London football history: Why our city’s turf war makes it the world capital of football

Flashback: Police regulate the crowd at the touchline as great numbers of spectators crowd the pitch at Highbury, 1928
Davis/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
John Dillon3 September 2016

The four giant cranes climb strikingly above the north-east London skyline. They are visible from the North Circular Road as Tottenham’s new stadium takes shape – soaring and dynamic symbols of London’s endless football revolution.

Spurs new ground will open in 2018 with a capacity of 61,000, which will be 548 more people than they get into Arsenal’s Emirates.

The percentage difference is 0.939 per cent, but every little counts in London’s most fierce football turf war. Not as much as winning trophies or league placing, at which Arsenal are so much better than their neighbours. But Spurs have a plan to change all that and the tiny difference in capacity is a part of it.

As the builders work away, it remains the case that no city on earth is home to as many of these complex sporting rivalries, simply because nowhere else is home to as many professional football clubs, with Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs clearly the big three throughout history and on the modern global stage. It is all becoming more intense, more avidly followed worldwide and more rocket-fuelled than ever by high finance and corporate power.

Tottenham’s opening of a new home will be the next striking development in this tangled and inter-twined struggle.

It will come hard on the heels of West Ham’s move into the Olympic stadium, with Chelsea’s plans for a new 60,000 HQ at Stamford Bridge well advanced too. Arsenal, of course, were well ahead of the game and moved ground from dear old Highbury 10 years ago.

Yet in in one way, despite all these advances and despite all the cranes at work, London football is simply now repeating one of its major stories; one which is detailed in a fascinating new book entitled “Turf Wars; A history of London football.”

For all the change, for all the money that has poured into football in recent times, argues author Steve Tongue, the backdrop to the ceaseless battle has remained remarkably consistent.

The hierarchy among the clubs is clear; the book, for instance, details how Arsenal, along with their 13 league titles and 12 FA Cup wins, far and away lead the league table of which London club has finished highest in the league each season.

They have done it 58 times ( 17 times as Woolwich Arsenal before they famously crossed the Thames) compared to Tottenham’s 21, Chelsea’s 20, QPR’S six, West Ham’s four – only four, which is disappointing and says so much about their past under-achievement - Charlton’s two and Brentford’s one.

Yes, the clubs were founded at different times. But these are the facts in the record books.

One major theme is clear, too, By moving to Stratford, the Hammers have made their most dramatic attempt yet to rise above their status as London’s fourth-ranking club and join Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea in claiming world-wide prominence (although the Hammers have never won the title).

Yet this is a struggle which is has been going on, through thick and a lot of thin, for nearly 100 years, since West Ham played in the famous White Horse FA Cup final of 1923 and reached Division One in the same season.

Tongue, a leading football journalist, who was for 13 years the voice of London football on LBC radio, says: “By any criteria, Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs have been the big three in London for more than 100 years now. Whether anyone could challenge them has been an interesting question.

“Immediately after the First World War, Fulham might have hoped to, but basically it took them too long to reach the top division, whereas West Ham did so in the same year they reached the first Wembley final, 1923, and were able to build on that.

“I think also that Fulham and the other west London clubs were always in Chelsea’s shadow and attracting smaller crowds than them.

“By contrast, West Ham were able to make east London their own territory and build a very loyal following there over the years.

“So can a new 60,000 stadium, with all the financial advantages they’ve enjoyed, help them take that next step? You’d have to say it gives them their best chance ever. And once Chelsea and Spurs increase their capacity as well, like Arsenal did, it’s easy to see those four pulling further away from the rest.”

Tongue knows all this as well as anyone. Born in Walthamstow, he is a lifelong Leyton Orient supporter who saw his first match in 1957. Along with his brilliant stint at LBC, he has chronicled the London football scene for The Independent, the Independent on Sunday and the old London Daily News evening paper. He has covered nine World Cups and nine Euros.

He knows the London scene from top to bottom so his book doesn’t just detail the histories and the rivalries of the big clubs. All their stories, their ups and downs are there – Crystal Palace, Millwall Charlton, Brentford, Wimbledon, AFC Wimbledon). Fulham, Dagenham and Redbridge, QPR and Barnet.

Which club, for example changed colours from “unlucky” green and were rewarded by a finishing third in the old Third Division South in 1929-30? It was QPR, who have stuck with blue and white hoops since.

Which notable 1920s London player turned up with his team in 1925 to play for his club against Manchester United at Old Trafford – only to be told in the dressing room at 2,15 pm that he had been sold to United for £2,000 earlier that afternoon and they wanted him in their side at 3pm?

It was Orient forward Albert Pape, who not only played for his new side but scored their third goal in a 4-2 defeat of the east London side he had reluctantly left before kick-off.

Naturally enough, too, the story of football in the capital is enmeshed with its once fabulous non-league tradition, which was encapsulated by famous old clubs like Walthamstow Avenue, Dulwich Hamlet and Corinthian Casuals.

Meanwhile, measure the biggest club’s rivalries by European trophies, of course, and Chelsea come out on top as the only winners of the European Cup. Yet it is remarkable that for all its footballing might, only one capital club has managed this – and that it didn’t happen until the 67th year of the competition’s existence.

1966 World Cup Final - England vs West Germany

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Spurs were the first English club to triumph in Europe by winning the 1963 Cup Winners Cup. Chelsea, though won that pot twice as well as winning the 2012 Champions League.

When, by the way, Liverpool fans taunt Blues supporters for having no history, they should recall that Chelsea triumphed in Europe before the Reds did by defeating Real Madrid in the famed 1971 Cup Winners Cup final, which went to replay in Athens.

Liverpool did not win Europe until they won the 1973 Uefa Cup. Both Spurs and Arsenal won two of the three former European trophies and West Ham crowned their finest years by winning the Cup Winners Cup in 1965, too.

Pitch Publishing/Steve Tongue
Pitch Publishing/Steve Tongue

“Although the hierarchy of London football has changed surprisingly little,” author Tongue adds, “others have had their moments – often prolonged ones.

“Even ‘little’ Leyton Orient played a season in the top division in 1962-63.

“The downside of the great variety of clubs here is the struggle to prosper or even survive in a very crowded field.

“Every London league club has – without exception – suffered serious financial problems at one time or another, often leading to the need to defend or expand their own territory.

“Most famously, Woolwich Arsenal, the capital’s first professional club, decided the district on the south bank of the Thames could no longer support them. Having failed to interest Fulham in a ground share or merger, they upped sticks from south London to north, enabling Charlton to flourish... but infuriating Tottenham and the perennially struggling Leyton Orient.

“So the turf wars began early.......” and long may they continue.

“TURF WARS: A history of London football” is produced by Pitch Publishing at RRP £9.99

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