- Ledley King
Biography
Club captain and longest-serving member of our playing staff, Ledley’s performances at the end of the 2009-10 campaign earned a place in England’s World Cup squad.
Injuries again took their toll during the season but it wasn’t his now famous knee problems but muscle injuries that cost Ledley time out of the team.
As always though, when Ledley played, he underlined his class and that was enough for Fabio Capell to take him to South Africa.
Ledley actually started 19 games in the Premier League – half of the season – skippering the side to a fourth-place finish and, 11 years after making his first-team debut, securing a place in the Champions League.
Having come through the Club’s Academy ranks, Ledley made his senior debut as an 18-year-old, coming on as a substitute during a 3-2 defeat against Liverpool at Anfield in May 1999.
It took another season before the London-born youngster properly established himself in the First Team, but once he did so during the 2000-01 campaign, there was no looking back.
Over the next few seasons, Ledley earned recognition as one of the best young defenders in the country, also often operating as a defensive midfielder.
He gained full international honours for England during this time, and was part of Sven-Goran Eriksson’s Euro 2004 squad, starting the first game of the tournament against holders France.
But the pivotal season of his career was the 2004-05 campaign. Ledley was an ever-present in our Premier League campaign, in which we conceded just 41 goals and kept 13 clean sheets. During that season, he was also named Club captain.
The following season, he led the Club to a top five Premier League finish, but missed the final games of that campaign due to a broken foot that kept him out of that summer’s World Cup Finals in Germany.
Since then, injury problems, particularly knee trouble, have blighted Ledley’s career.
This forced him to feature in less than half of our 59 competitive games in 2006-07.
The following season did not kick off for Ledley until Boxing Day, but although he only managed to play 10 games in 2007-08, the defining moment of his career so far came during this campaign.
He lived a boyhood dream of captaining Spurs to their first major trophy in nine years after a heroic performance in a 2-1 extra-time win over Chelsea in the Carling Cup Final at Wembley in February 2008.
Ledley called time on the season soon after, and following a summer of rehabilitation, 2008-09 saw a marked improvement in his fitness levels as he played 29 games in all competitions.
He established a strong defensive partnership with Jonathan Woodgate as the foundation of a back-line that conceded just 10 goals at home in the league all season.
At present, Ledley still holds the record for the fastest ever goal in Premier League history, scored after 10 seconds against Bradford City at Valley Parade in December 2000. This was also his first ever goal for the Club!
Ledley Brenton King (born 12 October 1980) is an English footballer who plays as a central defender for Tottenham Hotspur in the English Premier League and the England national team. He is the longest serving player at the club and captained Spurs for four years. He is currently contracted to Tottenham until 2012. Known for his pace, strength, heading, composure on the ball with both feet and ability in timing his tackles, he has been described as “the best central defender I have seen in my career” by Martin Jol In March 2009 an article in The Times named King as Tottenham’s 25th best player of all time.
In recent seasons King has been plagued by chronic knee problems, for which no effective treatment or remedy has been found, which prevent him from playing more than one game a week. Instead of training with the rest of the squad King undertakes fitness exercises on his own. His manager Harry Redknapp has called King “an absolute freak” for being able to perform at a high level despite not training.King has also received praise from former team mate and Sky Sports pundit Jamie Redknapp, saying that “He is like a magnet for the ball, a thoroughbred of a defender, the best centre-half in the country.”
Club career: Tottenham Hotspur (1997 – ?)