Well, this edition of the daily confession concerns Tottenham Hotspur. I’m just not that into them. In spite of my most earnest attempts at not scoffing whenever I watch them play, I find myself doing just that most of the time. And while scoffing is a perfectly reasonable reaction for the true fan – for true fans vent frustration better than anyone else – it is not, I have realised, the best reaction when you’re schooling yourself to appreciate a team to which you feel a certain geographical connection.

As I was watching Spurs play a friendly against Norwich City last night, however, I managed to avoid scoffing. And – wonder of wonders! – I did not merely avoid scoffing because I was seated in a pub with about twenty young men who seemed very serious about supporting Spurs. No, I believe that the reason why I refrained from scoffing was that I had passed through scoffing and all the way to the other side of scoffing, which is the place where you smile fondly. There is perhaps a short phase in between, where you can’t help giggling a little bit, but it lasted only a few short minutes with me – the minutes between realising that Spurs were, de facto, playing with a three-man defence [who needs more, right?] to the second of Darren Bent’s rather fortunate poker [anyone aware of an English word for this is welcome to tell me].

I turned to one of my companions – a lifelong and very proper Spurs fan who believes in attacking football and 4-4 draws [as opposed to defensive football and 1-0 wins] – and asked bemusedly, “So … basically, Spurs are on an ideological crusade to invert the Christmas tree?” I could, perhaps, have made rather more astute observations concerning Spurs’ playing style and, in particular, the formation they were playing [or, as it were, the formation they were trying to play], but as I am currently rather occupied with the idea of getting my dirty little hands on Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid , this was the thought that first occurred to me. And – much to my surprise, as it really was a rather sweeping statement – our friend, the real Spurs fan, thought it over with the help of a swig of Carlsberg. And agreed.

Now, I don’t find it particularly likely that Juande Ramos, or any of his predecessors, is out to bring back the pyramid formation, but I still found it interesting that most of the table – then consisting of five Spurs fans, generously including myself – did not have any problem with the basic sentiment of inverting the Christmas tree. Except, of course, for myself. Or rather, I knew I should have a problem with the basic sentiment – I happen to appreciate the Christmas tree, unless it’s being played to spectacularly little effect by Milan – and yet, I thought it was the most brilliant thing ever.

Possibly, I might want to blame the fact that I had more than one drink on a Monday night, which is surely excessive – and might make any imaginary tactical revolution seem like a stroke of genius when played to such inept success as Spurs’ 5-1 win over Norwich City – but I like to think of it as a real possibility. As the Euros would illustrate, there will certainly come a time when someone realises that haphazard defending sells more tickets and attracts more viewers than good defending [and, by natural extension, that the only reason that Sandro Nesta is rated as a half-decent footballer is that he's pretty], and we shall go back to the pyramid. Spurs are onto something. It might not win the league, or get them into the Champions League, but it’s making me smile fondly at them. And I’m sure there are others who are smiling even more fondly. The entire pub, for example.

Still – I shall be interested in seeing how their inverted Christmas tree holds up against Roma in a couple of weeks. Especially if Totti can be bothered is fit to play. And possibly a little less so if they suddenly decide to play a full central defence. But who needs a central defence, anyways?

The ways of my heart, by the way of explanation, are somewhat mysterious as well, and at some point in the far-distant past [further distant than 2005, honestly] my heart decided to take an irrational dislike towards Liverpool. Like this young man has been unable to justify his love of the club to me, I have been incapable of explaining my dislike; I fear that we shall have to classify it with “just one of those things”. He has, however, been able to articulate a number of other things concerning his club of choice, and surprisingly enough I do agree with a number of them. Yes, Steven Gerrard is quite a good midfielder. Not the best in the world, but then – who really is? Even I can see that when I’m not busy going blind with annoyance aimed in dear Stevie G’s general direction. At other times, I will prove less understanding of the young man’s claims. Like, for example, the other night. When our Liverpool-supporting friend looked at me and exclaimed, somewhat out of the blue [as I was really being very inconspicuous with my G&T], “But surely you have to agree that Jan Mølby is the best Danish player ever?”

Erm, no.

I think that I would like to respectfully disagree with that particular statement, interesting though it is. I do not have to agree that Jan Mølby is the best Danish player ever. The beauty of making sweeping claims about the qualities of footballers is, I rather think, that no one ever has to agree with anything. [Unless the subject of discussion is called Paolo Maldini, in which case said discussion is superfluous and, quitely possibly, sacrilegious.] I realise that it is so because I like quite a few footballers whose genius others seem incapable of detecting, and I am usually left feeling that I am privy to a special secret that no one else would even understand. As such, I am sure that I didn’t manage to convince the young man in question that there are a couple of Danish footballers who might have been better than Jan Mølby. I know this because one of the more profound questions of the evening went as follows, “Well, did Michael Laudrup ever play for any big clubs?” [It depends on how you look at it, I suppose. But FC Barcelona and Real Madrid both have a fairly substantial fanbase, I'm told. And they've also won some shiny things, once or twice.] And I know that this young man is most definitely very devout in his support of Liverpool, as my feeble suggestion of “Peter Schmeichel?” went ignored – not at all usual in this part of the world.

And even for all this assertion, I still remain convinced that Jan Mølby just doesn’t cut it as the best player that Denmark was ever fortunate to produce. Why? He had an illustrious club career, did he not? And was he not an important part of the only truly awesome national ever to have come out of Denmark [notwithstanding the boys who won in Gothenburg in 1992]? Well, yes. Sure. And he is not disqualified merely because his last name isn’t Laudrup. Promise. Rather, for all his talent and skill, he isn’t the greatest ever because he didn’t have the consistency of a Michael Laudrup or a Schmeichel. And he never did fail quite as spectacularly as Preben Elkjær, much like he never won as spectacularly as Elkjær did [in 1985, with Hellas Verona, wearing just one boot]. It wasn’t that he wasn’t up to much as a footballer; he was up to plenty. It’s just that he’s come up against a bit of competition, you know?

Then again, it could just be that I’m prejudiced against Jan Mølby because he played for Liverpool. The ways of the heart are mysterious, after all.

[*] The young man also seemed loath to admit that he was mispronouncing Jan Mølby’s name.

It took a while for this to sink in properly with me. I could blame the G&Ts for that, but the novelty of the idea might just as soon be the culprit. Of course a game of football can end in a draw! [Yes, I'll admit it. It also took me a second to figure out what she meant by "a tied game". Tied? What did you tie? This might have been after the fourth G&T.] Football games have been ending in draws since the beginning of time – by my count, the beginning of time where football is concerned is sometime in the mid-eighties, but I hear that football games have been known to end in draws as early as the 1960′s – and they will continue to end in draws. Sometimes two teams are evenly matched and all that jazz. Or sometimes two teams aren’t actually evenly matched, but one of the teams has all the finishing ability of a drunk fifty-year-old [... from what I hear]. And if you’re intent on waiting for someone to score a goal, you can wait until the cows come home – and the players can’t actually run any longer – when it comes to football. 200-minute matches, anyone? Wouldn’t that be fun to watch? But, the visitor countered – though not quite willing to concede the point that no one can keep playing very watchable football for that long, even if they might be able to move about the pitch at an unsteady trot – what about shoot-outs?

Shoot-outs? Shoot-outs? In half of the league games, every week? As a lover of Italian football, I was naturally appalled. Uncharacteristically, words concerning “the aesthetic of the game” might have come out of my mouth. And besides, what’s wrong with a draw? It’s not like the league title will go undecided because of a few draws, is it? Well, the visitor explained patiently, that’s not the point. The point, as far as she was concerned, is that either you win, or you lose. You don’t draw. Why did you just run around that green field for 90 minutes if you were going to draw by the end of it? I fumbled, contemplating the wall and the folded-up Sun [oh, Ronaldo, you stupid boy] and finally said that a draw is a result in its own right. I mentioned how the one point you get from a draw can make all the difference in the world; I explained how exciting it can be to watch two teams give it their all and still be evenly matched; hell, I even dragged out the old cliché about the beauty of the nil-nil [nah, I don't really think so either]. I might also have made a few slightly generalising guesses about American mentality, which may or may not have been very ill-advised. And I was met with a blank stare and a question: “What other sports can end in draws?”

Admittedly, I am no sports expert. I have only the barest grasp of the rules of, say, baseball and frankly, I haven’t got a clue about even the basics of ice hockey. Well, I am told, if other sports are tied by the end of normal playing time, they go to sudden death [... like Golden Goal? said I, not particularly wishing for the reinstatement of that particular practice] or shoot-outs. In any given game. Everyone at the table – football fans all – looked at each other and thought about it very hard, and then admitted that they couldn’t think of a single other sport that ever ended in a draw. And conversation drifted off to other, more fertile domains, such as the garage sale that Spurs appear to be having and the obligatory “Your team couldn’t even beat Arsenal!” comments. To be entirely honest, I doubt that most of the table even remember the conversation – and yet, this morning I woke up and had but one thought. “Chess!”

No, not the musical, delightful though it may be. The game. The metaphor, even. How many games aren’t really, if you’re going to be dragging the metaphors out of the morgue [in the case of chess, you'd probably even be digging it out of the grave], a game of chess? And they draw at chess all the time. I feel strangely vindicated, having thought of this.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I should perhaps let you know that the visitor almost conceded the point. After taking note of the fact that chess isn't an "athletic sport". But I hear tell that many athletic sports are all about where your head's at, anyways.]