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The return of Defoe

Jermain Defoe might notice that something’s not quite right when he faces up against his former club this weekend. Hang on a second, his internal monologue will cry, I don’t remember White Hart Lane being this big.

Then he’ll realise the sad truth: the ground in which Defoe enjoyed two goal-frenzied spells, between 2004-2008 and 2009-14, has been bulldozed back into the earth. Now, in its stead, Spurs’ new short-term home: Wembley. A stadium with a mixed history for the Bournemouth frontman.

Goals have come for England under the Arch, against the continental might of Kazakhstan, Andorra, Slovenia and, more recently, Lithuania— but never has Defoe scored at the national stadium during his long club career.

Perhaps he might have, had his January ’08 move to Portsmouth not been so poorly timed. Not only did he miss Spurs’ League Cup final triumph, their first trophy in a decade, he was also cup-tied for the climax of Pompey’s FA Cup run.

But let’s not dwell on past mistakes. Here, for your enjoyment, a salute to Spurs’ diminutive former striker. It’s The Top 3 Jermain Defoe Moments in a Tottenham Shirt:

North London Derby dynamite

Spurs lost the game 4-5; the defending for Arsenal’s third was amongst the worst I’ve witnessed and Jens Lehmann spent much of the afternoon wearing a drab grey baseball cap to shield his eyes from the bright November sun.

All in all, not a great opening fixture of Martin Jol’s reign at the club. What the day will be remembered for, however, is Jermain Defoe’s absolute foot bazooka which briefly bought Spurs fans hope that the tie could be rescued. Defoe deployed that classic strategy of running past three defenders and firing it pixel-perfectly into the top corner. JERMAIN DEFOE, screamed Martin Tyler as the ball flew in. Quite.

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Wigan walloped

In November 2009, Jermain Defoe joined Andy Cole and Alan Shearer on that short list of players who’d scored five goals in a single Premier League game. The fete has since been matched by Dimitar Berbatov and Sergio Agüero.

What made Defoe’s quintuplet against Wigan remarkable, in an eventual 9-1 victory for Spurs, was that he managed it in one half. 36 minutes to be precise. It was a masterclass of instinctive, lethal finishing by a striker practically spinning off the planet with confidence.

Twente-Twente vision

On a frosty night in Enschede, Netherlands, Jermain Defoe at least partially answered the question of whether he was cut out for the Champions League stage. And that answer was: kind of.

In a 3-3 draw with FC Twente, the previous season’s Eredivise title winners under Steve McClaren, the Tottenham man opened and closed his account in Europe’s elite competition. Two neatly poached finishes, the type of which Defoe has built a career on.

Welcome home, Jermain. It’s not like you remember it.