Beef Bagel

Does anyone know what these security measures for our away trip to Tel Aviv are all about? If you hadn’t noticed, the club is refusing to sell tickets to the game without flights as well in a move to protect Tottenham fans. It looks as if the flights out to Israel will be charter flights from Thompson for fans and officials only. Is the idea to make these safe from suicide bombings or is it the game itself that’s the potential target? I’m not quite sure how this is all supposed to work? Would it not be easy enough to get a ticket for the game in the home end? I’ll have to tap up my contact in the ticket office and find out.

What I can tell you is that The Bagel will be there. It just so happens that my family is going to be out there on a little jaunt as it is and a holiday that I initially rejected has now gained an irresistible appeal. With just 700 seats allocated to traveling Spurs, it’s unlikely I’ll have the pleasure of faking my brotherhood with the most distilled of ex-firm, Tottenham football fanatic but hopefully if the Pita can swing it there’ll be seats for my whole Bagel family clan in and amongst the locals of which my father is one. My Hebrew is more than a little shaky and his terrace talk is nil to basic but between us we should be able to unravel the shouts of the Hapoel fans. The bit I’m looking forward to most - and God I pray it happens - is when both sets of fans stand up, point at each other and shout, ‘Yiddo, Yiddo, Yiddo.’ It brings a tear to my eye just to think about it.

Having said that, it’s quite possible that the Jewish link could be lost on the local fans and our reception could be a little more hostile. In fact, a little bagel research has uncovered that they have their own set of Ultras, that wonderfully PC word that every country, other than ourselves, use to refer to their hooligans and I do wonder how my family will feel in an amongst this…

…should be a laugh. I may be keeping my allegiances rather muffled in case a Robbie Keane hat-trick gets me run through with a sharpened menorah.

In possibly more immediate news, you may have read in the paper yesterday that Spurs vice chairman and orchestrator of the Ramos mishap, Paul Kemsley has emerged as front runner for a takeover of the club. It’s unclear how much difference it would make given that he’s responsible for much of the club’s business as it is but he does come with added enthusiasm and a whole bunch of cash from a supporting consortium. The part I like is the quote in the Mail that refers to,

“Kemsley, who has the Spurs colours and crest woven into the carpet in his office.”

What a guy. That’s just the grown up’s version of a pillow and duvet set.

Such change at the club would have caused The Bagel concern back in the summer but it’s all par for the course in these uncertain times in which we live just now.

“How often does a bagel go past?

So often you won’t even notice it.”

The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 10:09 am and is filed under Bagel News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.