Glenn Hoddle
Attacking Midfielder · Tottenham Hotspur · England
About Glenn Hoddle
Glenn Hoddle was the most naturally gifted English footballer of his generation, a supremely elegant playmaker of rare technical quality who won two FA Cups with Spurs. He won 53 England caps but was controversially under-used by some managers who couldn't fit his genius into tactical systems.
Glenn Hoddle's story
Harlow Boy, Spurs Fan
Born in Hayes, Middlesex, on 27 October 1957, Hoddle grew up in Harlow, Essex, where his father Derek played non-league for Uxbridge. A Tottenham supporter from the age of eight, he joined the club's junior ranks at 12 and signed as an apprentice on 17 April 1974. Naturally two-footed, he spent hours perfecting his weaker side until both were equally deadly, a completeness almost unheard of in an English teenager of the era.
A Teenage Debut
He came off the bench against Norwich City on 30 August 1975, aged 17, and soon became the jewel of White Hart Lane: an upright, unhurried playmaker who could thread a pass or bend a shot from anywhere on the pitch. He was PFA Young Player of the Year by 1980 and the creative heart of the side that lifted the FA Cup in 1981 and 1982 and the UEFA Cup in 1984. Spurs supporters simply called him 'God', and team-mate Ossie Ardiles, a World Cup winner with Argentina, called him 'Maradona without pace'. His genius was never more outrageous than at Watford in 1983, when, back to goal and tightly marked, he flicked the ball up with a backheel to beat his marker and chipped the goalkeeper in one unbroken movement.
England's Unused Genius
He scored on his England debut against Bulgaria on 22 November 1979 but was rewarded with only 53 caps and 8 goals, a tally that reflects badly on England rather than on him. In an age of long balls and heavy pitches, his continental artistry was treated with suspicion, and manager after manager either left him out or asked him to play within himself. Michel Platini could not understand it: 'If Hoddle had been French, he would have won well over 100 caps and the team would have been built around him.' Brian Clough's verdict was shorter: 'It takes great courage to play the way Hoddle does.'
Wenger's Monaco
After Spurs lost the 1987 FA Cup final to Coventry, a young Arsène Wenger signed him for Monaco for £750,000 and gave him the freedom England never had, playing him as a pure number 10 with others doing the defensive running. He repaid it immediately, driving Monaco to the 1987-88 league title, their first in six years, and was voted the division's finest foreign player. A serious knee injury later cut his French adventure short.
Manager of England
A player-manager at Swindon Town from 1991, he scored in the 4-3 play-off final win over Leicester that took them up in 1993, then reached the 1994 FA Cup final in the same role at Chelsea. He took the England job in 1996, won Le Tournoi in 1997 and reached the 1998 World Cup last 16, going out to Argentina on penalties. His reign ended abruptly on 2 February 1999 after newspaper comments about disability and reincarnation, and he went on to manage Tottenham and Southampton before becoming one of television's most respected analysts.
Saved on His Birthday
On 27 October 2018, his 61st birthday, Hoddle suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed on the studio floor at BT Sport, minutes after coming off air. His heart had stopped for more than a minute when a sound engineer, Simon Daniels, a former special constable, reached him, performed CPR and used a defibrillator to bring him back, cracking several of his ribs in the effort. Hoddle calls Daniels the man he thanks every day, and has said the brush with death reshaped what he values: 'It is not really what we achieve, material or career.'
Did you know?
- ⚽ He made his first league start for Spurs on 21 February 1976 and scored the winning goal.
- 🎵 In May 1987 he and Chris Waddle released the single "Diamond Lights", which reached No. 12 in the UK charts.
- 👨👩👧👦 He married Christine Stirling in 1979 and, after they divorced, Vanessa Colburn in 2000. He has three children with his first wife, and his son is a musician and songwriter.
- 🧬 Football runs in the family: his younger brother Carl became a professional footballer, and his uncle Dave won the 1984 FA Vase with Stansted.
- 🇳🇱 Spurs beat a Feyenoord side that included Johan Cruyff 6-2 on aggregate in the 1983-84 UEFA Cup, the competition they went on to win.
- 🎓 In 2008 he founded the Glenn Hoddle Academy to help young players released by Premier League and Football League clubs back into the professional game. Alumnus Sam Clucas went on to start regularly in the Premier League for Hull City in 2016-17.
- 🙏 He became a born-again Christian after an experience on holiday in Israel in 1986.
- 🤲 Faith healer Eileen Drewery worked with his England squad, nicknamed the Hod Squad. Goalkeeper David Seaman said he saw her twice before the 1998 World Cup and "all she did was put her hands on my shoulder".
- 🐓 As a young apprentice at White Hart Lane he cleaned the club's cockerel emblem, a story he tells in his 2021 autobiography Playmaker.
- 👕 Hoddle could not stand playing with his shirt tucked in and reckoned he played better with it out; when Ron Greenwood ordered him to tuck it in for England, it felt all wrong.
- 🗺️ When the move to Monaco came up in 1987, Hoddle had to look up on a map exactly where the principality was before trusting his gut and signing.
- 🦷 Before the 1998 World Cup he sent the whole England squad to the dentist, remembering how he had nearly missed a game at Mexico 86 because of toothache.
See the full Glenn Hoddle profile
Stats, photo gallery, what the press are saying and the daily challenge, free on DailyPlayer.
Open the full profile