The Brilliance of Bill Nicholson - Part Four
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome back to It Was What It Was.
Jonathan and Rob continue exploring the extraordinary legacy of Bill Nicholson’s push and run game at Spurs and its relationship with Cruyff, Ajax, Barça and Total Football.
In Part 4, Nicholson guides Spurs to the first league and cup double of the 20th century and Spurs become the first British club to win a European trophy.
Don't forget to go back and listen to the rest of this series. Parts one and two feature Spurs royalty Steve Perryman!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jimmy Greaves never gave me a spot of trouble |
| 0:09.1 | and I'll tell you what, there are at least ten goals should have been added to his tally |
| 0:12.2 | has he been flagged offside simply because the movement was too quick for the either |
| 0:15.0 | island's the hardest of all to take was in the 1962 Euro pick-up semi-finaling against Benfica |
| 0:19.8 | at Whitehall Lane when he scored a perfectly good goal that was ruled offside. That broke all our hearts. |
| 0:26.1 | We might have beaten Joch Steen and his great Celtic side to become the first British side to win the European Cup. |
| 0:31.5 | I'm Jonathan Wilson and with Rob Draper and that was the great Bill Nicholson, talking about his |
| 0:35.6 | disappointment about Tom's defeat to Benfica in the 62 European Cup semi. |
| 0:40.7 | Welcome to It Was What I Was, the Football History Podcasts. |
| 0:43.5 | And today we're doing the second part of our special on Bill Nicholson. |
| 0:48.3 | So last week we interviewed Steve Perryman. |
| 0:51.9 | So do go back and listen to that. |
| 0:53.8 | Steve talks about his personal experience of being managed by Bill Nicholson, |
| 0:58.4 | and he knew him through the 80s. |
| 1:01.4 | So lots of good anecdotes, lots of good personal recollections there. |
| 1:06.1 | And then this week we've been talking about Bill Nicholson the man, |
| 1:10.0 | Bill Nichol and the manager, |
| 1:10.9 | how he fits into tactical history. |
| 1:12.8 | And in part one, |
| 1:15.2 | we just got up to him being appointed |
| 1:16.9 | manager of Tottenham in 958. |
| 1:19.6 | So Rob, |
... |
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