Argentine World Cup winner and the first great foreign import of English football
FootballIn the summer of 1978, Tottenham Hotspur signed a slight Argentine midfielder days after he had won the World Cup. English football has never been quite the same since.
Born in Cordoba in 1952, Osvaldo Cesar Ardiles was a lawyer turned footballer who won the 1978 World Cup on home soil with Argentina before his then controversial move to London. Along with compatriot Ricky Villa, he broke the assumption that Europeans beyond the English Channel would never take to the English game. Within three seasons he had helped Spurs win the FA Cup in 1981 and 1982, and his little white running shirt became the emblem of a whole generation at White Hart Lane.
The Falklands War in 1982 forced him briefly out of English football, yet his relationship with Tottenham never wavered. He returned, played on through 1988, and was immortalised in Chas and Dave's Ossie's Dream, one of the few Cup Final songs ever written about a single player. He managed Spurs in the Premier League era, coached clubs from Japan to Paraguay, and remains one of world football's most travelled tacticians.
On the speaking circuit he is a natural storyteller: warm, articulate, and still boyishly delighted by the game. Every room gets Argentina in 1978, Spurs in the 1980s, and the life of a man who joined English football as a stranger and left it as family.
Two decades of world class speakers in the basement at EC3. Want to book Ossie Ardiles or someone like them? Tell us what you need and we will come back with a plan.
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