Tottenham Hotspur - Home Away from Home

It's strange to feel so deeply connected to a football club in a city you've never set foot in. Tottenham Hotspur call N17 their home, a corner of north London I've only ever seen through a screen and yet, somehow, they've helped me feel at home all the way in India.

It started in 2012, with a team that was almost impossible not to fall in love with. Van der Vaart and Modric controlling the midfield. Lennon and Walker burning down the right. Defoe and Adebayor up front. And of course, the Welsh Wizard, Gareth Bale. Under Harry Redknapp, Spurs played with a joy and ambition that felt infectious, chasing a return to the Champions League with a swagger that was entirely their own. I was hooked. And if I needed any more convincing, there was the small matter of finally having a club to wave in the face of my Arsenal-supporting brother. Added ammo to our life-long rivalry.

Since everyone I knew had already claimed one of the other Big 6 clubs, I found myself the sole Spurs fan in school. It was a lonely post, but it pushed me online, where I discovered India Spurs, and through them, something even closer to home: Kerala Spurs. At just 14, I was the youngest member they had, a fact my mother reminded me of every time I asked to attend one of their late-night match screenings. My new friends in Kerala Spurs (who I never met), were warm and welcoming from the start; inviting me to screenings, even to their weddings. But for years, I could only watch from afar.

Then, in 2016, it finally happened. My first screening. Spurs against Manchester United, with Pochettino's superteam in full flight: Kane, Son, Eriksen, Dembélé, Dele, Vertonghen, Alderweireld, Lloris, Rose, Walker and co (a proper side, oh how I miss those days now). When I walked in and took my seat, I noticed a few whispers rippling through the Spurs fans in the room. “Another one of us, here in Kerala?” One of them was brave enough to walk over and ask my name. The moment I told him, his face broke into a wide grin. He grabbed my arm, pulled me to my feet, and announced me to the whole room and I was greeted with cheers. Finally they get to put a face to my name. 0-0 at half-time, I met them all properly, and there was already a quiet certainty between us: Spurs were winning this one. Three goals in six minutes in the second half and we were singing and celebrating loud enough to drown out every United fan in the room.

April 10th, 2016. Tottenham 3-0 Manchester United screening party in Kochi, Kerala.

College came, and once again I was the lone Spurs fan, carrying the badge in rooms where nobody else cared. That particular kind of loneliness; the kind that isn't about being disliked, just unseen, is something every football fan away from their tribe will recognise.

It wasn’t till I was done with college and working in Mumbai in 2024 where I reconnected with my fellow Spurs fans. A new city, a post-pandemic world that had made strangers of everyone, and very little sense of where to begin. Then Spurs Official from London announced a special matchday screening in Mumbai; Spurs vs Aston Villa, with Ledley King and Ossie Ardiles in attendance. I walked in and found myself surrounded by more than a hundred Spurs fans. A hundred. In Mumbai. It was, quietly, extraordinary. We might have lost the game, but I found a new community. 

A group of us started organising Sunday turf matches; just Spurs fans, playing football together. At first we were all a little shy, letting our feet do the talking. But week by week, something shifted. The Sunday game became a habit, and the habit became friendship.

Weekly turf football matches with Mumbai Spurs.

The highlight came in May 2025, with the Europa League Final, again a match against Manchester United. The younger fans buzzed with excitement; those of us with longer memories tried to keep our hearts in check. Spurs fans know better than to count on things before the final whistle. But when it came, when it was finally over and we had actually won, the room erupted. I remember being thrown into the air, arms around people I'd only met a few months earlier, screaming with a kind of relief that only years of near-misses can produce. That Sunday, when we took to the turf, we played as Champions of Europe. It felt surreal, and it felt earned.

May 22nd, 2025. Man United 0-1 Tottenham. Mumbai, Maharashtra.

Leaving Mumbai was harder than I expected. Kerala Spurs were waiting; my original football family, but saying goodbye to the friends I'd made in Mumbai was its own small heartbreak. They put it well, as football people tend to: I wasn't leaving, I was being transferred.

June 29th, 2025. My last Mumbai Spurs Sunday turf football session.

That's the thing about supporting Spurs from India. I've never stood in the stands at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. I've never walked down Tottenham High Road on a match day, never felt the cold of a north London winter during a European night. And yet, I feel unmistakably part of this club; because Spurs gave me a reason to find my people. In online forums as a lonely teenager, in screening rooms in Kerala, in a Mumbai venue packed with a hundred strangers who immediately felt like anything but. Tottenham's home is in N17. But the community it built gave me a home wherever I was.