February 16th, 2025, a crowd of over 3,000 Tottenham Hotspur fans made their way down Tottenham High Road like an army marching to war, protesting in full voice. A sound growing ever so familiar to those of small businesses and food vans that welcome the 62,000 that take to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium every other week. They have one message that sounds louder than others. Louder than the call for Ange Postecoglou’s head. It’s the call for change in the lilywhite’s hierarchy. They demand that chairman Daniel Levy and ENIC release control of their beloved football club. They are going to extreme lengths to make their peaceful protests and planned sit-ins effective.
The main question is why is there a demand for change, who are the architects behind this movement, how they are gaining such traction?
Change For Tottenham (CFT) is the leading Spurs supporters’ group, who are all aligned with the same vision of pushing for ENIC and Daniel Levy to relinquish their position as majority shareholders. When not taking to the streets of N17, members of CFT have become recognisable for their branding around the 17,500-capacity south stand. Matchday goers will be familiar with the yellow and blue banners that read: ‘24 years, 16 managers, 1 trophy. TIME FOR CHANGE!’.
To fans of all generations and other football clubs, it’s been no secret that Tottenham have fallen behind their rivals with the club having no silverware since 2008 when they secured the League Cup title, beating Chelsea under the Wembley arch with Juande Ramos in charge who was later sacked in October the same year. In most people’s eyes, the success of winning the League Cup was seen as more of a side note as opposed to the credibility the club receives from winning other domestic competitions like the FA Cup, which Spurs last one in 1991, before the takeover from Daniel Levy. Since Ramos, Spurs have seen 12 other managers take to the dugout, with the biggest names being the likes of Harry Redknapp, Mauricio Pochettino, Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte and current manager and under pressure, Ange Postecoglou. Despite some of those names being renowned as ‘serial winners’, only one ever came close to returning Tottenham to their glory days. Mauricio Pochettino, who took over in 2015, gave fans a reason to dream when he led arguably the club’s most dominant period since the days of Bill Nicholson. He took them to a top three Premier League finish on 3 occasions, a League Cup final, two FA Cup semi-finals and even runners-up in Europe’s most significant, the UEFA Champions League. A massive achievement for the club when considering that no transfers were made during the last 2 previous transfer windows.
So, why point the finger at Levy?
Well, despite the high-flying days under Pochettino and several years playing across three continental competitions, to Spurs fans, there has always been an underlying issue with the priorities of ENIC and Levy. For a lot of fans, what has fuelled the demand for change is that they feel their football club has lost its identity as a football club that was once daring to do and instead has now become more of a franchise or business. To some, this wouldn’t be an issue as that’s where most clubs are heading in today’s world, but most of those clubs have been successful along the way. This issue has been highlighted even more in recent months with the club currently sitting in the bottom half of the Premier League and they are seeing continuous rises in ticket prices, money being spent on players (who some see as not good enough) and their new £1B stadium becoming more of an entertainment centre with the announcement of several upcoming music concerts and other attractions such as: Beyonce and Chris Brown, the introduction of an F1 themed go karting track, and the hosting of major Rugby and Boxing events. Again, some understand the principle behind these business ventures but instead would wish to see this level of ambition being put into improving what the club was built around: The football pitch.
To gather a better understanding of how the club saw such a shift when Levy took over, I spoke to well-known podcaster, content creator and lifelong Spurs fan, Flav Bateman. Some will know of him from his popular podcast: ‘The fighting cock podcast’ which has reached over 1,000 episodes over 14 years and his appearances on Sky Sports and Talksport. We sat over a Zoom call where I was keen to pick his brain and be educated on the state of the club before the arrival of ENIC (so before 2001) and perhaps how supporting Tottenham has been affected by the high increase in commercialisation and, finally, how the CFT movement has become so influential.
When asked about his knowledge of Spurs before the change in ownership, Flav highlighted that he always remembered the Spurs fanbase being: “A community of people that either grew up near Tottenham, their fathers made them choose to support them, or for whatever reason, made that choice on their own accord, who would come together in unison watch Spurs play at White Hart Lane”
“That’s what football was like for a long time before Levy turned up.”
When reminiscing, Flav also highlighted the fact that the world he grew up watching Tottenham in was very different to what Tottenham is now. “The football was much worse, we had less hope, we had less optimism, there was very little chance we were going to become a team that would challenge for a league title”. Following on, he added: “You would argue now that Spurs are in a position where, with the right recruitment and manager, we could get there”
Despite siding that he too doesn’t feel the club can be successful with Levy and ENIC, Flav still rightly highlighted the positive moves made during their tenure highlighting that they knew the money put into the club was going to multiply significantly and on the pitch and there was progression in their first five years at the helm after a period from 2001-2004 which Flav labelled as “the worst period in terms of quality for a long, long time”. He also labelled the building of the stadium and the appointments of the likes of Mourinho and Conte as “ambitious”. He too was keen to address the issues with of recruitment and spending, highlighting that on top of Brexit happening, the stadium going from £600M to £1B in cost, and the pandemic coming so soon after, any recruitment for the first team would have been hindered. A similar scenario that has impacted other clubs and projects of that stature.
Speaking further, we touched upon one of the most fueling issues, the ticket pricing. When revealing to Flav that I spent £60 to watch Spurs take on bottom of the table Sheffield United, he raised a concern that many share about the image of having a brand new £1B stadium. “You’ve got the amazing stadium, but you’ve got the price points which gaslight you into thinking you operate as a massive football club, but you’re paying more than anyone else”. “We’re meant to believe that the price of entering the stadium means that Tottenham will operate as those other big football clubs”. As previously mentioned, the majority of those who wish to see the back of Daniel Levy have similar concerns surrounding the “monolithic nature”, as Flav described it, of how the club operates in terms of turnover and the importance of revenue in meeting PSR and FFP rules. Something Flav said earlier on in our conversation, which engulfs this topic with melancholy, was: “The matchday experience before Levy took over was much more in keeping with what I fell in love with”.
To close the insightful interview with Flav, who was generous in giving me 45 minutes of his time, I wanted to hear his view on the CFT movement and their recent actions and the impact of protesting and how the movement is making a global impact.
When asked for his opinion on protesting for change, Flav gave it his full backing, stating that: “You should always protest and congregate, countries are built on it”. “Supporters should make their voices heard”.
Touching on how previous attempts of protesting had hit a brick wall, Flav put CFT in high regard, saying that they have “galvanised the ENIC out movement with its element of peace and clear message: WE WANT DANIEL LEVY AND ENIC TO LEAVE!”. CFT were also commended for their work in encouraging 3,000, maybe more, fans to join the march in February rather than following suit with most people in “prioritising their desires over the greater good”. Despite the wishes, he concluded that he doesn’t see their work ever convincing Daniel Levy to sell the club.
I followed on by asking Flav how he sees CFT making more of a global impact. Flav shared his knowledge of American Spurs supporter groups acting, revealing that: “The change for Tottenham movement are addressing that mission in that they have made banners available for print that fans can use to show solidarity from oversees so there are ways of making more voices heard, creating awareness of the frustration.”
From speaking to Flav about the CFT movement, I was able to develop my understanding of the huge scale of the initiative with the likes of ex-players like Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville addressing it on their Sky Sports show ‘The Overlap’ and pundits alike now talking about the issues that lay ahead under Levy and ENIC. As Flav put it: “It’s a conversation that’s happening naturally.”
Just as my free 40-minute Zoom session was about to end, I got some final words from the wonderful Flav Bateman, asking him where he sees Tottenham Hotspur in 5 years. This was his closing response: “Football can move so quickly. I’ve learnt that it can be as simple as the right manager at the right time for everything to change. The success of Daniel Levy has been by luck rather than design.”
Stay tuned to the Change for Tottenham movement as they are yet to give up on making their voices heard with their next march set to take place before the Southampton home game on Sunday, the 6th of April.
