Although the day had been coming for what felt like an eternity now, it still didn’t seem to feel any easier when it happened. As the curtain finally came down on the career of one Ledley Brenton King, Tottenham Hotspur didn’t just loose a club legend. They lost one of the finest central defenders in a generation.
But as macabre as it may seem, King’s decision to retire wasn’t just the correct decision for his own well-being- it was the correct decision for Tottenham Hotspur. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but the club would have struggled to push on with the yo-yoing presence of their former leader in the ranks.
King knew this and his decision personifies both the courage and the selflessness that has adorned his career in N17. A career in which, even if the great man’s modesty would never entertain such a notion, has truly earned the title of legendary.
In the passing days since the club announced that King was set to hang his boots up once and for all, a reflection over the past 13 years has perhaps jolted many supporters as to how long the now former skipper has actually been at the club. After making his debut at Anfield in a 3-2 defeat to Liverpool towards the end of the 1998-99 season, it was the 2000-01 term in which King really began to establish himself under George Graham.
But as bizarre as it may seem that the great man once had the fleeting Chris Perry as competition, it was the dark specter of Sol Campbell that perhaps catalyzed the destiny of Ledley King forever. The comparisons between the two were inevitable. Both were crafted as trainees at Spurs, both possessed immense power and physical ability yet the two also had a rare level of technical excellence with the ball at their feet. There is little need to denote why that passage makes such painful reading for supporters.
As Campbell did the unspeakable, Ledley King no longer became just another player. He was the light, the one constant in an era full of George Graham, Glenn Hoddle and Jacques Santini like variables. Supporters bestowed as much expectation as they did adulation on the thoroughbred centre-half. Suffice to say, King didn’t disappoint.
What followed was a decade of football that immortalized him into the annals of White Hart Lane history. At the risk of sounding condescending, supporters from other clubs who aren’t entirely sure what all the fuss is about, simply haven’t followed King’s career close enough. When supporters talk about ‘club legends’, so often it is the cult heroes who crop up in conversation. Players, who clocked up hundreds of appearances and had great one-off seasons but not necessarily the most talented of footballers.
The thing with King is that he genuinely was one of the most gifted central-defenders to play the game. He had the supreme physical attributes and the body-lunging bravery that we appreciate in this country. But he was a footballer. Dare you say it, he embodied the ‘Spurs’ way of playing. He saw things that other defenders couldn’t see; he read the game in another way. And that gift was perhaps the most poignant one as the injuries took their toll.
Because there was of course, a heartbreaking sub-plot of injury that blighted Ledley King’s career. A vast majority of those who visit White Hart Lane could give you a relatively decent lecture about the degeneration of knee cartilage, such is its documentation in the national press. But as the years went by, even some Spurs fans perhaps took the King’s presence for granted, such was his supernatural ability to play Premier League without any real physical conditioning and a full working knee joint.
That’s not meant in a derogatory term. And again, without aiming another parting shot at Harry Redknapp, his infamous quip about King being so good, it was worth having him if only for 20 games a season, perhaps rings more hollow now.
As last season, King did finally begin to look human. Even then, he was still head and shoulders above most Premier League defenders. But as he began to mistime tackles for the first time in his career, fans knew something was up. The sight of him at times, physically struggling to straighten his knee, was perhaps the final straw.
But it’s the effect on the rest of the team which we often have shunned ,such has been the importance of the man. Spurs haven’t had a stable back four in several years now. Because as good as the team may have been for the game in which King played, it was the next fixture in which another partnership had to conjoin, where the team would suffer.
And as optimism blooms under the new Andre Villas-Boas era, there is a feeling Spurs are on the cusp of something big. But as painful as it seems, surely every team will hit a glass ceiling with a back four that shuffles every other game. Tottenham fans may be mourning, but there is a feeling of understanding at White Hart Lane. When asked if there were any positives to take out of King’s departure, the Spurs community on Twitter seemed to retain the sense of realism.
@Yids Stability.
@KennyPalmer Spurs will now be able to have a regular/stable CB partnership and a defined back four.
@SibsTHFC it’s better that he’s retired with his legs all still in one piece. Better that than witness a very sad slow decline…It also allows a new partnership that will last for years to be formed.
And it is the future that can now be built on at White Hart Lane. Spurs may not have been able to acquire the services of a top-class centre-half, in the mould of someone like Jan Vertonghen, if Ledley King was still looming at the Lane. How could they sell the club to a player on the premise that they would only be able to play every other week?
It feels uneasy to consign Ledley King’s retirement as a necessity. Yes, if he had chose to work another season for the club, you’d imagine he would gain the club several points along the way, such is his phenomenal level of ability. But it could also have been the season where, for the first time in his career, he began to cost the club points. Potentially, at the cost of massive loss himself. The club will never forget, but it had to move on.
Ledley King will always exist at White Hart Lane in some capacity. For the moment, it’s ambassadorial, but who knows what the future may hold. In the era of perceived Premier League greed, Ledley King was a player who went through genuine pain and put himself at real risk by playing for his football club.
He always wanted what was best for the football club. His decision to call it a day has evoked many emotions, but maybe in some ways, we should be harnessing optimism, not eternal sadness. Tottenham Hotspur can now finally push on.
How do you see Ledley King’s retirement? Right decision for you or do you think the club should have kept him on for one more season? Tell me how you see it, for Spurs talk and anything else, follow @samuel_antrobus and tell me what you think.
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