Timing is an essential part of the goalscorer’s art and, for once, Jermain Defoe’s appears a little awry.
Tottenham Hotspur are embracing their past, returning to their attacking traditions and selecting two strikers again.
This should represent an Indian summer for a specialist predator who is the fifth-highest goalscorer in the club’s history. With an Englishman in charge again, it seems a fine time to be a Londoner at White Hart Lane.
Except that, in a swift role reversal, a local seems certain to become an expensive export. Football’s worst-kept secret has been confirmed: Jermain Defoe is to swap the river Thames for Lake Ontario and, more surprisingly, leave the Premier League for Major League Soccer, and head to Toronto FC.
With the World Cup this summer it appears as though a poacher has made his run too early. He may have strayed about 5,500 kilometres offside as far as England manager Roy Hodgson is concerned.
So Defoe’s departure at the end of next month will represent the end of an era at Tottenham.
“Everybody knows how much this club means to me,” he said as his move was announced. His years have been an age of improvement but, perhaps epitomised by him, Spurs have been nearly men.
He first arrived at White Hart Lane in 2004. Their only trophy since then came in the 2008 League Cup when Defoe was in a gap year at Portsmouth (he was first lured away and then brought back by Harry Redknapp).
The only four men to prove more prolific for Tottenham – Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Smith, Martin Chivers and Cliff Jones – all played under the club’s greatest manager, Bill Nicholson, and at a time when silverware was rather more plentiful.
Nor, indeed, do the statistics paint a perfect picture of Defoe’s career at Spurs. A total of 142 goals in 361 games is more than respectable but distorted by a status as the perennial 12th man.
Reasons why he has begun so many games on the bench include Dimitar Berbatov, Robbie Keane, Rafael van der Vaart, Peter Crouch, Emmanuel Adebayor and Roberto Soldado.
A change in football fashions was as significant.
The specialist goalscorer has become an endangered species and Defoe is the sort of forward who rarely holds the ball up, links play or creates chances for others.
He has fallen out of favour in the age of lone strikers. Perhaps, though, he has tired of life as a super-sub.
Defoe averages almost exactly a goal every other Premier League start and close on one every 90 minutes in the cups.
He has proved the scourge of Europa League defences this season, when his nine goals have all come in knockout competitions. If that suggests he is a flat-track bully, the menace in midweek matches has been denied the opportunities he deserved.
He became a cause celebre with Spurs supporters when Andre Villas-Boas only selected one forward and that man, Soldado, struggled to score.
When the bolder Tim Sherwood took charge, switched system and put an onus on attack, Defoe was usurped by a returning Adebayor in the line-up.
Toronto head coach Ryan Nelsen, a former teammate, said: “If you ask any Premier League club, then they would take Jermain right now. I know Tottenham are getting offers everywhere for him and from top-four clubs in England.”
Yet they presumably regarded him as a potentially deadly bit-part player. Instead, he is a designated player at Toronto.
He won’t be the rescue act, sent on in desperate late attempts to secure a goal. Instead, a team should be built around him in a way Tottenham sides rarely were.
Coupled with the large financial package the Canadian club offered it is, as Sherwood said, “a great opportunity”.
A former Spurs manager, referring to Defoe’s fondness for shooting and reluctance to pass, used to say privately: “All moves end with Defoe.” Now he has reached the end at Tottenham.
At 31, though, Defoe looks a bit young to be heading to the MLS. He has gone too early.
sports@thenational.ae
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The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
Timeline
2012-2015
The company offers payments/bribes to win key contracts in the Middle East
May 2017
The UK SFO officially opens investigation into Petrofac’s use of agents, corruption, and potential bribery to secure contracts
September 2021
Petrofac pleads guilty to seven counts of failing to prevent bribery under the UK Bribery Act
October 2021
Court fines Petrofac £77 million for bribery. Former executive receives a two-year suspended sentence
December 2024
Petrofac enters into comprehensive restructuring to strengthen the financial position of the group
May 2025
The High Court of England and Wales approves the company’s restructuring plan
July 2025
The Court of Appeal issues a judgment challenging parts of the restructuring plan
August 2025
Petrofac issues a business update to execute the restructuring and confirms it will appeal the Court of Appeal decision
October 2025
Petrofac loses a major TenneT offshore wind contract worth €13 billion. Holding company files for administration in the UK. Petrofac delisted from the London Stock Exchange
November 2025
180 Petrofac employees laid off in the UAE
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Safety 'top priority' for rival hyperloop company
The chief operating officer of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Andres de Leon, said his company's hyperloop technology is “ready” and safe.
He said the company prioritised safety throughout its development and, last year, Munich Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, announced it was ready to insure their technology.
“Our levitation, propulsion, and vacuum technology have all been developed [...] over several decades and have been deployed and tested at full scale,” he said in a statement to The National.
“Only once the system has been certified and approved will it move people,” he said.
HyperloopTT has begun designing and engineering processes for its Abu Dhabi projects and hopes to break ground soon.
With no delivery date yet announced, Mr de Leon said timelines had to be considered carefully, as government approval, permits, and regulations could create necessary delays.
Squad
Ali Kasheif, Salim Rashid, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Khalfan Mubarak, Ali Mabkhout, Omar Abdulrahman, Mohammed Al Attas, Abdullah Ramadan, Zayed Al Ameri (Al Jazira), Mohammed Al Shamsi, Hamdan Al Kamali, Mohammed Barghash, Khalil Al Hammadi (Al Wahda), Khalid Essa, Mohammed Shaker, Ahmed Barman, Bandar Al Ahbabi (Al Ain), Al Hassan Saleh, Majid Suroor (Sharjah) Walid Abbas, Ahmed Khalil (Shabab Al Ahli), Tariq Ahmed, Jasim Yaqoub (Al Nasr), Ali Saleh, Ali Salmeen (Al Wasl), Hassan Al Muharami (Baniyas)
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The specs
Engine: 4-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: eight-speed PDK
Power: 630bhp
Torque: 820Nm
Price: Dh683,200
On sale: now
MATCH INFO
Everton 2 (Tosun 9', Doucoure 93')
Rotherham United 1 (Olosunde 56')
Man of the Match Olosunde (Rotherham)
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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The biog
First Job: Abu Dhabi Department of Petroleum in 1974
Current role: Chairperson of Al Maskari Holding since 2008
Career high: Regularly cited on Forbes list of 100 most powerful Arab Businesswomen
Achievement: Helped establish Al Maskari Medical Centre in 1969 in Abu Dhabi’s Western Region
Future plan: Will now concentrate on her charitable work
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
In numbers
1,000 tonnes of waste collected daily:
- 800 tonnes converted into alternative fuel
- 150 tonnes to landfill
- 50 tonnes sold as scrap metal
800 tonnes of RDF replaces 500 tonnes of coal
Two conveyor lines treat more than 350,000 tonnes of waste per year
25 staff on site
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
