rewrite this title ‘Never refer to us as Tottenham’ may seem a small edict but it says a lot about the modern game

Back in my early twenties, I was at a party at a rooftop bar trapped in a round of small talk with a friend of a friend. Scrambling around for conversation, I asked her where she came from. “Folkestone,” she said. If you don’t know, that’s a coastal town in Kent, in the south east of England.

Without hesitation, I replied: “Folkestone Invicta” — the name of the town’s local non-League club, currently playing in the seventh tier of English football. To this day, I have never forgotten the look on her face: one of almost total boredom and indifference, but for a trace amount of pity.

Yet, to paraphrase a certain Premier League club’s ‘Brand Playbook’: in a world full of Uniteds, Citys and Rovers, there is only one Invicta — Folkestone Invicta.

And back in 1936, if the club’s founders had thought ‘Invicta’ was unique enough to be the club’s name on its own — no need for the ‘Folkestone’ part — then not only could I have avoided that moment’s awkwardness decades later, but those founders would have been almost a century ahead of their time.

As The Athletic revealed on Friday, Tottenham no longer want you to call them Tottenham. It is ‘Spurs’ for short, thanks. And that’s not the only bit of preferred nomenclature.

“When referring to the team or the brand, please use ‘Tottenham Hotspur’, ‘Tottenham Hotspur Football Club’ or ‘THFC’,” the club wrote in guidance sent to Premier League broadcasters this month. “Never refer to our Club as ‘Tottenham’, ‘Tottenham Hotspur FC’ or ‘TH’.” Never. Or else.

It raises many questions, not least, what is the material difference between the terms ‘Tottenham Hotspur Football Club’ and ‘Tottenham Hotspur FC’? I don’t know. But I’m going to use the prohibited versions for the rest of this column in the hope of provoking somebody at Tottenham Hotspur FC into telling me.

There is a reason for the ‘Spurs’ preference, at least. Tottenham argue Tottenham is the name of the area, not the name of the club, and this has been their policy for years. Trawl through search engine results and you’ll do well to find a single use of ‘Tottenham’ without ‘Hotspur’ attached to it on the club’s website.

The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)

Tottenham have consistently been referred to as ‘Spurs’ in fixture listings on the Premier League’s official website for some time. Go back through the league’s official social media feeds and practically the only mentions of the word ‘Tottenham’ are references to the ‘Tottenham Hotspur Stadium’.

In a way, the club is merely going back to its roots. When a group of schoolboy cricketers founded the club in 1882, their choice of name was ‘Hotspur FC’. The ‘Tottenham’ was only added two years later because, as the possibly apocryphal tale goes, they began receiving the post of another club called Hotspur.

It is not as if the club has actually changed its name and eradicated any geographical marker altogether, either. Another in north London set the precedent for that back in 1913 upon relocation from Woolwich. So, does any of that make this diktat more explainable?

In response to Friday’s news, some Tottenham fans have rightly said that with Ange Postecoglou’s side in the bottom half of the table, after being knocked out of both domestic cups in the space of three days this month, they and the club itself have bigger things to worry about.

Others have suggested it is simply related to copyright, as the term ‘Spurs’ would be easier to trademark than the name of the surrounding area. Except Tottenham already list the word ‘Tottenham’ among their registered trademarks.

And even if they didn’t, what would that have to do with how the club is referred to on Soccer Saturday’s vidiprinter?

But it is hard not to agree with another strand of the reaction, from the Tottenham fans and supporters of other clubs who see this as a disappointing sign of where football is currently at; another small brick paved in a road that the sport as a whole has already travelled a long way down.

But are Tottenham Hotspur fans allowed in? (Jacques Feeney/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Many Manchester United supporters still lament the removal of the words ‘Football Club’ from the crest in 1998 — controversial at the time, but the same words or the initials ‘F.C.’ are now regularly dispensed with little comment.

Six years ago, Liverpool failed to trademark the city’s name for merchandising purposes. Chelsea had more success of a sort earlier this season, celebrating their 120th anniversary with a new, alternative club crest featuring their lion rampant regardant above the letters ‘LDN’.

Similarly, in 2016, West Ham United added the word ‘London’ to their revamped crest, although at least put that to a vote among supporters first.

And this sort of thing is far from a Premier League phenomenon. Paris Saint-Germain’s rebranding accentuated the word ‘Paris’ on their logo, not so much the ‘Saint-Germain’, and UEFA uniformly refers to the club as ‘Paris’ rather than ‘PSG’.

On the surface level, Tottenham’s ‘Spurs’ preference is different from some of those examples. Rather than more closely associating themselves with a larger metropolitan surrounding, they have gone the other way: drawing a line between ‘Spurs’ the team and ‘Tottenham’ the area in its justifications.

But there is a common thread between such decisions. All are fundamental attempts to make a club’s identity something that can be more easily swallowed and digested. In other words, something that can be consumed, especially on the global market.

Too often, that comes at the expense of what a club is: its history, its culture, its locality. It is said often enough to be a cliche nowadays, but it is still ignored enough to bear repeating: football clubs are representations of their communities first and foremost, global brands second.

The overwhelming majority of clubs recognise that in the creditable work they do within those communities, but are quick to forget that responsibility in their marketing departments when it is time to think about what will sell better on a plastic water bottle.

Tottenham are by no means alone in that. It often feels like clubs who want to get ahead in football’s present landscape have to prioritise where they are going over where they have come from. Referring to the club as ‘Spurs’ rather than ‘Tottenham’ is a small but not insignificant shift. And enough to remind me that, one of these days, I might have to get myself down to Folkestone Invicta.

(Top photo: Jacques Feeney/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)