🗣️ Peter Crouch on Benoît Assou-Ekotto:

"He would tell us straight out that he had no interest in football whatsoever. He genuinely didn't like it. At 1.30pm on a Saturday he'd have no idea which team you were playing.

"But Benoît, we've been talking about them in training all week...'

"And so to his pre-match meal. Now none of us are adventurous. It's pasta, chicken, no sauce, and has been for the past 20 years. Benoît would turn up with a Tesco's bag containing the same four items every time: a croissant, a hot chocolate, a full-fat Coke and a packet of crisps.

"The croissant I understood. He is French-Cameroonian. The hot chocolate: same cultural backstory. He used to dip the first into the second. But the crisps, and the Coke — it was like two discrete lunches, one belonging to a middle-aged Parisian and the other a 12-year-old on the Seven Sisters Road.

"And it worked. He was always in great shape and rarely injured. We accepted it, along with all the other weirdness: the random cars he would turn up to training in, sometimes a Smart car, then a Lamborghini; the way he would refuse to take ice baths for recovery, on the rather basic premise that they were 'too cold'.

"Benoît was a really weird guy but we loved him a lot." 🤍😅

7 dager senere

Spurs cult hero Sandro reveals ‘crazy’ Benoit Assou-Ekotto ‘repeatedly punched' Rafa Van der Vaart 😳

🗣️ "Benoit [Assou-Ekotto] is a crazy guy, he really is. We liked him a lot. We knew he was a particular kind of guy, but we liked him because of it. He never used to know who we were playing on a weekend... he just didn't like football.

"There's a funny moment that springs to mind when I think about Assou-Ekotto. He used to like to take free-kicks for us. One time we got a free-kick in a good position and Rafael van der Vaart picked up the ball and decided to shoot. Assou took this very personally; he was very upset because, to him, that was his ball; he was going to shoot.

"In this moment, he was mad. At half-time, we get into the dressing room and he's punching Rafa! I tried to grab hold of him, he was so strong as well, so I'm grabbing holding of him and dragging him back because he's trying to attack Rafa. 'Why did you take the shot? Why did you do this? It's my ball, my friend... you don't take it! Next time, I kill you!'

"He was so angry. The next day, we turn up to training and Van der Vaart comes over to me and says 'Sandro, you saved my life... thank you very much!'" 😬

    Knut
    Haha kul historie om ikke annet. Sandro, Benny og Vdv. Veldig kule spillere synes jeg. Følte at vi var "der oppe" selv om vi ikke var helt i toppen på grunn av den type spillere. Mulig jeg Spurs romantiserer men synes vi har hatt mange begavede og personlighetsrike spillere i mine snart 40 år som supporter. Kanskje det som har gjort at vi blir sett på som en storklubb på tross av pokaltørke. Og kanskje det som har gjort at noen kulturer henger igjen, dvs at vinnermentaliteten kan gå på akkord med behovet for å underholde

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