Or do you think Middlesboro where a bigger club than us in the 90's?

Add to that the fact that Ginola fell out with Dalgish, and Graham actively and habitually undermined Ginola for 2 seasons just because he wasn't his kind of player (there's a reason why Arsenal only started playing football in 1996), and you have your answer. Ginola was also deemed a good enough player for the best side in the league in his first season at Newcastle, and was one of their star players too, the reason they did not win the league being that their manager lost the plot and threw away a great points advantage very quickly (not unlike us a couple of years ago under Redknapp in fact, unless you think that our final position that season was in fact what it should have been and Redknapp wasn't at fault at all).

Ginola was a great player, he was, and is, the most talented and gifted player Spurs have had since Gazza (including Modric, Berbatov, VDV and Bale), he produced constantly despite being in the most shocking Spurs side of all time and he aimed to please the fans. Writing him off as a show pony is not just incorrect, it's ridiculous to the utmost extreme. His one drawback, if you consider it a drawback (I don't, his role wasn't to defend, his role was to create and entertain) is that he did little defensively (I even find that arguable seeing as, without him as an outlet we'd have just constantly been under pressure). He was a great player, he performed in hard conditions against battling sides home and away, and he also performed against the top sides who tended to control games against us. He single handedly made White Hart Lane bearable and with the exception of maybe Ledley King he is the player with whom the supporters have had the most affinity with over the past two decades, even compared against longer servants like Keane and Defoe, or players who did produce more ultimately like Bale. There's a reason for that, and it's certainly not that tens of thousands of football supporters were blinded by, and seduced by, the cheap tricks of a show pony.

 

[Kendall]

Ginola was a wonderfully entertaining footballer, but he was fundamentally a show pony who played for himself. Why else do you think he ended up playing for mid table clubs like us and Villa ?

Agree with you, always said it. He was a genius, but also one of the most selfish footballer's around. The game for him was about personal glory.

 

[Flashspur]

i cant believe some of the opinions here....seriously.

 

[BringBack_leGin]

Agree with you, always said it. He was a genius, but also one of the most selfish footballer's around. The game for him was about personal glory.

Did you get to see Spurs live that much (in a time when we weren't televised often at all and there weren't any live streams) as that was still in the time that if you didn't get to go to matches, you relied on radio updates (was soccer saturday in existence yet?) and teletext/ ceefax.

I promise you that I'm not trying to be patronising, I just can't fathom how anybody who was witness to the majority of minutes Ginola played could subscribe to this view.

 

[danielneeds]

Ginola was a wonderfully entertaining footballer, but he was fundamentally a show pony who played for himself. Why else do you think he ended up playing for mid table clubs like us and Villa ?

If you listen to the interview you'll see how close he came joining Barca (twice) and Arsenal. He didn't have much luck when it came to transfers.