Matthew Le Tissier: Diamond in the rough
Matt Le Tissier
On the 14th of October 1968, the world made a little room for a very special baby, one who would go on to become one of the greatest footballers of his generation. On a dare, try taking a walk down to St.Mary’s stadium in Southampton today, on the eve of his birthday, and asking The Saints to keep it down tomorrow.
You will then be treated to some of the most un-saintly behavior you are ever likely to see, daredevil.
The man in question is Matthew Le Tissier, or Le Tiz, as his mates call him. When talk revolves around one-club legends, the names of the usual suspects are all thrown into the mix carelessly.
If anything, Le Tissier deserves more accolades than any man on that list, with all due respect to them.
Simply because the club he chose to make his home was Southampton, when he could just as easily have gone on to play for far more illustrious names. Not that he has had any shortage in the adulation department, mind you. His 16 years at The Dell were spent in the adoring company of a fan base that christened him “Le God”.
It all got to the point where certain religious figures actually sent letters to The Dell, wanting Le Tissier to come out and state publicly that, he was, in fact, not God.
To understand why he never moved to a bigger club, you’d have to ask the great man himself. Very articulate and humble in his words, he is refreshingly blunt as he looks back on his career. A major factor was that he was truly grateful to Southampton for giving him his start in professional football – an obvious rarity in the footballing world.
And if that seems a little too far-fetched for your taste, then the man does admit that, from a footballing perspective, he preferred to stay because Southampton offered him the chance to play football the way he wanted to.
The big fish in the small pond had a freedom he would have hardly enjoyed had he made a much-expected move to Terry Venables’ Tottenham Hotspur; or anywhere else, for that matter.
Le Tissier was known to be a Spurs fan, too, so it looked like it was only a matter of time before he switched allegiances. Thankfully, the man was always cut from a different cloth than his peers, and he remains the only Spurs supporter I adore.
Mathew Le Tissier is also my all-time favorite football player. And only a fellow Arsenal supporter can understand the inherent romanticism involved with my fascination with a footballer who, despite all his considerable achievements, is considered by the less enlightened to have not taken his career to the heights it could have gone to.
Le Tissier was that rare English player who was uniquely technically gifted, a select company that, in recent memory, includes only the names of Paul Gascoigne, Wayne Rooney, and potentially Jack Wilshere.
Sir Alex Ferguson once said that Le Tissier was the kind of player he would never pick in his team, but that he did not want to see him in the team his side were up against next. And that explains the man’s genius far more succinctly than anyone else ever could.