DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
Sometimes it takes only a couple of seconds to fall for a player. In the case of Glenn Hoddle, even less was needed, as the 17-year-old tamed the ball on one long thigh and flicked it to his other foot, from which it was volleyed to a Tottenham team-mate on a distant flank, all in one smooth movement. The identity of the wideman eludes memory – it might have been Jimmy Neighbour on one wing, Ralph Coates on the other, or Steve Perryman driving forward – and so does the outcome of what was, for a newcomer to the highest level of English football, a pass of astonishingly beautiful simplicity. But it can be safely assumed that the recipient had no difficulty in controlling it. Even as a kid, Hoddle could make the ball slow down, speed up, stop or change direction, almost as if he were a drone operator. Or a golfer. It was Perryman who, many years later, chose the metaphor. Hoddle, now a pundit for BT Sport and ITV, relays to FourFourTwo the conversation with his old pal, explaining why he was different from most players sharing the rugged 1970s into which he arrived – an era in which the machismo of a Tommy Smith or Norman Hunter was as likely to be hailed as the craft of a Tony Currie or Frank Worthington.
It was a question of range, Hoddle confesses at last, having been egged on by FFT. “Left and right foot – that was where I was unique,” he answers. “To be able to play with the outside of my left or my right, or the inside of my left or my right, and the instep as well, gave me a variety of ways of manipulating the ball, and all naturally. And I could do everything when I was young, cutting across the ball and so on.”
Spin was just one of his allies. “I used to love playing into the wind,” he recalls, “because I’d use the wind, too. Stevie said to me, ‘Glenn, you’re like a golfer. Your feet are like a set of golf clubs.’ I took that as a big compliment.”
Not that he was ever shy to impart a bit of power. He made his first Football League start in the mud at Stoke. A ball was half-cleared and Hoddle took a couple of hastening steps before half-volleying it in a blur beyond the goalkeeper. Not just any keeper, either: the great Peter Shilton, and a defender on the line.
Among his team-mates was Martin Chivers, the striker whom Bill Nicholson had made Britain’s most expensive player while Hoddle was an adolescent fan. Around that time, Hoddle had been approached by Spurs scouts but heard nothing more, until one day Chivers – who was a hero by then – came to his home town of Harlow to watch a schoolboy cup final and present the
