Despite imperfections, Daniel Levy leaves impressive legacy as Tottenham Hotspur chairman

Regardless of the circumstances, every club has an autumn man, and few are as well known as Daniel Levy. Regardless of the connection, every fan seemed to have an opinion about the Tottenham Hotspur Chairman, who left the role on Thursday after 24 years, and truthfully the review was rarely a glowing. For many of those 24 years, Levy was the face of what Spurs had not reached -One EFL cup, a UEFA Europa League title and one trip to the UEFA Champions League final in two decades feel like beautiful meager return, depending on who you are asking for. While Levy leaves Tottenham, he leaves behind a complex legacy, a complicated by the fact that there was actually a lot that went well during his stint in the club.

Levy, the longest serving club chairman in the Premier League, can be remembered in the first place because of his lifespan, the kind of lasting power that made his exit a real shock. However, his long enchantment that is in charge of Spurs is just as clearly a snapshot of one of the club’s unexpected journey in the past two decades.

Long before Spurs’ Trophy Cabinet was a common topic of social media discussion, Levy took over in February 2001 as executive chairman of the club after buying the importance of 27% of the British company magnate Alan Sugar in the club. Speaking of trophies was ambitious, to say the least, when Levy took the lead – Tottenham was perhaps one of the “big five” clubs that facilitated the escape of the Football League to create the Premier League, but prestige did not follow the North London Club exactly. They had not finished since the seventh since the inaugural season of the Premier League in 1992-93, sometimes closer to the relegation zone with a 15th place the following season than the title hunt.

Success was not immediately, but within a few years the upward trajectory of Spurs became clear to everyone to see. Tottenham managed a fifth place in the 2005-06 season, partly thanks to a career-best 16-goal campaign by Robbie Keane, even if things were unraveled with a case of food poisoning that the team influenced before a crucial match against a crucial match against West Ham United With fourth place on the line. Their participation in the UEFA Cup (now known as the Europa League) the following season, however, is where Levy’s Crowing Achievement is – Spurs played in the European competition in 18 of the last 20 seasons, a streak that was previously unknown to the team.

It was a marker for the consistency of Tottenham under Levy, where the club became more and more competent in drawing up talented players such as Dimitar Berbatov and Gareth Bale. Each of them is perhaps left the club for larger shots at silverware, although their new clubs have sent in exchange for considerable transfer costs. The traces of Levy have since been stuck in the purgatory of a CUSPY club, one that feels like a regular Dark Horse Medical Education for silverware, but is consistently reminded of the second status in the food chain of the sport. That does not mean that the most recognizable strategy of Levy was not effective – for the majority, sport is actually not an exercise in winning titles, because the task of breaking in the elites is easier said than done. In football terms, most clubs are “selling clubs”, and there is an argument that Levy’s Spurs were the cream of the crop. Even if the Luka Modric And Kyle Walker On the left, Tottenham has recruited well enough that maintaining their place in European competition was almost a given. They may have been lucky at the academy product Harry KaneBut players like it Son Heung-min, Toby Alderweireld And Christian Eriksen left their own stamp, especially as staples of Mauricio Pochettinos 2018-19 team that went all the way to the Champions League final.

The most visible legacy of Levy, however, will be the Tottenham Hotspur stage of 62,000 seats. The location perfectly includes the rise of Spurs, the club now successful enough to justify a state-of-the-art stadium that regularly yields income from NFL -Games and concerts in his secondary responsibilities. By the time the new stadium was opened in 2019, a rarely seen a route completed spurs had climbed from the middle of the mediocre to become one of the most recognizable clubs of the sport, all without the money injection of a nation state or a business person with remarkably deep pockets. Levy succeeded in that incredible achievement without following a blueprint and for a period in which Big Money flooded the sport, sometimes the most important competitors of Spurs lifted to unprecedented heights.

Levy actually built a club that was too big for one person to run.

If there was a call that also looked the balance of Spurs Nice Before the run to the final of the Champions League, the sound reached a fever after the fact. The Tottenham team has almost faded compared to Pochettin’s version of the team, which ended in the top three of the Premier League for three of the five full seasons he was at the helm. Contrary to what is often thought, this is not really due to Levy’s lack of interest in new signing sessions-Tottenham has not made a profit on the transfer market in the last five years, with a net expenses of approximately $ 760 million in the past five years, the fourth highest in the competition. The top eight players on the list of their record signs joined the club after the run to the Champions League final, including new charts Xavi Simons.

How well the club has spent on new signing sessions, however, is a completely different story. Clubs can no longer function as a one-person surgery, let alone the richest and most successful. The requirements of building the stadium may have kept the levy from the transfer market to the point that Spurs did not sign players in the summer of 2018, but he was not the only one who pulled the strings in spurs in his last days in the club. That said, it took too long before a modern structure took place. Sports directors have come and gone, but have had different levels of influence along the way, things that only seemed to take a shift with the hiring of 2021 from Fabio Paraticians and the recruitment of 2023 by Johan Lange, who took on the role after paraticians received a 30 -month ban before an accounting scandal received during his time at Juventus. It means that traces still catch up with clubs like Liverpool And Manchester City, who has had robust sports departments for several years, and will not be able to keep pace until they improve their player recruitment strategy.

It was not the only suspicious decision tax taken at the club in his last years, although unfortunately he is far from the only one in this category. Tottenham is one of the various English clubs that have refused to invest further in the women’s game, despite the fact that the back-to-back European championships of the lion ribbons have fueled an unmistakable increase in the popularity for sport. BarcelonaThe 2015 trajectory to become a professional team to become the UEFA Women’s Champions League winners in 2021 should be a signal for the Power players in Europe that breaking in the upper echelons of the women’s game is more than feasible. However, there may be signs of optimism for the Spurs Lady Team – the new CEO Vinai Venkatesham was a advocate for Arsenal‘s women’s team during his time at the club, the fruits of that work paid off with their UWCL triumph in 2025.

Every honest criticism of Levy is rooted in the fact that the task of running Tottenham was too great for one person, several important tasks that fell to the club in his last years. It means His reported removal by the majority shareholders of Spurs Perhaps a deserved, like a daring, because Levy felt like a permanent game in the club. It may not be a consultation with him at the moment, but his failures are actually a sign of well -done work. Levy is perhaps the only director of his type in the sport to have transformed a club on his own without an empty check of ownership, which is perhaps the most impossible tasks in a new era of commercialization in sport.